26. Amorette
AMORETTE
A ndre had a firm hold on my arm as he guided me down the hallway. Instead of moving to another apartment, we left the residential wing. Men dressed in all black passed us once we were in the common area. If they thought there was anything wrong with Andre leading me around, they didn’t show it.
Hell, they didn’t even bat an eye. Why would they? Andre and his brothers ran this place, and they wouldn’t raise a finger against him.
I caught sight of the woman—Blanca—heading up the stairs, and I started to step toward her, but Andre pulled me along behind him. I hadn’t seen her since that day. Was she okay? Did she hate me? Would she have understood why I did what I did?
“Come on, little bronca . I have better things to do than cater to you. I’m not my brothers,” Andre said as he continued to tug me behind him.
Fuck him.
We passed a kitchen and another gym before coming to a heavy metal door. Andre hit a few buttons on the keypad and after a beep, it started to swing open. He ushered me in ahead of him.
At least he’d stopped being so rough. I should be thankful for the small mercies with this asswipe.
Inside the large office, Parker swung from side to side in the desk chair as he watched something on his phone. He must have heard us come in, even though he didn’t glance at us once. Not until Andre walked around the desk and smacked the back of his head.
“Out of my chair.”
He snorted and stood, walking around to the other side. The space was everything I would expect to see in an executive’s office. Sleek modern furniture, moody large landscape prints on the wall. A desk setup that had to cost at least ten grand.
The pretentious air both fit and didn’t with Andre’s barely leashed violent tendencies.
“Little Love, so we meet again.” Parker took my hand and…encouraged me to take a seat. Once my ass was in the chair, he turned to face me. “I hear you had my dear brother in a state.” He smirked.
What kind of relationship did these men have? Grey was the only one who seemed to care about Lafe at all. If Grace was strung out, I’d be tearing the world apart to get her the help she needed. I wouldn’t rest until we’d put together a plan and she stuck with it, even if I had to sit on her.
She would do the same for me, because we loved each other.
How was I supposed to continue my life here if I didn’t understand them?
“Are you going to ask how Lafe is doing?” my question slipped out, betraying my irritation with his blasé attitude.
He dipped his chin as his smirk spread into a smile.
“Ah-ah. Little Love, you aren’t getting attached to Lafe, are you?
” I stiffened. “He’s not the relationship type.
I can tell you that his attempting to kill himself with powder while at home means he has no love lost for you.
You took a man who had very clear boundaries when he sampled his wares and forced him to cross them. ”
“I didn’t do anything to him,” I whispered.
He was trying to shock me, and damn it, he succeeded. But I wasn’t to blame for Lafe’s choices. He was a big boy. He decided what he did or didn’t put in his body.
No, Parker reminded me of the sleazebag husbands I helped take to the cleaners. The ones who tried to make their wives feel like everything was their fault.
I realized I was shaking my head and glaring at him when he snickered. “Fuck you. Fuck you, too.” I flicked my gaze to Andre, who just raised his brows.
Standing, I backed away from the desk. When neither made to detain me, the false sense of security sent a burst of courage through my blood. How dare these fucking men treat me like my being here was my fault. Like everything that happened to them was my fault.
Hell no.
“Either let me go or send me back,” I ground out, even if the words tasted like ash in my mouth.
Andre rubbed a finger over his brow and sighed. He was such a different man here than he’d been the other brief time we’d met, but he was still a bastard.
“We can’t let you go. I was coming to get you so we could talk about your situation here,” he said as he folded his hands over the glossy desktop.
“We’re also not taking you back.” Parker shrugged like he could care less, but it wasn’t his decision.
“Why? Make me understand. I really want to know why you want to keep me here. It’s not like you like me.
It’s not like you have any sort of attachment to me.
If what I’ve gathered is true, my presence is making your life a hell of a lot harder than it was before.
” I tossed up a hand, then braced my weight against the back of the empty chair.
With them both sitting, I felt stronger, bigger. The illusion of having the dominant position added a spark to my already building anger. Parker’s amused expression made me believe he knew it too.
“Listen, we started off on the wrong foot,” Andre began but paused when I snorted. It wasn’t the carefree snort Parker had made when Andre took his chair back. This was an ugly, rude sound that told exactly what I thought about our start.
