Chapter Sixty-Four
Miranda
“No way,” I said, shaking my head as I swirled the wine that the owner himself had come over to bring to us. “That sweet gentleman?” I asked, thinking of his great suit and his attractive face with his salt and pepper hair.
“That sweet gentleman runs the most prominent mafia family in the state,” he told me, nodding. “Him and his sons,” he clarified.
“And people just… know this?”
“I’m not sure how many normal, average people know that,” he admitted, looking around. “The Grassi Family works hard not to have their names end up in the papers or on the news, so it’s entirely possible that more than two-thirds of the people in here have no idea.”
“But that means a third of them do? And they keep coming here to eat?”
“You’ve seen the place,” he said, waving out toward the balcony over the water. I’d bet, weather permitting, it was amazing to sit out there and eat. Especially at night. “And the food is the best you are going to find in the area. Navesink Bank is a… curious town.”
There was just something about the way he’d said ‘curious’ that had my curiosity immediately piqued.
“Curious how?”
“So, you know how the mob used to really pretty much run the city?”
“Yeah, of course,” I agreed, nodding. They’d had their hand in literally everything.
“Well, it’s like that here. Except it isn’t just the mob.”
“Who else is it?”
“There’s the outlaw bikers, the family of loan sharks, the paramilitary camp, then at least a dozen other people working independently, with deep enough pockets to grease the palms of the local police force.”
“You have to be exaggerating. Why would people live here if the crime was that rampant?”
“That’s the thing, though. Most of the organizations here have a code.
They don’t let their crimes put the locals at risk.
In a way, it is almost safer here for the normal families because of them.
And the cops, with their hands tied with the organizations around here, focus more on the petty crime shit, so that is kept to a minimum as well. ”
“It’s still a little hard to believe,” I said, taking another sip of my wine as the owner of the place came from the back with another bottle of wine, walking over toward a table and greeting them like old friends.
“See that table Antony just went to?” Brock asked, jerking his chin toward it.
“Yes,” I said, nodding, as I glanced at the lovely dark-haired woman and her distinguished-looking man with some graying hair and bright blue eyes.
“That is Charlie and Helen Mallick. The heads of the loan shark family I was telling you about. They and their sons lend out money and break kneecaps if you don’t pay.”
“You’ve got to be pulling my leg,” I said, seeing nothing nefarious about the couple.
“Charlie is partially retired from the actual enforcing now. They run the local bar in town. But make no mistake, that is a fearsome man. And that woman is even more so if you cross her or the ones she loves.”
“Why would the mob and the loan sharks be so friendly?” I asked, ever the skeptic.
“A lot of the organizations around here are allies. They band together when common enemies show up in town. And since their business isn’t in direct opposition to each other, they can do it without any issues.
You still don’t believe me,” Brock said, smiling.
“Tell you what, the next time you have contact with Sawyer or Tig, ask them.”
“I think I might need to,” I said, unconvinced. Though it was a good story, and it made what could have been an awkward date-like moment feel comfortable and easy.
After he’d held my hand in his room and I’d opened up to him, I wasn’t sure that we could go back to casual and carefree.
Clearly, I’d underestimated Brock.
He could go from intense to laid-back in a blink.
It was both off-putting yet extremely welcome.
I did want to talk about the psych ward, let out a little of the steam before it made me implode, but I didn’t want to harp on it.
Brock seemed to understand and respect that.
“If the food is half as good at the coffee was, I guess I might be able to look past the fact that I’m enabling crime. So how did you come to know about all the crime around here?”
“I actually grew up, in a way, around it all. Antony’s sons—Luca and Matteo—went to our school. So did Reign, who runs the biker club. And Charlie and Helen’s kids,” he said, nodding toward the couple. “Sure, everyone was tight-lipped about family business, but shit always gets around.
“You never felt, I don’t know, unsafe, being privy to all that information?”
“Nah. Like I said, they have their code. Innocents don’t get caught up in their shit.”
“I hardly think you could call yourself innocent,” I shot back.
“Me?” he asked, pressing a hand to his chest. “I’m a starry-eyed virgin over here,” he insisted.
“Really? Is that why the bartender is giving you both a death glare, and a longing look?” I asked.
Maybe someone else might have been jealous about that.
