5. Chapter 5
Chapter 5
R oman
I studied Luna as she slumbered beside me in the car, her long, graceful neck stretched to the side and her thick, dark hair spread out on the headrest. Fiona was right, she did have nice breasts and a firm ass. When she’d come to the office demanding I let her out of the internship, I entertained myself fantasizing about what I wanted to do with her if I ever got her underneath me. I’d use and discard Luna like the unwitting pawn she was, but I could enjoy myself in the meantime.
She didn’t care about our law firm's reputation, financial net worth, or that our corporation was staggeringly successful, thanks to all the businesses and start-ups we’d bought into over the years. Most people in the legal and business community knew who we were, but she hadn’t. I also found it invigorating to spar with her. Luna had a quick wit and a wicked tongue, but she wasn’t cynical or jaded. That would likely change by the time I got done with her.
She’d schooled that drunk asshole, Hutton, at breakfast and quickly picked up on me guiding her out of the country club restaurant. The men sitting at that table were dangerous, and I didn’t want Luna to become a target because she was with me and looked like a wet dream wrapped in a cheap little suit. I’d be the one to ruin her, not anyone else.
Her brow furrowed and she whimpered softly. I wondered what she dreamed about and shook my head at her naiveté. She finally woke and stretched when I pulled the car into the parking garage, her lace bra and the faint shadow of her pink nipples pressing against her thin white dress shirt for a split second. I didn’t feel any guilt for appreciating the view.
When we walked past the reception desk, Brenna glared at Luna like she wanted to rip her hair out. Luna simply smiled at her.
I pointed to the office door next to mine. “It’s empty. You can use it while you’re here.” The smaller office was meant for a personal secretary or paralegal, but I hadn’t bothered to hire another one when the last one quit. Gideon took care of most of that, and the last paralegal I had said I was too “abrupt and rude.”
Luna still looked groggy and sleepy from her nap, and it made me want to slide my hand behind her neck, fist her hair, and pull her in for a soul-sucking kiss.
She perked up when she saw Gideon. “We visited Euphoria today. Have you been there?”
He smiled at her enthusiasm. “No, but I’ve heard about it from the partners.”
Luna glanced back at me and snickered. “I bet they spend a lot of time there, and probably write it off too, huh?”
“I wouldn’t venture to guess.” Gideon’s lip twitched because we’d had a similar conversation not long ago.
She grinned. “I bet it’s a big write-off. To compensate for other things.”
Gideon laughed, but I lifted an eyebrow. “I believe that was a sexual innuendo.”
Sighing, she schooled her features and tried to look contrite. “That was inappropriate, I apologize.”
I waved my hand. “It’s good to know you’re comfortable with them. Come on, you need to study, and I’ll take you home in a couple of hours.”
When I showed Luna the small office, I left the connecting door open while we worked that afternoon. Glancing in a few times, I noticed Luna wore noise-canceling headphones and spread highlighters out in a neat row on her desk while she studied. But she never seemed to use them. When I knocked on the dividing door a few hours later, she jumped. The room smelled like cinnamon, and I spotted a small sack on the corner of her desk. She frequently nibbled on it, and she even smelled like cinnamon sometimes.
“You ready to go home?”
She pulled the headphones off. “Pardon?”
“Are you ready to go?” I asked again slowly.
“Yes.” She looked down at whatever she’d been reading, then back at me, as if she needed a minute to shift gears. I wondered idly if Luna had sensory overload issues or tunnel concentration, like my law partner Xander did. She packed her things, and I took her back to the mortuary.
She turned to me. “I’ll see you at the office tomorrow. What time do you want me to be there?”
I smirked. “Nice try. I’m picking you up at eight again.”
We got out, and Luna sighed loudly. “You don’t need to pick me up or walk me to the apartment.”
“But I want to.” I followed Luna to her door, and she turned to me.
“Bye.”
“May I use your bathroom?”
She studied me. “Are you messing with me right now?”
“A little.” I waited her out.
She narrowed her eyes and put her code in. When we walked inside, she bent down and scooped up her three-legged cat, who waited at the door and meowed impatiently. “Hello, Carl. Did you miss me?” The cat had an unpleasant, grinding purr and seemed to barely tolerate her. And who named a cat Carl , for fuck’s sake?
“What happened to his leg?”
“We don’t know. He kind of adopted us. Ezra thinks he followed his late owner to the mortuary, and when the man was cremated Carl decided we’d have to do. The bathroom is down the hall.” She put Carl down, and he looked up at me suspiciously, then started licking himself.
Luna smirked. “See? He likes you.”
