Page 12 of Precious Hazard (Perfectly Imperfect #11)

A heavy weight settles in the pit of my stomach. This is bad.

“Oh! I almost forgot!” Sienna jumps onto her knees and claps her hands with glee. It’s so like her. Sad one moment, excited the next. “The first draft of my hockey romance is done. Will you have time to read it and give me some feedback?”

“Um… sure. Need me to count limbs again?”

Sienna is amazing when it comes to the overall plot of the story and creating well-developed characters and settings, but she’s terrible with pesky little details.

Fact checks. Consistency. That sort of thing.

Which means, in every sex scene she writes, she seems to end up with at least two extra hands somehow.

“Please! I’ll email it to you in a sec.”

I watch her dance out of my room on the tips of her sparkly turquoise house slippers, then slump in bed and stare at the ceiling.

In no time at all, my laptop pings with an incoming email.

I pull it off the nightstand and onto my stomach, opening the attachment Sienna sent.

After repeated attempts, I give up trying to read it.

My head’s not in it; I can’t make myself focus on the text.

What am I going to do? I spent the past three days hoping that the arrogant devil would come to his senses and back out of this idiotic plan to get hitched.

In truth, I haven’t fully wrapped my mind around the fact that I’m being forced into marriage, so for now, I’m simply going with the flow.

The temptation to tell my brother what happened and rely on him to get me out of this mess is overwhelming.

He’d probably kill DeVille for me. Maybe.

I can’t imagine he’d hurt Sienna like that.

And, even if he’d be willing to do it, I don’t think I could bring myself to ask that of him.

Plus, I’d have to explain how my damn prints ended up all over a murder weapon, and then ask Drago to clean up yet another one of my messes. Again.

Like the time he had to pick me up from a police precinct after my friends and I got busted for disorderly conduct.

A bunch of us left piles of turds outside a high-end boutique.

In my defense, they were selling fur coats.

Real fur coats made from endangered animals’ pelts!

Since I was deemed the ringleader, and because I used school grounds to organize this little “protest,” I got expelled from that particular school in my freshman year.

My stint at my second high school wasn’t much better.

Drago had to pay to decontaminate and renovate an entire chem lab after I accidentally spilled a dangerous substance while trying to rescue a resident guinea pig that escaped from the neighboring biology classroom.

I only got suspended for that, and only because of Drago’s deep pockets.

I’m sure he bribed school officials to get me off the hook, too.

Being older, one would think I’d wise up.

But nope. Last year, my brother had to “rescue” me once more.

Drunk as a skunk, I got on the wrong train, fell asleep, and ended up in the middle of nowhere good.

Not surprisingly, my wallet and phone did not arrive with me.

Luckily, that’s the worst of what happened.

I had to beg a stranger to let me use their phone to get a message to Drago.

He was spitting mad when he came to pick me up, practically ready to strangle me for disobeying him.

He specifically told me to get ahold of him when I was ready to leave the bar and go home.

But I knew he’d been exhausted, and it was very late, and I simply didn’t want to wake him.

God! I’m so tired of being stuck on this merry-go-round. As sick as I am of always fucking up, Drago must be reaching the limit of how much he’s willing to put up with. He’s got a wife now. His attention should be on taking care of her, not cleaning up after me.

And that leads me to the other major worry on my mind. I’m terrified of Drago’s reaction if he finds out the truth. What if he challenges Ajello? The last thing I want is to put my brother in danger because I managed to get myself into another clusterfuck.

I’m staring blankly at the ceiling, contemplating my options, when a sudden commotion breaks out on the driveway.

It must be something substantial because several raised voices followed by the rapid slamming of car doors reaches me.

I rush to look outside just in time to see Drago getting on his bike and peeling out like his tail’s on fire.

“Adam!” I call out after I crack my window open. “What’s going on?”

My brother’s childhood buddy, and now his head enforcer, shifts his mighty frame to look up at me. “Special agents from the IRS just showed up at Naos,” he says while yanking his motorcycle helmet onto his head.

“Shit.”

“Yeah.” He flips down his visor and, in the next breath, takes off on his bike, too.

Getting back on the bed, I grab my laptop again so I can check the admin files for Naos, just in case there’s something that I’m unfamiliar with.

