I smiled. “Dead serious, but no promises.”
It was a blatant lie. The man owed me favors and would give a toddler a job if I so demanded it, but I wanted to make sure Sophie was comfortable there first.
She nodded.
“Understood.” But then she let out another squeal. “But to work again and hear that first baby’s cry…”
“It’s nice to see when someone loves their job.”
She sighed. “I really do. This life of leisure has been nice but hard, and it’s certainly not helping my morning crankiness.”
“All right, I’ll set it up and take you to meet him. Think of it as your interview of him as much as his of you.”
“Thank you.” God, she was beautiful when she beamed like this. If she asked for the moon, I’d find a way to get up there and drag it down.
“Should I secure an afternoon shift for you? I don’t want you to have to deal with morning crankiness.”
She shook her head. “Absolutely not. I’ll take whatever shift they offer.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Are you sure? You tend to be pretty cranky when someone wakes you up.”
“I know.” She flashed me a somewhat sheepish smile. “The funny thing is when it’s for work, I’m pretty good and professional. The monster only comes out when I’m sleeping with no work lined up but still get woken up.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.” I let out a sardonic breath. “Not sure if I should take it personally that you tolerate work more than me in the morning.”
She winked playfully. “I tolerate work, but you’re more important than that.”
I chuckled, although those words sealed my obsession right there and then. There’d be no moving on from it or from her.Ever.
“You have no idea what this potential job means to me,” she continued, oblivious to all these feelings she was stirring inside me. “My aunt says I tend to become a terror when I’m bored. She’s right.”
“You two are close?”
I nodded. “Yes. She and Kristoff have been amazing to me.”
“Ah, his mother.”
I knew some things about her: parents dead, went to live with her aunt and cousin, attended medical school, graduated cum laude. But her file didn’t give me details on her emotions and dreams. I wanted to know it all.
“I was loved and protected. Losing my parents hurt, but they made it bearable, you know. My childhood and adolescent years were happy.”
“Just as they should have been.”
“Once you left your father, did… Were you happy?” she questioned. “He didn’t find you ever again, right?”
“I didn’t see him again until the night I took his life,” I said coldly. “He thought I’d run straight to Albania—to my grandfather and my mother. Instead, I enlisted. I built a few companies—one of them was Blackhawk Security. When my grandfather died, I inherited the Albanian mafia. And all the while, working in the shadows, I dismantled the Cortes Cartel piece by piece—even after my half brother took over.”
“You two weren’t close, then?”
“No.”
And that was the understatement of the century. Perez thrived on drugging and raping women, among many other sick things.
However, that was one truth I would never share with her. She already carried more guilt than she should have to bear over what happened to her niece. Telling her everything would serve no purposebut cruelty. Some burdens weren’t meant to be passed on, and I refused to make her carry the weight of his sins on top of her own.
“And Jonathan?” I asked. “You met him through Kristoff?”
Her shoulders slumped the smallest bit, but it landed like a blow to my chest.