Andre shook his head, his mouth dipping into a frown. “I won’t apologize. My first and only priority is my family—” could have fooled me—” and your being here disrupted that. But Parker’s right. Now that you’re here, I couldn’t in good conscience take you back to Maikel’s.”
I kept my gaze glued to his face, searching for any tell that he was lying. Someone like Andre, who had weak morals and no aversion to violence, didn’t strike me as someone who would care about something as small and inconsequential as his conscience.
“That’s not a business we’ve ever wanted any part of—”
“Then why? Get rid of that branch. Save those women,” I demanded, wincing at the shrill tone of my voice. Grey had argued why they couldn’t, but his excuses weren’t enough.
Would never be.
Shit, maybe I wasn’t accepting my fate the way I thought I was.
Parker tipped his head to the side. “Has no one explained to you where you are? Who we are?” He seemed genuinely curious. Even morbidly fascinated.
“She knows something,” Andre muttered.
“I know who you are—” I shouldn’t have admitted that. “Grey told me why your hands are tied. I just don’t understand it.”
“Short story long, Little Love, we’re not the biggest, baddest men in the Institution.
We’re toward the top of the food chain, to be sure, but we’re not at the top.
Our psychopath father holds that title, and the only way he’d allow us to dismantle that operation was if he put us in body bags afterward.
Then he’d find someone more sadistic to take Maikel’s place.
Assuming we killed him.” He leaned back, gently rocking the chair.
“That’s the thing you have to understand with Vicente.
He would find someone worse than Maikel just to spite us, regardless if we’re around to care or not.
On top of that, Vicente chases the money.
There’s too big of an industry in sex trafficking for him to let there be a void there. ”
Unfortunately, his words made sense. He phrased it in a way that penetrated my unwilling thoughts more than Grey’s had. Or maybe, I just needed to be told the same thing over and over again for it to sink in.
“From your frown, I’d say you at least see why we wouldn’t risk it.” Parker chuckled like there was something funny about letting that business continue.
“Amorette.” My name rolled off of Andre’s tongue as he pulled my attention back to him.
“The bottom line is, Lafe risked his life and ours by taking you. Now, we have to assume Vicente knows what he did. The damage is done, and we’re not about to take you back there so Vicente can abduct you.
And he would. He would take you from there and question you on why we took you, what we did with you, and try to garner any information, no matter how insignificant, that could fuck us over.
We can’t allow that.” He shook his head.
Some of the blusters left my sails. Now this fit with my first impression of Andre. He didn’t want to take me back because it didn’t sit right with him. He didn’t want Vicente to get his hands on me on the off chance I knew something their father didn’t.
Joke was on them, because the only thing I could tell was that their security was impeccable, and their decor was tasteful. Nothing a crime lord could use.
“Now, let’s talk about how you can work for us.” Parker slapped his hands on his thighs as he sat forward. The hard sunlight cast deep shadows over his already sharp face, giving him a forbidding air. “We’ve run your background check, and—”
“What?” I shouted, backing away from them. That meant they knew about Grace. Could they use her against me? I couldn’t allow that to happen. I’d take the suicide route before ever letting her get roped into this cluster fuck of a life.
“Calm down,” Andre said coolly, his lids lowering.
“Why would you do that? I could have told you anything you needed to know.” I tried to settle the fear in my voice, but I was afraid it still leaked through.
Parker stood, watching my every move as I took another step back. “Amorette, we needed to know you weren’t a danger to us. We also wanted to figure out how we would incorporate you into our businesses,” he spoke with deliberately measured words.
“And,” I choked out, barely able to hear myself over my racing heart. All I kept picturing was Grace shoved in one of those cages at that warehouse. That…that would break me in a way I wasn’t sure anything else could. “What did you find?”
“Come sit down, and I’ll tell you.” If those words were from anyone else, I’d believe they were concerned for me. But these men had probably never felt concern for anyone in their lives. Not unless it was each other, and I still wasn’t convinced that was the case, no matter what they said.
Forcing each foot in front of the other, I went back to the chair. I didn’t sit down. I couldn’t.