19. Malone
NINETEEN
“It’s not just a matter of protection; it’s also a matter of finding out who’s after you.” I pause. “Unless you don’t want me to know.”
Grant Hanlon gives me a look that, at its heart, is pure contempt.
And fear.
He fears me. All the rumors he’s heard about me, and him poking into my character, have paid off. Usually, no one ever goes beneath the surface, but I always make sure there are layers, just in case.
He clearly has delved deep.
And he knows of James Malone’s reputation outside of New York. He’s seen that other criminals vie for my time, to visit my club, to buy my products.
It says to me that Hanlon Shipping knows they’re up to no good with the things they transport, but they try to keep their hands as clean as possible.
Of course they do. Look at the fuck who’s in charge of it.
Scarlett’s father.
He’s an expert in keeping himself clean, the fucker.
“We don’t know—I don’t know.” He straightens his tie. “For more information, if there is any, you’ll have to ask my brother.”
I let myself have a moment, ease into some of the rage bubbling in my blood.
His brother. The prick I want dead. The one who ruined my life. The one I need to remember every time I dip into the pleasures of his daughter. Because she has a way of softening things, twisting them without ever meaning to.
There are, I think, two innocents here. Grant’s daughter, Amelia, and Scarlett. Well, as innocent as someone like Scarlett can be. Because how can anyone be truly innocent with Dale Hanlon as her father?
“And where is he?”
“The office,” Grant says, moving into the small living room on the first floor. When we’re in there, he gestures to a seat and pours himself a drink.
“Scotch for me.”
I know Scarlett’s here. No way am I not having her followed. But I don’t think he knows she’s here yet. Not that it matters, not to him. Scarlett’s a glorified office girl, a tasty morsel I let him put on the hook to reel me in.
Men like him think they have the upper hand. He’s got me now. Or rather, he thinks he does.
He offered money, favors, all the things a man like JM doesn’t need. All because he wants my help. And the only reason to seek me out is because he knows something.
What it is and whether it’s helpful, is something I’m going to need to find out for the Knights. It’s interesting that all the threats, except the one against his kid, are things I’ve set up and put in motion.
There are numerous ways I could have gone about getting the client list, and making threats was the easiest. Using Scarlett as my price turned out to be a little buttercream on top.
That all went along beautifully.
But the more intriguing thing right now is how Grant Hanlon’s acting. Like the threats aren’t as big a shock as they should be.
Like he’s been up to no good.
Maybe it’s just because of the clients. Or maybe it’s because he dug into them and tried to get something from them. In the grand scheme of my job at hand, it’s useful, but fuck, I’ll take anything I can get to turn the screws. And when it’s done, when I move in for the kill, I’ll use whatever I uncover to make his brother suffer.
Right before I end Dale Hanlon.
“Thanks,” I say, taking the proffered drink. “Are you going to tell me why you wanted to see me alone?”
He paces, staring down into his drink. “I’m worried about Amelia.”
“You know you have my protection.”
His gaze swings at me, glittering with unease. “And what?—?”
“Have I done?” I cut him off. “Are you really going to fucking ask me that?”
“You’ve got my niece; that’s worth the price of information.”
“Are you trying to say she’s a fucking commodity?” I ask, taking a gulp of the scotch and sitting back against the chair. “Because there’s a bond between us. Maybe I’ll marry her for real.”
He stiffens, like he just stepped on something vile with his bare feet. “That won’t be necessary.”
“You don’t think I’m fucking good enough for your family?”
I know that’s what he’s thinking; he can barely hold on to the judgment. And it’s a beautiful thing to watch. Men like him… I love it when they think they’ve got all the power and a deal to boot.
Maybe I’ll kill him along with his brother. Purely for thinking his niece is worthless. Because he’s saved money by just handing over the girl.
But I play my game.
“I’m rich, powerful, and unlike you, I understand the criminal mind. I just want a taste of the life you have. It opens doors.” And I smile. “To bigger and better arenas.”
He frowns. “This thing with Scarlett’s temporary. A stepping stone for you.”
“If you think I want part of your business, you can rest easy. I’m not into shipping.”
Grant Hanlon’s hand jerks as he lifts his drink, and I’ve hit on something. Greedy fuck, no matter what secrets he has or pies he’s got fingers in, he doesn’t want to share.
I can use that. “But you’re right, she’s a stepping stone. And even with all my power and money, I’m always looking for ways to easily expand my business.” I pause. “And not the bigger and better arenas. I’m talking ways to move goods here.”
“Through shipping?”
I can almost see his greedy mind tick.
