Chapter 5
FIVE
D AKOTA
I’m exhausted by the time I get back to the apartment and trudge up the steps. There was an issue with our liquor license that I had to drive down to the county seat to deal with. Then Hazel called, crying and worried about the centerpieces and seating arrangements that she wanted to hash out together in person. Since I was already there, we ironed out details for the pre-wedding party that was fast approaching. One that was turning into a massive event, but one she was so excited for; it makes me smile every time I think about the animated description of her plans. After all of that, she talked me into going for a ride, one that was a much-needed escape, except for the fact that I managed to slip when we let the horses stop for water, ending up a muddy mess. So I showered and had a quick dinner with them before I made my way back home .
I need to get changed out of this Queen City Chaos shirt and into something sexier before I have to start my eight o’clock chat with my best subscriber. An appointment I’ll have to cut tactfully short so I can make it to cover a shift at the bar tonight and hopefully grab a scoop of sorbet to keep my spirits up.
I shut the door behind me, locking it, and sliding down the back of it in exhaustion. I wonder for the briefest of moments why Vendetta isn’t in my lap already before I nearly have a heart attack when I open my eyes and see the silhouette at the table. I open my mouth to scream, but he cuts me off.
“Long day?” It’s the fucking devil himself, lurking in the late-day shadows.
“What the fuck are you doing in my apartment?” I’m furious. He’s rarely even been in my apartment, and now in a week, he’s been in here twice. “Just because you have a key doesn’t mean you can let yourself in.”
Anger and panic swirl around one another, tightening into a knot in my stomach. There are lots of reasons I don’t want him in here. Too many secrets he could uncover and things he could never unsee that would kill me for him to find out.
“No, but it does mean I have to let the handyman in when you forget to meet him.”
“Oh shit.” I press my hand to my mouth. It had completely slipped my mind with everything else going on. “I had to put out fires today, and I guess I forgot.”
“I guess.” His eyes drift over my shirt. “You have fun with Hazel?”
“Mostly.” I’m not about to admit I fell in the mud. It would just be another failure he could add to the column of things he finds annoying about me.
“Good. I’m glad one of us was enjoying ourselves.”
“Listen. I’m sorry about the handyman. I fucked up. Was he able to fix it?” I ask as I make my way into the kitchen. I set my purse down in one of the chairs at the dining room table, and my eyes fall on my computer. It’s sitting square in front of Grant in a place I definitely did not leave it.
“He was.” He doesn’t flinch as he watches me.
“What are you doing with that?”
“With this?” He holds up the laptop and then looks between me and the device.
“Yes.” I eye it nervously, grateful when I remember I left it password protected.
“Well… funny fucking thing is, when you weren’t here and the apartment was so messy it looked like it could have been tossed over by someone, I got real fucking worried. Especially when I called your phone a dozen times, and you didn’t bother to pick up.”
“Yeah. Sorry about that. I was on the trail.”
“And after the trail when you were showering? When you got in the car to come back home? At any other fucking point today?” I hear his temper rising in his voice.
“I saw you called and figured this was more bullshit about the shots or the money I owe you. I didn’t care to hear about either when I was dealing with every other problem under the sun, so I decided to wait to call you back.” I give it back to him two-fold. I don’t need his lectures tonight. I need him gone so I can get on to chat with my subscribers and then get down to the bar. Gemma had called off, and that meant I was up. This day refused to end. “Can we please just do this some other time? I have shit to do.”
“Nah. You can have a seat though.”
“I have work to do,” I insist, refusing to sit down.
“It can wait.”
“It can’t. I’m busy, and I don’t need whatever asinine lecture you’re about to give me about answering my phone and putting things on my calendar. ”
“Oh, this lecture’s going to be a lot more than that.”
“Yeah. I don’t need your bullshit. I thought we covered this the other day.”
He slams his open palm on the table.
“Sit. The. Fuck. Down. Hartfield.” He booms, and his lashes barely lift to reveal blue eyes that are positively glacial. My heart clicks up a notch in my chest. I normally don’t fear him, but sometimes, like right now, even I worry I’ve pushed him too far.
I drop my ass in the chair reluctantly and give him an expectant look. He doesn’t say another word; he just opens the lid of my computer, and I nearly choke on my words trying to stop him.
“What are you doing? Don’t touch that!” I reach for it, trying to tear it out of his grasp, but he artfully dodges me, punching numbers into the keyboard and then turning the screen around.
“Why? Because of this?” he asks as I’m faced with my mostly naked body on full display.
The heat races up my neck and colors my cheeks. I thought no one would ever find these. At least, not anyone I knew. I’d gone to great lengths to keep it a secret. And now the last person on earth I’d ever want to know is staring at it. Has possibly seen all of it. I want to die .
He hits another button, and a voice memo I’d sent to one of my subscribers starts playing. It’s my voice, husky and overheated. The sound of my vibrator in the background.