Drago might need my help to deal with whatever it is they’re investigating.

My phone starts ringing, and I answer it without glancing at the caller ID, too distracted by opening one folder after another.

“I hope you didn’t forget about our plans tonight, Tara.” The deep, polished voice rumbles across the line, setting off a slight shiver down my spine, even from a distance.

“Now’s not a good time, DeVille.” I hit that red circle on the screen and throw the phone on the nightstand. It starts ringing again as soon as it lands on the wooden surface.

“Jesus.” Grabbing the damn thing, I press it to my ear. “I told you that—”

“Don’t ever hang up on me again.”

“Noted.” After disconnecting the call, I turn off the phone completely. I can’t deal with this asshole right now, not when we might be facing a debacle at the club.

Over the years, I’ve asked Drago several times to allow me to oversee Naos’s accounting, but apparently, I’m not responsible enough.

Can’t say I blame him for being reluctant, considering my track record.

Pretty much at every job I’ve had, I somehow fucked up.

Dealing with people is really not my thing.

Words, on the other hand, and numbers, those are putty in my hands.

And, I’m excellent at spotting inconsistencies.

The first folder I dive into contains copies of invoices from our suppliers.

Alcohol distributors. Produce wholesalers.

The list goes on and on. These are mostly our partners who inflate their prices, allowing us to show greater expenses on the P&L statements.

At a quick glance, everything appears to be in order.

Still, I pull up each invoice for the current year and track it against our main database.

Once I’m done with kitchen and bar records, I move to guest services, diligently reviewing booth reservations and nightly cover charge intakes.

With IRS CI Agents on our doorsteps, it’s likely they are looking at tax evasion or money laundering.

Keva handles the money laundering through the club and has been doing it for years.

She’s great, but in recent months, she’s been stretched too thin.

What if she missed something? Drago could be in serious trouble.

Halfway through the stack of February receipts, there’s a knock on my door.

“Tara.” Jelena pokes her head in, holding up her phone.

“Not now.”

“Um… I have Arturo DeVille on the line for you.”

My head snaps up. “How the fuck did he get your number?”

“No idea, babe. But he doesn’t sound happy.” She throws the phone at me, and I nearly fall off the bed trying to catch the thing.

“Um. Some privacy, please?”

“Absolutely.” She gives me a wink. “Lover’s quarrels are the cutest.”

I groan. More than half of my brother’s crew lives in this house. That’s over fifty people under the same roof. Which means, about twenty seconds after the arrival of the first bouquet from Satan, every single person knew I was “dating” him.

“What?” I snap into the phone.

A thick, throaty sound comes from the other end of the line.

“Did you just growl at me, DeVille?”

“You have three minutes.” A pause. “To get your ass downstairs.” Another pause. “Or my friend from the IRS Criminal Investigation Division will start asking the kinds of questions no one at Naos wants to hear.”

“You bastard! You sent them?”

“I figured you’d need an incentive,” he snaps. “Three minutes, Tara.”

Nothing but dead air greets me after that not-so-veiled threat. I glance at the phone, confirming what I already knew. Call ended is flashing on the screen. All I can do is grit my teeth so I won’t scream in frustration.

I hate you, Arturo DeVille!

“Everything okay, Mr. DeVille?” Riggo asks from the driver’s seat.

“Yup. Fucking perfect.”

I throw the phone onto the plush, leather seat cushion and squeeze the bridge of my nose. No other person in my thirty-six years has ever made me lose my shit as fast as that insufferable woman.

“You sure? You have a very strange look on your face. Maybe you’re experiencing side effects after that blood donation? My sister told me it could happen, especially if they take too much…”

I groan inwardly. The only reason I made Riggo my driver while my license is suspended is that I didn’t want to waste anyone else on this stupid job.

The kid is eager to help out, but he’s a royal pain in the ass who talks all the damn time.

His sister works at the clinic with Milene Ajello, and that somehow led to the boss asking me to find a job for the guy.

“…such a noble act. Saving the world one drop at a time, yeah? I heard Dr. Ilaria say you do it regularly. She says your O negative blood saves a lot of our guys. Especially with some of them getting shot so often and all that. Hey, do you know who’s going to get your blood next?”

“You. Unless you stop talking.”