“Through a company I can trust.” I smile and lean forward. “But that’s down the road. You’re protected, and now I need to find out who’s behind the threats. Any enemies, big or small? I also need to know the biggest clients…”
Scarlett isn’t back when I get home. I hang up my jacket with a deep sigh. Can’t say I’m not disappointed. I haven’t been able to stop thinking about my enemy’s daughter since I fucked her sweet pussy with my tongue this morning.
Her uncle didn’t give me much in the way of finding the client list, but one thing’s clear. The whole fucking thing’s caught up in twisted secrets. The man knows more about what they ship than he wants to let on.
Of course he does.
Look at who his fucking brother is. A man like that isn’t going to balk at moving things like human cargo.
But Grant did let it slip that maybe some of the people who apparently don’t use them do. It was the way he said some things that pricked my ears. How he said the client list is kept very, very secret to protect not just themselves, but clients, too.
He gave me some names, but after going through them, I don’t find anything new, no one we don’t already know of. I want the other names. The people they ship for who create so much nefarious activity in the dead of night.
Because the shit listed on the papers Grant gave me? The illegal and legal businesses? Those shipments mostly happen early mornings or during the day. Child’s play compared to what I’m looking for. I need to get into the office on the dock. The one that’s always fucking busy.
And I need to get into the foreman’s notebook and iPad.
My phone screen lights up with a text message.
Scarlett’s been to her house in Brooklyn. She went there after leaving Sugar Hill. There’s nothing interesting in the update. She went home, left, bought a coffee, and now she’s out shopping. Nothing interesting, I amend, unless she was there to hide things. But I doubt it. She’s not duplicitous.
I call Smith.
“Set up a meeting with the client.”
“Am I your personal assistant?” he asks.
“You don’t have the legs for the short skirt I’d want my personal assistant to fucking wear.”
He doesn’t laugh. “The guard who had that photo’s clean.”
“As in he wasn’t into underage girls?”
“As in he probably was into looking, but there were no stories about him fucking any. Or any affiliation to groups who do that shit. Apart from picking up shifts with the Herald Bros., he worked around a lot of different people in the business. From Dark Desires to members of the Collectors to Bishop.” His voice hardens on the Collectors.
No wonder. Those fucks took his daughter, and Orion saved her from a fate way worse than death. We still keep an eye on all the surviving members and the little splinter groups that form. But nothing with sex slaves has popped up on our radar. At least, nothing with unpaid, stolen sex slaves acting against their will.
If someone wants to hire themselves out as a plaything, they can. It’s when they’re taken it becomes problematic for the Knights.
But that group won’t pick up steam in the sticky underbelly of legality until everything settles and is forgotten.
But the Knights never forget.
“Interesting.”
“The Collectors angle?” he asks.
“Only because of your interest in them.”
“I think you know my angle with that. But they aren’t part of this. They aren’t part of anything.”
No, the ones who dared put hands on his daughter are dead.
Not that she wants anything much to do with her father, anyway.
“Family dynamics interest me,” I say. “And you’ll get your list.”
I recount what I learned today and how I’m still trying to find a good time to get into the office on the dock.
“That office?” Smith asks. “Do you think that’ll hold anything of interest?”
“It’d be a good place to hide things, but we should try to find out what clients have shipments come in during the hours past midnight to say… four a.m. From five on, I’d call that early morning shipments.” I tap my pen against the paper I’ve been making lists on. “Any luck on that foreman?”
I can almost smell something in the air, something sensuous and inviting, and the atmosphere seems to charge. I sigh as I wait for Smith’s response, desire licking at my skin.
“He doesn’t bring his work home.”
“Then there’s a locker somewhere in the office.” I click open a file on my computer. In the background of the penthouse, I can hear someone moving around, banging things in the kitchen. Scarlett’s back, but I knew that already. She’s like spice in the air, because I smelled her before I heard a sound. “Or a safe.”
“Getting in there is hard. Someone’s always there. We crossed that office off the list. Too many people passing through it to be a good storage location for classified information.”
I see his point, but I disagree. “The meeting?”
“I’ll set it up for later tonight.” He pauses, and I know what’s coming. “You’re not going to tell me what your personal end goal is here, are you?”
“Would you?”
There’s a silence. “You’re usually a lot colder than this, West. Is Scarlett getting to you?”
“She’s part of my plan.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Part of my fucking plan,” I repeat, more for my benefit than his, before hanging up.
Scents of vanilla and chocolate weave through the apartment, seeping in under my office door. I work a little longer, and finally when I can’t stand it anymore, I close down the computer and lock all paperwork, along with the laptop I was using, in my safe. Just in case. And then I head out into the hallway.
Scarlett’s in the kitchen, baking. Again.
I lean against the counter and wait for her to acknowledge me. She really can be a shit sub. There’s nothing typical about her behavior and how she can change her attitude on a dime.
