I wanted to rip that man’s throat out with my bare hands. “I’m sorry you got fired, but I told you to stop digging.”
She froze. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Stop while you’re ahead.“I’m just saying that if you would have laid off—”
She scooted away from me. “If I would’ve listened to some man I don’t know, I might still have my job? Is that what you’re saying? That I got a four-fucking-year degree just to listen to a bunch of asshole men for the rest of my life?”
I sat myself up. “That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that sometimes, even if you don’t agree with it, you have to obey the signs that come your way. I told you to lay off. He told you to lay off. It’s just that—”
She slid off the bed. “Fucking amazing. Just fucking great.”
I watched as she angrily pulled her robe over her perfect, petite little body, and I knew I had stepped in it.
Why the fuck do I always do this?
“Well, you know that?” she asked as she tied her robe off around her waist. “I think there’s a serious story to pursue if everyone around me is telling me to stop. You, my boss, and my editor? You can all suck my fucking dick. When this many people say ‘stop digging?’ That means there’s something people don’t want to be found out.”
I stood to my feet and gathered my clothes. “Or maybe there really is nothing to pursue and you’re being stubborn. Ever think of that?”
She threw my leather cut at my face. “Get the fuck out.”
I pulled my clothes on as quickly as possible. “Don’t mind if I do.”
“And don’t you ever come back around here. If I see you? I’m calling the cops.”
“Trust me, it would’ve never worked anyway. Thanks for the lay.”
“Get out!” she shrieked.
She threw my shoes out the door and I heard them tumble down the steps. I resisted the urge to fire back at her and tell her that her firing was her own doing. That her stubbornness was the only thing responsible for her losing her job. Whatever. Maybe she’d finally learn a few life lessons once she was living on the streets and unable to provide for herself before her ego was more important than her well-being.
But as I made my way out of her place, I paused and turned my gaze over my shoulder.
“I know you’re going to continue digging, so for what it’s worth, my guys and I weren’t involved in what happened at Heist. We were set up.”
Her voice dripped with venom as she walked over and gripped her open door. “I don’t believe that for a fucking second, you useless fuck.”
Then, she slammed the door in my face so hard that it echoed down the corridor of stairs.
Well, fuck you too, then.
SIXTEEN
ARIA
I listened to him fumble his way down the steps while he murmured beneath his breath. I felt disgusted as his mark dripped down the insides of my thighs. I grimaced to myself as I raced back into my bathroom and quickly hopped into the shower, determined to scrub every last inch of his presence off my skin.
But as the hot water scalded my body while I scrubbed, my reality dawned on me.
I don’t have work to do today because I got fired.
I allowed the tears to fall, but it would be the only time I cried over some stupid-ass job. The only reason I had taken it and come home in the first place was because Nadia had asked me to get closer to home. I figured I would surprise her with being in town again. Close, like family needed to be.
And as I got out of the shower for the third time that day, I settled on my plans.
“I’ll go help her at the homeless shelter she was at today,” I said breathlessly.
I shot a quick text off to my sister letting her know that I’d come by to help, then I got ready. She volunteered at the homeless and women’s shelters around town whenever she wasn’t working with the kids in the area, and some days I didn’t understand how the fuck she came across that kind of energy. She was a saint, and the fact that a robbery gone wrong had taken the love of her life away from her made me ache.