“I wish it was you with me right now. Wish it was your hands on me.” Voice-memo me gasps and then lets out a soft whimper. “Would you fuck me with your tongue or would you—” Grant cuts me short when he presses another button.
The silence between us stretches on, moving from deeply uncomfortable to tortuously long in nature .
“Should I keep going?” He breaks it finally, nodding to the computer.
“You’ve made your point.”
“Have I? Because when I was worried something happened to you and I went looking for information…” His tone is lethal as he speaks. “Finding this? I thought one of these sick fucks could have taken you. I thought you could be lost to the fucking wind. Stuck in his basement being used for some madman’s amusement.”
“Well. I’m not.” I state the obvious.
“You’re not . Instead, you just disappear. Blowing off your responsibilities—”
“I was not blowing off responsibilities.” It’s my turn to cut him off, and he doesn’t like it. “I had an issue with the liquor license, and then Hazel had a wedding emergency.”
“What liquor-license issue?” His lips flatten.
“I forgot to check something. Betty always made sure to remind me, but I guess she’s gone now. They’ve turned over a lot of the staff at the county office, and I missed a date. But I fixed it. I can take care of things myself.” I don’t want to hear him say that he’ll take care of it. He always “takes care” of everything and then lords it over me like I’m a child who can’t be responsible.
There’s a low scathing laugh on his part as he considers my defense.
“So you’re spending so much time talking to dirty old men on the internet, you can’t keep up with your actual responsibilities?”
“I’m not talking to them for fun. I need the money.”
“Yeah. I saw the thousands sitting in your account, and yet you haven’t been able to make rent for months. Why is that?” Accusation scorches through his tone .
“Because the bar isn’t doing well. You know this.” It hurts my heart to admit it, but it’s true.
“And you couldn’t use some of your porn money to pay the rent?”
“It’s not porn!”
Another derisive chuckle bubbles up from his chest. “No? What is it then?”
“It’s just some pictures. No different than the kind I’d share with a boyfriend. You’re making it sound lewd.”
He runs his hand over his lips like he’s half in disbelief and half incapable of speech. It’s distractingly attractive, and I hate it. He blinks and refocuses his attention on me.
“ I’m making it sound lewd? Do you need me to replay that voice memo? Or the half dozen other ones I found? These men aren’t your boyfriends. They don’t care about you.”
“You listened to all of them?” I’m having trouble breathing, and I hear a faint ringing sound in my ears.
I can’t hear the rest of what he’s saying because I’m too busy coming to terms with the fact that Grant fucking Stockton has just witnessed enough private content to make me want to dig my own grave and jump in it.
“I told you. When you were missing…” There’s the slightest catch in his voice before he speaks, though, like he was thinking of the lie he was going to tell before he spoke.
“There’s no way you looked through all of that before you started calling your brothers if you really thought something happened to me.”
“I don’t call Ramsey for this kind of thing.”
“So you called Levi.”
“To see if he could find out where you were. It took time for him to get that information.” The middle Stockton brother is half genius and half enforcer. He’s always the one they call when they need the important jobs done. If we weren’t in the middle of a humiliating argument, it might be a little bit touching he was that worried about me.
“So then you—” He cuts me off before I can finish.
“I’m done acting like this is a fucking democracy. You owed me rent. You didn’t pay, and now I find out you had the money all along.”
“It’s in arrears. I don’t have the money yet.”
“You didn’t have the money for the rent, but you had money for all these clothes and lingerie?” He points to the mess on the couch. I was trying to find something cute to wear for my client earlier. He’s particular about what he likes, but he tips well.
“It’s part of doing business. You have to spend money to make money.” I state the obvious.
“You spent my money,” he snaps, his tone growing more impatient each time he speaks.
“Like you fucking needed it!” It’s my turn to slap my palm on the table.
His eyes follow the motion, staring at my hand before the bright blues slowly lift to meet mine.
“I think you’re forgetting who you’re talking to.”
“I know who I’m talking to—the one who thinks he’s better than everyone in this town with his fancy fucking suits and his expensive liquor, when in reality, he’s the person in this town everyone tries to avoid like the plague because they all hate him.”
He’s quiet again. A long minute passes before his lips form their way into a wry smirk.
“They don’t hate me, Hartfield. They fear me.” His eyes lock with mine, and I can’t seem to tear them away no matter how much I want to. “But you’re right. It’s high time I stopped treating you differently just because I loved your brother like one of my own. You want to learn the hard way? We can make that happen.”
“Sounds good to me.” I know I sound petulant, but I can’t bring myself to care.
“Perfect. You owe me all the back rent in full—tomorrow.”
I let out a stuttered laugh. “You’re insane. I don’t have it.”
“You seem to have plenty from giving keyboard warriors blue balls in your spare time.”
“I told you—that money gets paid in arrears. I won’t even have the first installment until a week from now.”
“Not my problem.”
