At the sound of his voice, she stopped and padded into the room. With a terse smile, she rustled the bag’s shattered contents.
“The girl’s got some fire to her.”
Fingers laced behind his head, Jack broke with hearty laughter. The humor was lost on Emory. His shoulders tensed, and dull pain radiated down his back.
“Where is she?” he asked.
Mirabelle frowned and picked at the bag’s plastic handle looped around her finger.
“She’s so scared, Em. She just wants to go home.”
Funny how Mirabelle had swept up Amelia’s mess and argued on her behalf. She answered the wrong question, though. Emory didn’t give a fuck howthe girl was.
“She can’t go home.Whereis she?”
“She ate a little and fell asleep in the bedroom across from yours.”
“Good. She’ll stay there until she tells the truth.”
Emory left no margin for discussion, but Mirabelle didn’t need him to carve out that space. She crouched at his feet with a plea.
“You need to tell her you’re not going to hurt her, that no one here is going to hurt her.”
“I’ll deal with it.”
Liam ashed his cigar in the fireplace and stepped from the mantle.
“Don’t forget you have business in Vegas tomorrow. You need to figure out how you want to handle that.”
Emory hadn’t forgotten but also hadn’t expected such a disastrous detour. Second rule of conduct—business was handled in the order it came and delegated accordingly. Vegas wasn’t a matter he could hand off to someone else.
“Weneed to postpone until things cool down,” Emory said. “I guarantee the Velascos are hot that we swooped in on their target.”
Jack cracked a smile. “Works in our favor. They fuck with us, we fuck with them.”
Emory nodded. “If nothing else, she’s a bargaining chip.”
Horrified, Mirabelle gaped at him. He could deal with her anger but not her disgust. It was the price of doing business around her. She’d see the way he slipped skins into a ruthless man.
“I thought you were protecting her,” Mirabelle said, her voice breathy with disbelief. “You didn’t say anything about using her to bargain with.”
“I’ll keep her safe, but she’s here to give me answers,” Emory reminded. “I need you to get that in her head, Miri. I won’t tolerate her being obstinate.” He pointed to the bag. “I won’t tolerate this shit either.”
Mirabelle crossed her arms and sat back on her heels. “You’re gonna have a hell of a time with her.”
“How so?”
“She’s as stubborn as you are.”
Emory shrugged. “I’ll get what I want.”
Jack cut him a lecherous glance. If it were him, he’d play the hand dirty; smooth talk until Amelia parted her thighs and spilled her secrets.
It wasn’t as if Emory didn’t want that from her too. Amelia was sugar-spun straight from his sweetest fantasies, but his charm didn’t work that way and, even if it did, they were too far gone for him to romance her into compliance.
He’d planned to take Amelia himself and even pulled her from the pile of bodies at Rich’s party, but his good intentions went awry, as they often did. He had no choice now but to play the part of the beast.
“Eventually, we need to deal with the Vegas issue,” Liam interjected again. “When we do, Amelia will have to come with us.”
