“Rich,” I murmur. “I want you to take a deep breath, go back, sit down, and finish playing your game. I’ll be there soon to finish unpacking and to cook us lunch while you go do what you need to do.”
AJ shuffles forward on his knees. “She has a gun! And…and we’re at the P?—”
I slam my hand against the phone, ending the call while my finger hugs the trigger.
“Are you stupid?” I grunt.
“Areyou?”
“I’mthe one trying to make sure you go back to New York alive because I still have some respect for your parents.”
He scoffs. “So you’d really do it? You’d kill me over this?”
“No.He’llkill you over me. He doesn’t care who you are. To him, you’re just another stupid man who hurt me, and he doesn’t spare stupid men. So I think it’s best if you shut up and let me and Blake work this out.”
Two solid knocks echo throughout the suite. “It’s Blake! Open the door.”
“Is that really necessary?” Blake nods toward Rich’s gun sitting on the dining table next to me.
“Was the beating your client gave me necessary?” I ask through throbbing lips.
AJ sucks his teeth and holds a makeshift ice pack to his mouth that Blake made from one of the hotel towels and the melted ice from the champagne bucket.
Blake’s nostrils flare as he reaches down for the Morgan Stanley folder that sits in the empty chair between me and them.
It took five phone calls for him to make this happen. One to AJ’s accountant, one to AJ’s lawyer, one to a financial advisor at a Morgan Stanley in Uptown who Blake’s frat brother recommended, one to a courier service, and thenanotherone to AJ’s accountant who wanted to know why AJ was making a three-million-dollar investment he hadn’t consulted with him about on a random Friday in Houston. And Blake’s such a good agent that he lied without stuttering as he paced back and forth in the suite’s kitchen while telling Mr. Chavez that it was “a personal venture AJ and his family were embarking on that he wasn’t at liberty to discuss.”
The bright sun shines on the middle of the dining table while a heavy silence engulfs the room just like it did when we’d meet at the penthouse back in New York, but for the first time I have a seat at the table. Usually I lingered off to the side next to AJ’s chair as Blake rattled off his “what does this mean for AJ’s career” speech.
He pulls an envelope out of the folder. “This was the safest and quickest way to do this.”
“Are you positive they won’t find anything out? Like can they trace any of this back to her?” AJ asks.
Blake cuts his eyes at him from across the table. “Can you shut the fuck up and let me do my job?”
AJ blows a breath out of his bloody mouth.
“He has a point,” I grit out. “I told you I wanted cash.”
“And I told you that was impossible on a day’s notice. No bank has three million dollars lying around. Even if we gave them a week’s notice, they’d ask questions and request law enforcement presence. It’d be messy.”
He opens the envelope and pulls out three checks. “They’re cashier’s checks. There’s no cap on them and Dorian said he talked to his manager and the bank can guarantee the funds.”
My face throbs as I stare at the checks.
“Are you sure this is how you wanna handle this, Lovie? I know AJ has some issues…but he’s a good kid. You’re a good girl. I remember the first time I saw you two together. I said, ‘Wow. I don’t even need to polish them up. They’re already gold. They already have the makings of an NFL power couple.’”
“Until you found out we were just fool’s gold, huh?” I ask, glancing at the side of AJ’s face as his jaw clenches.
“We can get you two into some couples therapy and forget this—forget these people—forget whatever this Rich dude has gotten you tangled up in.” Blake fingers the checks and holds them up.
His eyebrows had almost shot off his head when I told him I wanted two of the checks made out to Melo Barnes and one of them out to Rich Lovelace Jr.
“You know you can take this three mil and finish planning that wedding, and we can move on quietly from this,” he says.
“Is this the speech you’ll give your daughter some day if she ends up with a good kid like him?” I jut my chin towards AJ.
“All I’m saying is that you’re throwing years down the drain for something that can be fixed. Look at how much you’ve already invested into this life.”