But that morning really opened up more doors in her. She’s got the beating heart and fiery soul of a warrior, a siren, all wrapped in spiky armor around her pain and humiliation sub alter ego.
She genuinely wants to fight against it all.
And I fucking love it.
Like she knew the exact moment I came close. I was silent, yes, but she went from relaxed to that tightly coiled, straight-backed girl who wants to pretend she rules the world.
Maybe she does in a way, but she also longs to bow to me and resents that with everything in her.
It’s fucking delicious. As good as her baking.
“Stop staring at me,” she says. “And before you ask, I didn’t get anything. I got the drawer open, the one that’s always locked, but it was empty.”
She frowns as she says this.
“It isn’t normally empty?”
“I don’t think they’d keep an empty drawer locked.” She opens the oven and pulls out a tray and then slides in another tray of little unbaked cakes.
“You’ve seen them put things in it, haven’t you?”
She gives me the side-eye filled with resentment as she sets the cakes from the oven onto a cooling rack, one she must have bought because I have exactly three pots in the cabinets and nothing else. “Does it matter?”
“It might.”
She wipes her hand on the apron she has on, a pretty purple one with flowers on it. It should be an instant boner killer, but it isn’t. There’s something that’s so her, the disparity between the innocent flowers and the siren on the warpath vibes she gives off.
“I know you were there today,” she says. “I heard you.”
“Your uncle wanted to see me.”
Her gaze flicks to me again, softer this time. “If you’re going to stand there, try this.”
She hands me a cake that’s cooling on a second rack.
“Trying to make me fat?”
For some weird reason, I feel good. Relaxed.
“I bake to soothe myself,” she mutters, her cheeks turning pink. “Eat it or don’t. I don’t care.”
But I think she does care. And I’m feeling generous, so I try it and fuck, it’s better than the one yesterday. There’s a faint hint of cinnamon in the chocolate cupcake that gives it a lift.
“Pretty good. So what’s your endgame with the baking? You going to open your own bakery?”
“You sound like my friend, Lacey. I’d love to but… it’s a lot of work.”
“And you’re rich and don’t like hard work.”
She gives me a withering look. “I have no problems with hard work.”
“You don’t want to fail.” I say this almost to myself and her mouth twists.
My little siren with the tastiest cunt I’ve had the privilege of tasting doesn’t seem like a baker, but then again, I like the measured work of restoring watches, which is so unlike me that it’s totally me. We have hobbies.
But hers is more than that. Deeper.
It’s therapy.
She sighs and doesn’t look at me as she says, “I’m not trained.”
“So?”
“I don’t want to fail. You’re right. Happy?”
I am, but not in the way she means. I like learning about her. Because it helps me manipulate. Although I don’t really know how her insecurity about not being good enough to be a professional baker will help me, I lock it down as a tool for future use.
I watch her work and then point at the ganache and buttercream. “Do me a favor and keep that.”
“I’m using it.” She frowns, turning to study me like she’s trying to work out my angle.
“Will there be leftovers?”
“Probably.”
“As I said, keep it.”
“Why?” That pretty frown’s still in place.
And I know why I want her to keep it. “It might come in handy.”
Then I leave the kitchen and head to the front door because I need to get to the Obsidian Knights HQ. We have some good databases I’d like to use. I’m interested to see if fucking Jones will try to corner me again.
And I need to leave the apartment, because if I don’t, I’ll bend her over the damn island and take her ass.
“Stay here,” I call out to her, my hand on the door handle. “I’ll be back.”
She pokes her head out of the kitchen, her brows knitted, eyes glittering with anger. “I’m not your prisoner.”
“Do what you’re told or I’ll spank you.”
As I leave, I make up my mind to do just that.
As meetings go, the one with UR Fantasies that Smith arranged went the way I expected. They want to know about Dark Desires, if they’re a client of Hanlon Shipping. But when I pushed for reasons why, they got shifty.
The list they finally get will be sanitized by the Knights, if needed. But that meeting gave me nothing except confirmation that they’re not just interested in their competition ousting them from the services of Hanlon Shipping. I get the feeling they want dirt on them, too.
Hell, maybe they want to start some kind of porn service war.
So I need to dig deeper into Dark Desires and their subsidiaries, if any exist.
Someone here is transporting not-so-willing human cargo. I’d bet money on that. Call it a hunch or intuition. It’s what my gut screams.
And that means we need to stop it at all costs.
When I get home, I push open the driver’s side door of my car and step onto the pavement. I walk toward the building entrance and my heart slams hard against my chest when the door opens.
My spine goes stiff, pulse hammering as I hiss my next words.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”