As she’d said, she was back in her office in less than two minutes with Tenor following close behind. They both came in and sat down, Tenor having to make do with the seat next to me.
“Piers,” he said with a slight inclination of his head.
I did the same. “Tenor.”
“What’s this about a crime boss Mia’s talking about?” he asked, wasting no time getting to the point.
I repeated everything I’d told Mia. Tenor listened carefully, not saying anything until I’d finished.
“Damn.” He ran one of his hands through his hair. “I don’t know what to think, much less where to start.”
“Off the top of your head, can you think of anyone you pissed off that may have ties to organized crime?”
“Hell,” Tenor said. “I’ve pissed off more people than I can count over the years. I would imagine at least a handful of them have connections with the underground. But pissed them off enough to set me up for a sexual harassment lawsuit? I don’t think I’ve made anyone that angry.”
“Especially since Benjamin would have to know I wouldn’t go along with whatever he said,” Mia added.
I got out my phone to take notes. “Tell me again exactly what went down at the hotel.”
Tenor went first and spoke about how he and Mia were waiting in a long line to check in at the hotel in Atlanta when Benjamin came up beside them, recognizing Mia. He told her he was in town attending a cyber security conference being held at the hotel. Tenor left them chatting and checked both of them into their rooms. Before they went up, Benjamin asked Mia out to dinner.
She’d initially declined, saying she didn’t want to leave Tenor by himself, but Tenor told her to go on, he’d grab room service. Which he did and later ended up falling asleep on the couch, waking up when he heard Mia and Benjamin in her room next door, arguing. She was asking him to leave, and he was refusing. Tenor shot over there as quickly as possible, found Mia pressed against the wall with Benjamin towering over her.
Tenor said a few choice words and physically removed Benjamin from the room.
It was the same series of events he’d given me any other time we’d discussed that night. “Mia?” I asked. “Tell me what happened up to the point that Tenor came in.”
She said she’d met Benjamin in the lobby and didn’t protest when he mentioned stopping by the bar before dinner.
“I was tired,” Mia explained. “Travel always does that to me. Frankly, I didn’t feel like hitting the town anyway. So staying in for the night sounded good.”
But Benjamin seemed reluctant to leave the bar. After two hours, she told him she was going to get dinner at the hotel’s restaurant and didn’t care if he joined her or not. She did her best not to act surprised when he followed her out.
“For the record,” she was quick to add, “I’d consumed zero amount of alcohol because I can’t drink on an empty stomach. At that point, all I’d had was two tonic waters.”
Over dinner, Benjamin seemed more like the man she’d gone to school with. Surprisingly, she enjoyed the dinner and ended up staying much later than planned. When Benjamin asked if he could see her to her room, she saw no reason to say no.
“Thank you,” I said, noting that, like Tenor, her story hadn’t changed. “And for the record, though I’ve told you both before, when he contacted me, he claimed he and Mia were participating in a consensual nonconsent scene.”
“Consensual nonconsent, my ass,” Mia mumbled under her breath, and Tenor placed his hand on top of hers.
I continued, “He also told me Mia knew Tenor was into her and that he wanted to sleep with her, so she intended to set him up for sexual harassment.”
Everything the man had said had been a damn lie. I knew that looking back, but he had come across so convincingly, I’d gone along with it.
“I still can’t see what would interest a crime lord about a matchmaking business,” Tenor said. “It makes little sense to me.”
“But people like that have reasons for everything they do,” I said. “It’s just a matter of finding out what that reason is.”
Chapter 2
Bri
After years of preparing myself for this day, one would think I’d be ready for anything. Certainly I’d thought I was one hundred percent prepared for whatever came my way. But somehow, while making preparations and plans as well as backup plans for the backup plan, I overlooked one critical item.
Not that I’d spent every minute of every day focused solely on hunting Piers Worthington down and what I planned to do once I found him. But I’d thought with all the time and energy I’d poured into ensuring I located the bastard, I’d be more than ready when I actually did.
I’d obtained recent photos of him (hot as hell), I’d researched the places he’d worked (mostly on his own), who had hired him (the list was impressive), and for what jobs (see previous comment about who hired him). I knew the upscale neighborhood he had listed as his main address, the Italian place on Hanover Street where he liked to eat, and the little café on the corner across from his apartment where he stopped almost every morning to get a cup of coffee.
I was aware of both his rift with his once good friend, Tenor Butler, and what had caused that rift. In fact, the animosity between the two was a big part of why I was selected to work for Bachelor International. With me in place, the plan to destroy Piers Worthington piece by piece was underway. Bachelor International held the dubious honor of being piece number one.
Neither I nor the people I worked for had anything against Tenor Butler or his new partner, Mia Matthews. But someone had to be the first to fall, and Bachelor International was it for this operation. Or at least it was now.
The plan had been to take down a small advertising agency Piers did some work for first. But one of our group’s newest hires, Benjamin Douglas, had run across Tenor Butler in Atlanta unexpectedly and moved Bachelor International up on the list.
Because of his spur-of-the-moment decision and the complete horseshit of a mess that followed, everything had to be juggled around and new plans made to replace the ones Benjamin obliterated. Though Benjamin had pissed a lot of people off with his actions, I, for one, couldn’t have been happier. Not because Benjamin had failed so epically, but because his failure was the catalyst for the Organization to put me into play. This was the opportunity I’d been preparing and waiting years for. Unfortunately, there was one thing I hadn’t counted on.
How the sound of his voice would freeze me in my tracks.
Mia’s office sat between mine and Tenor’s. When she left the door open, and most days she did, I could hear almost everything that went on inside. Earlier, someone passed by my office on the way to either hers or Tenor’s, but I’d thought nothing of it. They were the owners and always seemed to have a steady stream of visitors. I’d gotten to the point where most of the time I tuned out the noise coming from Mia’s office. I didn’t even hear her welcome whoever it was.
But I heard every syllable of the rough “Thank you for taking the time to see me today, Mia” given in reply.
I’d been in the middle of typing an email, and my fingers stopped, poised right above the keyboard.