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Brent

I hated working in this shit job for my shit grandfather. The Dictator. He was a demanding asshole who wanted answers and I was not prepared for another beratement about how I was a failure grandson once again. Those got tiring.

Reaper left an oddly complete write up for me that made it look like we did a proper job without him prematurely ejaculating into his panties. He got so stab happy some days, but others he kept his cool. You never knew what to expect.

Maybe he needed to get laid too. I didn’t know what kind of life he lived outside of working for us, but I didn’t need to know–or want to.

The file was a professional write up, describing the information John presented us. There was a full profile on Jason Haines and his involvement in business espionage, hostile takeovers, and other illegal activities. It wasn’t anything that I hadn’t seen before, but he’d been circling us for three years or more, and I could understand why my grandfather would be antsy about getting his information back quickly.

I wasn’t filled in on the top level business dealings–I wasn’t trustworthy enough. My volatile nature is my undoing. His words, not mine.

What surprised me was the meticulous nature of the notes as if he had been taking meeting minutes and I felt confident enough to present the information.

Being ushered in by one of the regular muscles, my grandfather sat at his desk in his typical Godfather style. You’d think he ran the mafia the way he acts. A lit cigar in his hand, he motioned me in with his typical lazy hand gesture.

I tossed the report from Reaper onto his desk and sat in my usual interrogation chair.

“Good work.” He barely glanced at the pages before dropping the file back down. “Now, tell me something other than this bullshit.”

“John was a rat and had been for three years under the direction of Jason Haines. He talked about wanting the pay and cuts of goods from him. Too bad he sacrificed himself for table scraps. I’m unsure of their meaning, but they used codes for movements like ‘Tower,’ ‘Green,’ and ‘Garden.’ We’re still trying to understand what these words mean, but I’m sure we have some men that could sniff this out.”

He scoffed and threw his stapler at me. Just like when I was a kid. “Not this shit, you idiot! You know I have fucking eyes on everything! What the fuck are you doing with the Montgomery girl?!”

“What?” I’m with a lot of girls, what the fuck does he care?

“That fucking girl you drove out into the middle of nowhere to visit Martha! You seriously can’t be that dense to think she wouldn’t tell me. I am going to ask you again: what the fuck are you doing with the Montgomery girl?”

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M y head hurt like a bitch from The Dictator beating me while screaming at me. As I entered my room, the silence was louder than usual. I tossed my jacket onto the chair–only, I didn’t. Right. The “Montgomery girl” still had it.

Things got a little more interesting after he finished beating the shit out of me. He told me to stay away from her while he dealt with business he didn’t want me fucking up, but that was the last thing I planned to do. The memory of her standing on her doorstep, swallowed up by my jacket played in a wicked loop in my mind. It was far too large for her frame, the sleeves practically made it look like she had no hands. Only, in my imagination, she was completely naked underneath my jacket.

She looked deliciously innocent, though.

Fuck, she probably was. Especially with the beating that I received. One of the guys had to rip the old man off of me before he fucking shot me. The bastard pointed a gun at me! And for what?!

I did, however, like the idea of my jacket draped over a chair in her room where she could see it regularly. Did I? Maybe I do.

What confused me was her hesitation with me. Girls didn’t hesitate with me. But she wasn’t most girls, was she? Those big blue eyes widened when I leaned in... fuck that innocence was so tempting. She was so close, too.

She lives a few houses away...

I ran a hand over my head, feeling the fresh buzzcut I got a few days ago. I laughed, remembering what her friend said to her at the door. “Guess I can’t call you a virgin anymore.” Was she really a virgin? Who at twenty was a virgin?

Part of me wondered what would have happened if her friend hadn’t opened the door. I couldn’t predict it, and that was a first for me.

You’re overthinking it–moving too fast. She’s got her little distraction of a boyfriend and an inability to say no. But that smart mouth...

A knock on my door yanked me out of my thoughts of the day. I didn’t even need to guess who it was.

Sloane.

She always had this way of showing up when I least wanted company. Pushing myself up off the bed to open the door, I saw her leaning up against the frame in her typical catlike manner. The smirk on her lips reeked of trouble.

“Hey, you,” she purred, pushing through the door as if it just didn’t exist. “Saw your bike in the driveway. Thought I’d stop by.”

She lived nowhere near my house. “Sloane. I’m not in the mood. I’d like to relax for once.”

