Flippantly, I flicked it back toward him. “Don’t tell me you had me come all the way over here because you wanted to ask me about my new client.”
He pitched forward. “Drop it.”
Incredulous laughter rocked out of me. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Drop the case. Give it to someone else. I don’t care. I don’t want you anywhere near it.”
My head shook. “I’m not sure how you think you have any say in the clients I take.”
“I do when they’re this high profile. You can’t be drawing attention to yourself. People look too deeply into you, and they will see more than I want them to. Do you really think I want you associated in any way with a man as powerful as Reed Dearborne? It’s suicide.”
I didn’t know if he meant that in the literal or figurative sense. With the way he was looking at me, it was literal. But clearly, the only thing the asshole gave a shit about was how it might affect him.
More laughter.
This time scornful.
All of it directed at myself. It was my fault I’d let this asshole exert so much control over me for all these years. Thinking I’d owed him something when he’d clearly only been using me.
Venom screamed through my veins. So harsh and hard that I’d put down bets he could feel it spurting from my pores.
I set my palms on his desk and leaned toward him, voice dipping in menace. “Let’s make one thing clear, old man. You don’t own me. I will take on whatever case I choose, and you don’t have a say in it. Do you understand me?”
Especially when it came to Grace.
Grace.
Bastard laughed and shook his head. “You really are clueless, aren’t you, Ian?”
One of those old-school intercoms squeaked on his desk, and he pushed the button to answer it. “Yes, Mimi?”
“Sir, you have a delivery you need to sign for.”
“I’ll be right out.”
He pushed to standing, his glare clearly ordering me to stay put as he moved out his door.
The second he did, I was around his desk and punching the code into his computer.
Needing . . . something. I didn’t fucking know what. I just wanted more. More than what I was involved in because without a doubt that shady shit went deep.
Something big and ugly.
If the asshole thought he was going to push me? Guess-fucking-what? I was going to push right back.
Hard.
My fingers quickly clicked over the keyboard.
The guy had a system and was meticulous.
Luckily, I’d spent my life being privy to it. The eight-digit password wasn’t that hard to decode.
I hacked into his computer in a flash. I started clicking and moving. Eyes darting and gathering anything I possibly could. There was nothing that really stood out that I didn’t already know about.
Then my heart rate spiked when I popped open a minimized file.
It was code. Not quite making sense. Which told me I’d stumbled upon exactly what I’d been looking for. It wasn’t like the dirtbag was going to have “Illegal activities” stamped on the top of the file.
The document was a list of addresses, and there was another file with names.
All female.
I blinked at it, mind whirring as I struggled to add up when it meant.
I could hear Lawrence’s low voice echoing from out front, and I fumbled to pull my phone out of my pocket and snapped a couple pics.
Footsteps came closer and closer, his voice drawing nearer as he shouted something at his secretary like the asshole he was.
Shit.
I was running out of time.
Breaths turning hard, I clicked through the documents, minimizing them both and putting his computer back into sleep mode, all but jumping over his desk and onto the other side by the time Lawrence pushed back through his door, carrying a flat overnight envelope.
My pulse raced like a bitch, the close call a little too close for my taste.
He moved back around to his executive chair, sighing out a contented sound as he rocked back in it. He tossed the envelope carelessly onto his desk.
“You want to make things clear, Ian? Fine. Know this. I could take you down with a snap of my fingers. I own you. I’ve owned you since the second you started working for me. I have always owned you. You just didn’t know it.”
My head cocked. “Is that so?”
“It is.”
I planted my hands back on his desk, leaning over far enough that I could get in his face. “Then you can take this as my resignation.”
* * *
The address stared back at me.
It was in the middle of the others. Nothing special about it except for the fact that it was so goddamned important to me.
One I’d never forget.
One that I couldn’t help but move toward, drawn back to a memory that I wanted to slay.
A stone sank to the pit of my stomach as I got deeper into the city, buildings becoming shoddier and the characters walking the sidewalks and loitering at the end of the alleys growing shadier.
Could almost taste the despair and despondency in the air.
Memories slammed me.
Heavy and vile.
I’d sworn to myself I’d never come down here again. That I’d outrun the poverty and depravity. That never again would I be looked at like I was trash.
Worthless.
Scum.
Hungry and begging.
Emotion raced my throat as I made a left and then a right.
My last memories as a boy sped up to meet me.
Rushing.
Hitting me head on.
I slowed as I approached the old building, and part of me wanted to ram on the accelerator and get the fuck out of there before I was taken back to that time.
A hostage.
A prisoner.
Instead, I forced myself to slow, and I cracked the window of my car, which was so out of place that people kept turning their heads, distrust in their postures as they stopped in their tracks to watch me drive by.
The sounds of the inner city came at me in waves. A baby crying and a woman shouting. Music thumping and a fight down the street.
Maybe it was shock I felt when I came to a stop at the address in front of the rundown building where everything had changed.
Where my life as I had known it had come to an end.
This was where I’d become someone else.
This was where I’d become a man.
A man who had chosen to take what he wanted for his life rather than a boy who had scrounged for any scraps he could find.
A fire burned in my eyes and raced my throat.
I fought the sensation because it made me fucking weak.
My hands clamped down on the steering wheel and sweat poured from my brow when I saw the three women stumble out of the building. It was early, but I guess some jobs were never done.
Men always breathed. Ready to degrade and take and overpower.
Didn’t matter the time of the day.
I squeezed my eyes closed. Like it could stop it. Staunch it. But it would never matter how far I went or how calloused I became or how many years had passed.
She was always right there.
My greatest sin.
Treason and betrayal.
Twenty-Four
Grace
“You have a walk-in haircut.”
Melissa was smirking at me as she walked into the salon area from the front waiting room.
My heart skipped and sped in a million wayward beats when I saw who followed behind her.
Foolish, foolish heart.
But there was no stopping the reaction to the man, so tall and powerful and commanding that he made the ground tremble beneath my feet.
“It seems someone’s hair grows really fast.” The words falling from Melissa’s mouth were perfectly wry, delivered with a silent, Plan on dishing the details later.
No doubt, she would pin me down and pry it out of me.
“Okay,” I managed to mumble, looking back to the older woman sitting in my chair. “Let me finish up with Mrs. Galvez, and I’ll be right with you.”
Ian nodded, those hands in his pockets, the energy speeding between us like it was fuel for an out-of-control train.
I finished styling Mrs. Galvez, quickly dusted off the hair from her robe, and unsnapped it. She pushed from the chair. “Thank you, dear. I’ll see you in six weeks.”
She reached out and stuffed a five-dollar tip into my hand before she scurried around Ian, who looked as if he was half inclined to chase everyone out of the salon.