I cut her off. “Why are you doing my schedule? You don’t know a damn thing about my schedule.”
“Because—”
“Where is my assistant?” I snap, racking my brain for her name. Maggie, Mallory… “Molly. Where the hell is Molly?”
Janine just stares at me. Like the next words out of her mouth are going to send her to the guillotine. “She’s gone.”
“Gone?” I snap and she winces. “Where did she go?”
“You fired her, sir.”
Right. Fuck.
“Figure out where my coffee is. And then bring me a list of all the applicants on file for the assistant position. And do not touch my schedule again.”
“Yes, sir.” She scampers out of the room in a tizzy.
I take in a deep breath and let it out in a persecuted sigh. Everything is on fire. My entire life is one big forest fire and I am just standing in the middle, watching it burn out of control.
And if there is anything that grinds on me, that I cannot stand, that I will not tolerate, it’s losing control.
I need a competent assistant. One that gets my coffee order right and writes up my schedule in a way that actually makes some fucking sense. One that doesn’t stare at me like a deer in the fucking headlights only to stutter out a half-literate answer to whatever question I ask.
I need Amara.
I grit at the thought of it. It would be one thing to ask her to come back after firing her and sending her and her siblings packing. It would be another to have her working in her condition. She needs to focus on the baby, on making sure that she isn’t under any stress. The last thing she needs to be worrying about is being at my every beck and call, though I love when she’s in my service.
My phone rings, thankfully, and I yank it out of my pocket before even looking at who it is. “Yeah?”
“Boss, we’ve got a mess on our hands. You sitting down?”
It’s Maverick. I should have looked before I answered, because I’m not in the mood for whatever fuckery he’s got going on.
“Let me guess. You picked a fight at a Chadovich bar and you need backup?”
“No,” he says. “Though that does sound like me.”
“Lost a poker game and short on cash because you spent it all at a strip club the night before?” I ask, sifting through mail that has been piled up on my desk. Amara would know to sort it. To leave only the important ones on my desk and deal with the others.
“Listen, Ransome. There was a snag with one of the shipments,” he says.
That stops me. “What kind of snag?”
“Not totally sure. Somewhere en-route in the Midwest, there was police activity surrounding some of the trucks. El Paso stopped the shipments on their end when word got out.”
“What mile marker?” I bark out.
“I texted you all the info earlier. They’re off the hook, but from the sounds of it, the cops were tipped off.”
My jaw vises shut. “Tipped off or paid off?”
“That was my thought too,” he says.
“Still no word on him?” I don’t have to say Tristan’s name for Maverick and anyone else to know who I am referring to.
“Nope,” he answers. “Wherever thatkusok der’mais, he’s hiding good. For now anyways.”
Maverick’s Russian isn’t the best, but he’s right about two things.