I raised an eyebrow. “And that’s how he shows it, by licking his nonexistent balls? Why is he named Carl?”
“I named him after a character from the book series Dungeon Crawler Carl . You probably wouldn’t like it, you’re too pretentious and stuck up.”
I arched an eyebrow and made a mental note to look up the series as she pointed down the hall. She’d thrown a good dozen insults at me today, but I didn’t mind. If she knew what I planned to do with her, she'd do more than just insult me.
“The bathroom is the second door on the left.”
As I walked down the hall, I studied the apartment. The first door I passed was closed, but the next one stood open. The room was neat, and an overstuffed bookshelf stood against one wall, crammed with books and a few personal items. Based on all the books, this was probably Luna’s room.
It wasn’t like most women’s bedrooms I’d seen. There weren’t feminine knickknacks or clothes strewn around, or an overpowering smell of perfumes and lotions. It was all about comfort and books. I tried to see if they had any security as I walked back into the kitchen, where a tall blond woman stood next to Alexa at the bar. All three of them were beautiful, but Luna was the one I wanted to fuck.
She pointed to her friend. “This is Sylvie Spade. Her family owns the mortuary.”
Sylvie quirked her mouth. “Roman Fowler, of FUCK, Legal. So you’re the jackass who ruined Luna’s internship plans and our fall vacation. I know one of your partners. Are you as big of an asshole as he is?”
Luna didn’t try to shut Sylvie up. Her friend didn’t mince words, and she was protective of Luna. Good to know. “A pleasure to meet you, Ms. Spade. Tell your grandfather and cousins I said hello.” I nodded at Alexa and turned to Luna. “I’ll see you tomorrow at eight sharp. Don’t stay up so late tonight.”
Walking out, I cracked my knuckles as I strode to my car. Ever since I’d glimpsed Luna’s flushed, animated face as she talked with Gideon last Friday, I’d been obsessed with her. She disliked the country club, ate without embarrassment when she was hungry, and had been fascinated by Euphoria. It would be a pleasure to spar and debate with her before I eventually had to break her.
When I walked into the office twenty minutes later, the partners were gathered around my oversized desk, already drinking my liquor and playing with my coin collection. We met like this at least once a week after hours to decompress and catch up. Sometimes we sparred at the boxing gym a few blocks away, or met up on the weekends to watch a game or shoot the shit.
Drakos glanced up when I strode in, still wearing his suit jacket and silk tie. “How’s the new intern, mentee, whatever-the-fuck she is?”
“Better than expected. I think you’ve heard that she’s Montgomery Cross’s daughter. Klim changed her mentorship at the last minute and sent her to me.” I smirked evilly and poured myself a drink. “Then she tried to weasel her way out of it.”
Ivan shook his head and folded his muscled, tattooed arms. “So, of course, you didn’t let her, being the contrary jackass you are. That would’ve been like waving a fucking red cape at you. I still need to do a background check on her.” He wore faded jeans and black biker boots and was our expert hacker. Ivan had his law degree, but he hated being an attorney and was a savant with computers, so he did whatever the hell he wanted to, including our security and investigations.
I nodded absently. “I want you to dig up everything. Her grades, her finances, what type of birth control she’s on, and what her weaknesses are. I want to know if she has a boyfriend, even her tampon brand if she uses them.”
Drakos shook his head and took a drink. “Her birth control, boyfriend, and tampon brand? Are you planning to fuck her before or after you fuck her over? You’re an evil bastard.” He looked like a successful Wall Street broker in his silk ties, cuff links, and excessively expensive suits–until he opened his foul mouth and biting sarcasm spilled out.
I raised an eyebrow and took another sip. “Both.”
Ivan studied me. “So you want the full monty on her. She’s what, twenty-four? That’ll take a day, maybe two.”
Xander lounged against my bookcase, rolling one of my rare, ancient Roman coins between his fingers. He was the silent one. His long, dark blond hair hung around his shoulders, and he’d untucked his shirt and rolled up his shirt sleeves.
“You’re obsessing again,” he warned me.
Xander was the philosophical, introspective one. Sometimes he wore suits, but when he got to the office, he always shed his jacket and lost his tie. He also looked like a California surfer.
“It’s not a fucking obsession.”
“Uh-huh,” Drakos needled. “That’s why you want the ‘full monty’ on a young law student.”
Unlike Xander, Drakos liked to stir up shit. We were tight like family, but black and white in temperament sometimes.
I stared them down. “Klim sent Ms. Cross to me to do with as I please. And since she’s a Cross, I’ll reel her in and ruin her slowly and methodically. But no one gets close to us unless they’ve been vetted. We protect our family.”