“Since when does that matter?” She crossed her arms, taking a once over of my space like she was looking for something. Her gaze lingered on my empty chair with no jacket hanging there as it usually did when I was here. She didn’t seem to notice...

I stayed planted in the open doorway as she approached me. She was hot, confident, had everything going for her, and knew how to get exactly what she wanted. Too bad for her, I wasn’t interested.

Her fingers trailed down from my chest to my pant line. “I missed you,” she whispered into my ear.

Grabbing her wrist before she could grip my dick, I said, “Not tonight.”

She blinked and her typical smirk disappeared from her lips. “What the hell, Brent? You’re not one to turn me down.”

Pulling her wrist from my grip with a sharp yank, I put space between us with a sidestep. “I just told you no. What part of that do you not understand? I. Don’t. Want. You. Here.”

“You? Not in the mood?” She crossed her arms, eyes narrowing at me. “That’s ridiculous considering I can’t get you off me half the time. What? Is there someone else now or are you just playing hard to get?”

Her words didn’t necessarily sting, but they were annoying. We weren’t dating and I was not about to explain myself to some pretentious princess. I laughed. “Clingy much? I just need some fucking space. I work, you know.”

And, also, fuck your attitude.

“Space,” she scoffed. “Since when do you need space?” Her voice was dripping in disbelief, her mouth left open in confusion.

I didn’t answer her. I met her gaze until she sighed in defeat. “You know what? What the fuck ever, Brent. You are so not worth this much effort.”

The door was half shut when those fucking words snapped me. No one fucking tells me that and just walks away.

I grabbed her wrist and spun her around to face me.

“What?” she asked, challenging me. That half innocent voice pissing me off more.

She wasn’t about to leave thinking she’d gotten the better of me.

The moment my mouth was on hers, I regretted it. I hated that I let her get under my skin like that, but I wasn’t about to back down. She placed a firm hand on my chest and backed me up to the bed.

Straddling me, she started pulling off her top. Seeing her expose herself to me like she’d done a million times did absolutely nothing for me. “This is more like it,” she groaned into my mouth.

“Don’t fucking talk.”

I flipped her over to where I was straddling her and pulled her pants off.

She narrowed her eyes at me. “You’re lucky you’re cute, Brent.”

“Yeah, don’t get too comfortable.”

Below me, I didn’t see Sloane. I saw Fallon .

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I woke up with a rotten feeling in my stomach. Was this what regret felt like ?

No, it was just a bad hangover–nothing I hadn’t dealt with before. That, and I only slept for maybe three hours.

I heaved my tired and beaten body out of bed, nabbing a shirt from the floor. My room was a complete mess from the way Sloane liked to have sex. Trying to blur those thoughts, I looked around and sighed in relief when I saw that Sloane had left. I rubbed my face and eyes, hoping to wipe off at least one bad decision.

I made too many bad decisions, but I loved doing it.

The whole situation was really fucking stupid. First, my grandfather beats me senseless and tells me to stay away from Fallon because she’s Maria’s kid and I shouldn’t “taint” her with my bastard ass. Second, I shouldn’t have let Sloane stay, but I really wanted to get fucking laid and she was far too easy to get into bed.

Fuck, I wanted to punch something.

My fist connected with a thud and a crack , breaking through the wall, leaving a nice gaping wound.

I turned to grab my jacket–only to realize it wasn’t there–and threw the chair across the room, breaking my lamp into multiple pieces. My room became chaos, just like my mind.

Whatever, I’ll fix it later.

The cold flooring on my feet was a welcomed sensation as I shuffled into the kitchen. I pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge to freeze out my insides, pushing away whatever feelings I was having down with the water.

“Hey, bro!” Josh walked into the kitchen. “Sounded like a hell of a time for you and...” he trailed off.

No one could keep up with who I brought into my room.

“Just some chick,” I said, grabbing some leftovers from the fridge.

He laughed. “Well, save some chicks for the rest of us, dude.” He smacked my back as he went to prep the coffee pot.

“Yeah, I’ll try.” Try to forget Sloane was ever here. Sitting at the island, I dug into the styrofoam container of cold Chinese food.

Josh filled two cups of coffee and came to sit next to me at the island. He was a good guy, just a bit on the naive side of life. If only I had some of the same luxuries .

“You coming out to the field today? Coach said it was mandatory.”

Of course he did . “I think that’s what mandatory means.”