Remembered it.
Liked it.
My dick hardened. I stroked it twice before telling it to fuck off.
“Nope. I bought it.” Delilah cooed at the naked rat she called a dog. “Did you pee, Rosco? Did you pee? Such a good boy.” Her voice came out louder this time, “From the place down the street. I paid some kid fifty bucks to dress in a uniform and cart breakfast to you. Cute, right?”
And I’d left him alone with a fat wad of cash in my suitcase, designer everything, and my company laptop.
Perfect.
“You are so extra.”
“And you are so fucked.” In the background, the wind whipped around her until I could barely make out her voice. “Why did building security call me this morning to inform me that a man from the Security and Exchanges Commission came here to see you?”
The S.E.C.—high-and-mighty, Paul Blart rent-a-cops who aspired to be the real thing. Unfortunately, the crimes they investigated included the ones I'd committed.
I bit back a curse and tightened my fingers into fists before returning my hands to my head and lathering the shampoo. “Is he still here?”
“I bought you an hour. He’ll be back. Do you need me there?”
“No.”
It was probably a good idea to have the head of my legal department with me because, let’s face it, I’d broken a shit ton of laws this decade, but I knew Delilah. She would demand that I spill everything to her, and that sounded as appealing to me as a blow job from a piranha.
“Nash…” she trailed off, and I could picture her scrunched up nose and crossed arms. That bulging vein on her forehead she claimed she only got around me. Apparently, I was responsible for aging her ten years, too.
“Delilah, if you can’t understand simple words like ‘no,’ you’re in the wrong line of work.” I rinsed the shampoo, watching it swirl down the drain in a Rorschach pattern. It looked like Sisyphus shouldering a boulder.
“You are such an ass.” The words held no bite.
“I’m also your boss.”
“Now that you mention that, I feel incredibly underpaid. You know, I may take the liberty of hiring you an assistant if you’re going to be too stubborn to do it yourself.” Rosco barked in the background, starting a chain reaction where five dozen dogs barked back. The last thing I wanted to hear with a hangover. “I didn’t go to law school to be your twenty-four-seven bitch, Nash.”
“What’s that? I think someone just called my name.”
“You’re in the shower,” she deadpanned.
“Gotta go, D.”
I finished showering, brushed my teeth, dried my hair off with a towel, and tossed on a Stuart Hughes suit, F.P. Journe watch, and a pair of Testonis.
Delilah liked to coat herself in diamonds and designer threads for country club dinners with her husband. She used her looks, her wealth, and her bitchiness to intimidate catty, rich housewives into submission.
For men to intimidate men, you needed to be taller, stronger, smarter. But a show of wealth and a sculpted face didn’t hurt, which was why I filled my closet with overpriced clothes I didn’t need and thanked Ma for my good genetics.
When I re-entered the bedroom of my suite, Rosco sat on my bed, the long strands of black and white hair sprouting from his gargantuan ears and onto my sheets. His bare ass pressed against my pillow, precisely where I liked to lay my head. The only fur he boasted budded from his head and tail, and he looked like a dog like Shawn Spencer looked like a psychic.
Delilah held a slice of French toast to her mouth, swallowing half in one bite like the damned Neanderthal she pretended she wasn’t. Grade-A syrup dropped from her lips to the carpet. Rosco yelped, then dove off the bed and lapped it up.
“The rat better not vomit on my carpet.” I grabbed the toast from her fingers and took a bite. Cold, like everything in this room, including me. “If this were 1690s Salem, you’d hang for witchcraft.”
She rolled her mint-green eyes and licked at the syrup that had smeared onto her cheek. Her tongue waggled across her cheek like one of those inflatable tube men at car dealerships. “I choppered in earlier this morning.” She allowed Rosco to lap at her fingers. I watched on, vowing never to get a pet rat. “Security just let me up.”
“Remind me to fire them.”
“I repeat, I am not your assistant.”
“I repeat, I don’t need you here.”
She ignored me, her favorite pastime and the sole person on my payroll I allowed the privilege. “I looked into the S.E.C. agent. They have a pending investigation into you, Nash. My source wouldn’t say much, which tells me this is serious.” Furrowed brows and a half scowl formed her don’t-bullshit-me face. “What did you do?”
“Delilah—”
“Are you going to tell me what you’ll be investigated for?”
This was what happened when you worked with someone for too long. They got comfortable and thought they could ask questions I didn’t want them asking.
“Do you remember the catering company from last night?” I redirected.
Why the hell was Emery Winthrop working a catering gig, anyway? I understood the modeling part. She had the height and face, but catering? Her family’s net worth dipped into the ten figures. Her trust fund had to be at least eight if not nine figures. She could finance a war and not want for money.
Maybe Virginia had sent her on the heiress equivalent of an apology tour. A few magazine covers, and I was supposed to fucking forget she’d known about her dad’s embezzlement.
“Don’t change the subject.” Delilah tucked a dirty blonde strand of hair back into her French chignon and folded her hands on her lap. She took a seat on the absolute edge of my bed, like she feared she would catch my germs. “I asked around about the lead investigator. Brandon Vu. He’s ambitious. Moved up the ladder fast, looking to be the chair of the S.E.C. If you did something, he’ll find it. You have to tell me everything.”
Like hell I would.
“No. Fika took care of it.” I didn’t elaborate, merely pulled out the bundles of bills from my suitcase and shoved them into the built-in safe I’d had installed yesterday. I thumbed through one of the ten-thousand-dollar stacks and pointed at Delilah with it. “You act like I’m a sketchy person. I’m entirely innocent.”
Delilah watched me shove half a million dollars into the safe, my ritual for every penthouse in all my hotels. A fail-safe in case I ever got caught and needed cash quickly and a go-bag to run. “Ugh. Fika. You trust him to take care of it?”
“Took care of it,” I corrected, cramming a small go-bag into the remaining space. “As in, it’s already done. Stop worrying about it. I think I see two new wrinkles on your forehead. You look forty.”
“I’m thirty-one, and I look twenty-six,” she corrected, fingers dabbing her forehead for the aforementioned wrinkles. “It’s Fika. Trusting Fika is like giving Rosco a full bag of treats and trusting him not to finish it.”
No love lost between them. Odd, considering they both shared similar views on the law. Fika pretended it didn’t exist. Delilah dedicated her life to defending people who bent it. Either way, they both treated it like a nuisance.