We all fell silent, and the mood went dark. After the nightmarish way we met and became brothers, we’d adopted that motto so we all knew we’d have each other’s backs. Protegat Familia : Protect Family. It meant protecting each other because our biological families sure as fuck hadn’t. The air in the office thickened as memories tried to claw their way to the surface. The past was a shadow we lived under and never quite escaped.
I sighed and faced the elephant in the room. “That fucking hellhole has a way of grabbing us by the throat, even now.”
Xander rolled the coin again and studied the movement. “It made us who we are, for better or worse.”
“Ruthless, soulless bastards who have no problem using daughters as pawns and skirting the law?” Ivan mused.
Drakos grinned. “We don’t skirt the law, we fucking break the law most of the time.” His remark seemed to ease the tension.
Running my hand through my hair, I glanced over at Ivan. “She’s just a girl I need to use and inconveniently want to fuck. She looks like a wet dream even in mediocre clothes, asks a thousand questions, and is too smart for her own good. But we vet her.”
Ivan sipped his whiskey and studied me. “Then I’ll get you her tampon brand.”
When everyone was gone, I sat and studied the coin Xander had set on the corner of my desk. Luna didn’t want to be interning at The Firm or with me, but she’d made the most of it. She was unique, smart, and curious. I frowned.
The office had gone quiet, with only Ivan clattering on his keyboards a couple of offices down. Swirling the whiskey, I watched the liquid catch the light from the dim lamp on my desk and thought of Luna’s inquisitive mind and probing green eyes that didn’t miss much.
The scar on my neck twinged, and I absently ran a finger over it, feeling the raised skin. I’d gotten it years ago when a guard threw me into the side of an old outbuilding. I’d been centimeters away from being impaled through my throat on that long, rusty nail. Instead, the guards kicked the shit out of me as my neck bled all over, threw me into a cell, and left me for days. The wound had healed badly.
“Hey.” Ivan’s voice cut through the silence, snapping me back to the present as he studied me from the doorway. “Anything specific you're looking for?”
“Everything, every skeleton in her closet. I may or may not read it all, but I want it just in case.”
He rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s young, and she’s probably squeaky fucking clean. Are you sure you want to drag her into our shit?”
“Yes,” I replied with cold finality.
Ivan looked down at the coin. “You and your fucking obsessions. Alright, I’ll send you what I find.” When Ivan left, I drained the last of my whiskey and went home.
The gleaming glass panes of the cold, modern house reflected my headlights back to me as I turned into the driveway. The sleek modern structure, with a facade of concrete, steel, and glass, sat nestled in the foothills above Las Vegas. Intermittent greenery defied the desert, softening the house a little. The underground irrigation systems in almost every yard in the West still mystified me.
I left my Mercedes in the circular driveway and used my thumbprint to unlock the massive glass front door, shed my jacket, and threw it over the entryway table. Then I paused and studied the interior as if from Luna’s eyes. It unfolded like a gallery of shadows and sharp angles.
I absently wondered what she’d think of this house. It was so different from her odd, vibrant apartment. She lived above a sprawling mortuary in the middle of a cemetery, for fuck’s sake, but her apartment had more life and vitality than my cutting-edge, multimillion-dollar home. It looked like Ezra had renovated the space over the last ten years or so, but he kept the same 1960s vintage feel to match the mid-century modern mortuary it was attached to.
Looking around at my house with its natural stone floors, sleek furniture, and abstract art pieces, I still couldn’t decide whether I liked the space or not. The back of the residence had floor-to-ceiling windows that offered an unobstructed view of Sin City’s skyline and the infinity pool outside. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d used the pool.
After shedding the rest of my clothes, I slipped into compression shorts and headed to the gym. My mind wouldn’t rest as thoughts about what I wanted to do to Luna Cross kept intruding, which only angered me more. Over the years, I’d found the best way to quiet my brain was to work through one of the brutal sparring routines Gideon had taught us after we’d been liberated from Bitter Creek. It seemed to be a cross between Brazilian Jui-Jitsu and Krav Maga. I sparred with the punching bag, and as sweat dripped from my body, my thoughts eventually quieted.
When I finished, I toweled off and headed to the kitchen for some water and protein. As I stood at the kitchen sink drinking a foul protein shake, the pool spread out like a dark inky mirror, reflecting the glowing skyline. I finished my shake and stared out at the night, eventually walking out onto the back patio into the cool fall desert night. I stripped off my shorts and dove into the warm, black water, leisurely swimming laps as I continued to obsess about Luna.