But, first, this wasn’t a date, regardless of how it looked, and even how I was beginning to feel about him.
Also, second, we all had a past. Neither of us were starry-eyed virgins.
I had men in my past, he women in his. That was life. It was silly to be jealous about that.
“You noticed that, huh?” he asked, looking both bashful and cocky at the same time, something that shouldn’t have been possible, but he managed to pull it off.
“I think it says something that it’s both, not one or the other,” I said.
“It was casual fun… two years ago,” he said, shrugging it off.
Two years ago and she still had that longing look? How good was this man in bed?
What?
No.
I could not let my mind go there.
Oh, who was I kidding? My mind had been there almost since laying eyes on him.
And since I’d been batting the question around for a few days, I was pretty sure I could say with some level of certainty that he was probably amazing in bed.
I had the feeling that he was not a one-trick pony. You know… the guys who had one move only. The ones who couldn’t handle a position change, let alone anything else.
And Brock’s casual confidence told me that he wasn’t the kind of guy who was intimidated by bringing some fun toys into the bedroom either.
I mean, I could just imagine him saying something about how toys were friends, not foes.
“Miranda,” Brock said, making me jolt, having been so lost in my own mind.
“Yeah?”
“I’m going to need you to stop looking at me like that,” he said, voice just a shade huskier than usual.
My sex clenched hard in response, damn him.
“Like what?” I asked, going for casual, breezy, as I reached for my wine glass, my mouth suddenly feeling dry.
“Like if I offered to climb under this table and go down on you, you’d let me,” he said.
And, yeah.
Not once, not ever in my current life, or my life before, did I ever choke on my drink because of something someone said to me.
But it happened right there, in the middle of a crowded restaurant, making a couple of heads swivel in our direction, concerned.
Brock silently passed me one of the crimson napkins, and I reached for it, wiping my mouth, trying to give myself a second to think clearly, to come up with something to say to that.
“I was not thinking that,” I insisted, folding up his napkin.
“Baby, you have a lot of skills, but hiding when you’re turned on is not one of them,” he told me.
It was right that moment that our server came back with bread and some kind of oil dip with herbs floating in it, and asked if we were ready to order.
Saving us from letting the conversation continue. Because I had a feeling that it wasn’t going to go well if we did.
We all had our flaws.
And I had a really hard time being called out. My pride wanted me to fight to the bitter, bloody end. I knew me. If it got heated enough, I would have demanded that Tig or Sawyer be put on my case instead of him.
Quite frankly, I would have said that just to save face, not because it was actually what I wanted.
Luckily, I had some menu questions, and our server was chatty.
As she wandered off, my phone bleeped, and I went ahead and let myself be rude and answer Cam.
Better rude than without my private investigator and live-in protection detail.
“I’m sure Cam is holding down the fort,” Brock said as I, admittedly, typed off a never-ending response just to have an excuse not to face Brock again so soon.
“He did a great job while I was… away,” I agreed, tucking the phone away. “I’ve never met anyone who can anticipate needs like he can.”
“Have you given any more thought to what I said about him?” Brock asked.
“I have. And I know you might think it is naive of me, but I am something like ninety-eight percent sure he had nothing to do with this. What would he have to gain if something happened to me? He has no stake in the company, no position in it if I weren’t around.
The worst thing that could happen to him would be that I died. He would immediately be out of a job.
“And he would never find one again that would pay him what I do. What?” I asked as his head turned to the side as he looked at me.
“You really have given it a lot of thought, and I’m apt to agree with you when you put it that way. He was willing to pay our fee. That says you pay him at least three times what a normal assistant would ever get.”
“Exactly. But where does that leave us?” I asked.
“There’s still a lot of avenues to look into. I will be getting the videos from the building cameras tomorrow when the super heads out to grab lunch. What?” he asked.
“The super,” I said.
“What about him? You suspect him? Have you had issues with him?”
“Issues might be… pushing it,” I said. “I’ve only directly dealt with him maybe twice. But he’s… this sounds so rude…”
“Trying to murder someone is rude, honey.”
Well, when he put it that way.
“He’s a creep. Or, at least, he gave me creep vibes. He came up to work on my kitchen sink once. And I caught him in my bedroom when I came in.”