“Well, there’s no way you’re getting the money tomorrow.”
“Then expect an eviction notice.”
I scoff. “Be serious.”
“I’m the most serious I’ve ever been in my life. And your little side hustle? It’s mine now. Every ounce of income you have coming from it goes toward the back rent plus interest and late fees.”
I laugh. “I’d like to see you try.”
“I don’t have to try.” He shoves the computer toward me. “Hit refresh.”
I do, and in a blink, the page is gone. The pictures, the messages, the subscribers. All of it is poof—gone. My heart bottoms out into my stomach.
“What did you do?”
“Deleted it. But not before I had the money forwarded to my account.”
“You can’t be serious, Grant. I need that money. I need at least another month of that work. I have things I have to pay for!” I protest.
“Then you’ll have to pay it from the money you make at the bar.”
“It’s not enough!” Tears start to well in my eyes, and my stomach churns. It was barely going to be enough with what I was earning with the subscribers. It would take forever to build back a subscriber base, if I even could. I’d never do it in time to pay all the bills I have coming due.
His jaw ticks, and he studies my face. I try to bite back the burn of the tears down my throat, holding his gaze, but it’s a useless fight. They crest over the edge and stream down my cheeks. Humiliation burning a trail down my skin in their wake. I can add this to the list of things I didn’t need him to witness today.
“Not enough for what? What could you possibly need all this money for? Do you have an addiction or something you haven’t told me about?” His brow furrows, and his tone changes. A hint of the brotherly concern I’ve known before seeps through the coarse impatience of the gangster who’s sitting in front of me now.
“Hazel’s wedding. The pre-wedding party. The bachelorette. The dress and shoes. The hair. Do you have any fucking idea how much it costs to be a maid of honor when the bride’s marrying a pro football player and everyone but you has money?” I glare at him bitterly.
“That’s what this was for?”
I nod, looking away and swiping at the tears running down my cheeks.
“I just started it recently when the bar started to go downhill thanks to the extra competition in town.” I pause to give him a pointed look. “Bristol was worried about paying for everything too, and she joked about selling pictures of her feet. I don’t have cute feet, but I do have other things men can’t stop staring at. So I thought, what the hell… if it gets the bills paid, and I can do it without showing my face, who does it really hurt?” I shrug and shake my head, barely able to make eye contact with him .
“You. It hurts you if one of these men turns out to be a fucking creep.” He sounds genuinely concerned in this moment but still unable to grasp that I’m an adult fully in charge of my own life. One who gets to decide whether something is worth the gamble or not.
“Then it’s a risk I’m willing to take. I need the money, Grant. I can’t let her down. I can’t. It’s humiliating enough as it is telling you.”
He closes his eyes and scrubs a hand over his face. A rough sigh escapes from his chest while he lets the silence stretch on.
“Fine,” he says at last.
Hope blooms again. I glance at the clock. There’s still time. We could fix this.
“Is there some way to get it back? Some way to undo the deletion of the account? I have someone I’m supposed to be online with in an hour.”
“No.” His thumb swipes over his lips as his eyes fall over me while he considers my situation. “You’re done with that.”
“I thought we just established that—” The look he gives me stops me mid-sentence. He shakes his head and sits back in the seat, surveying me in a way that makes me shift in mine.
“I’m done being your fucking guardian angel all the time. Fuck, I don’t think I can handle another day like today.” He looks up at the ceiling like he’s saying a prayer to a higher power. “I’ll give you the money in advance so you can pay for the things you need for Hazel’s wedding. But you’re going to pay it all back. Anything over and above what you already earned, the back rent, all of it—with interest and fucking penalties for lying to me. You don’t want me to be family? Fine. I’m not gonna treat you like family. You’re gonna learn what it means to be in debt up to your fucking eyeballs with the Horsemen.”
“The bar is barely in the black most months after I pay the staff. Without more subscriber money…” I shake my head. “There’s no way I can pay you the money back. You might as well tell your minions to slit my throat or take a finger or whatever it is you all do now. Save us both the trouble of waiting around for it.”
“I don’t outsource my dirty work, and I didn’t say you were going to pay me back in cash.”
“What?” I frown in confusion.
He glances at the clock and stands abruptly like he has somewhere important to be.
“I have to get back to the Avarice. We’ve got VIPs in tonight. Cover the bar shift. But when I go back to my room after last call tonight, I expect to hear from you. Don’t make me wait for the text.”
“What do you mean hear from me? What am I texting you?”
“What were you doing for him in an hour?”
“I was…” The words fade on my lips, trying to make sense of what he’s asking of me. It can’t be what I think it is. I have to be misunderstanding him somehow.
“You were?” He looks at me impatiently and smirks when he sees the blush returning to my cheeks. His eyes drift down over my body. “You’re gonna have to get over that embarrassment. It’s gonna make it real hard for you to show me how wet you’re getting while you beg for my cock later, Cowgirl.”