Chapter 4
FOUR
Conrad
I stared out the window of my office at the traffic below.
My forehead thunked onto the cool glass, and I closed my eyes.
I should have been reading some reports or making some phone calls.
Mergers and acquisitions never ended, and there was a company we were about to close on.
Hell, even playing solitaire on my computer was better than letting my mind wander.
Because now, just like this entire last week, every time my brain wasn’t occupied with a task, it strayed to Tav.
I’d woken up Saturday morning to an empty bed. Tav was gone. Only a couple of dark hairs on the pillow next to mine and a handful of used condoms in my bathroom trash was evidence he’d been to my apartment at all.
How I never heard him leave was a mystery.
I slept light, always had, since my entire childhood.
I had always kept one ear turned toward my bedroom door for the sound of the weaving footsteps on the hollow echo of our trailer floor.
It was a tossup who my mother would let in our door at any odd hour.
I blinked my eyes open, staring sightlessly outside at the busy Friday afternoon. Tav might not even live in Detroit for all of I knew. Where did he live? Would I see him again?
Why did I care?
He was a hot fuck, perfectly submissive. But that was it. I didn’t do relationships, because I couldn’t afford people getting to know me, so the fact that he slipped out in the middle of the night, saving us an awkward morning, should have made me happy.
It wasn’t until I was drinking my coffee alone that I realized I had wanted to sit and have breakfast with the man, stare into those eyes in the daytime see how the light shining through my windows reflected in his two-tone irises.
I was losing it. Bona fide losing it. Light reflecting in his irises? What the fuck?
The phone on my desk beeped. “Mr. Stafford.”
I straightened from the window at the sound of my secretary’s voice. “Yes.”
“Mr. Marshall is here to see you.”
“Let him in.”
I didn’t bother turning around as the door to my office opened.
Ben wasn’t someone that needed a proper greeting.
The squeak of the leather from my sofa let me know where he’d settled himself.
It was a matter of time before he showed up in my office, because I’d avoided his calls for the last week and only answered his texts to tell him I was busy, and we’d catch up later.
But Ben wouldn’t be put off forever, and this was his breaking point.
He didn’t speak for a while, and neither did I.
Finally, he huffed, “What’s going on with you? ”
“I’m looking out my window,” I said dryly.
Ben didn’t respond, so I turned around. He was staring at me pensively.
“What?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re not really the meditative type. Usually I come in here and you’re yelling into the phone, squeezing someone’s balls in a vise.”
Tav. His full balls in the cock ring. My pants felt tight. “I don’t yell into the phone.”
Ben snorted.
I walked behind my desk and sat down, propping my elbow on the arm rest and resting my chin on my fingers. “What’s the reason for the visit?”
“I looked for you at the club, and you’d left.”
“Don’t pout.”
“I was just curious if you found someone.” He was fishing.
I never had a problem talking to Ben about men who’d fallen into my bed. But this time… “No, I had a headache, so I left early. Sorry about that.”
Ben’s eyebrows drew together, and he studied me. I stared back. I dismantled entire corporations; I could handle a couple of looks from my best friend.
I didn’t keep secrets from him. He knew I worked in mergers and acquisitions at Stafford Investments, that I was gay, and that I liked my sex with a kink.
He knew that I had another private business buried under so many layers that no one could trace it back to me and why.
Sometimes, he even helped me run that business.
Ben and I had been inseparable as kids in the White Hills Trailer Park in Rathburn, Michigan.
Along with Devlin, we’d been a trio of delinquents who dreamed of one day holding court in an office like the one we were in now.
Of living in apartments like the one I owned in the Reverent.
And we’d made it, somehow, through blood, sweat, tears, and by other means that weren’t quite legal.
No one got to where we were with clean hands.
But I tried, I tried so hard to make up for the damage I’d done, and Ben did too.
While Devlin…Devlin reveled in the damage.
In the chaos. In the depravity. Just the thought of him made my guts twist.
Ben squinted at me, choosing to drop his inquiry of my plans from that night. “So what’s your opinion of the club?”
That it’s a cesspool? “I think it’s a bit of a fixer upper.”
Ben burst out laughing. “Since when do you mince words?”
“I’m trying to spare your feelings.”
Ben laughed even harder. “Since when do you spare my feelings?”
“Okay, I think you should douse it with gasoline, light it on fire and burn it to ashes. Then bury those ashes in a pauper’s grave and start over.”
He smiled. “There’s my Conrad.”
“I’m not your Conrad.”
He looked affronted. “Well, excuse me.”
“Excused.”
“I’m looking at my options. Right now there’s… a definite atmosphere.”
“Right, and who doesn’t crave the stabbings-in-back-alley atmosphere?”
He scoffed. “It’s not so bad.”
I’d met Tav there, so really, I probably should have been cherishing the place. Although, when I’d met him there, he hadn’t been mine yet.
He still isn’t yours, you fool, a voice said. Except when he’d been in my apartment, he’d been mine. Gloriously, perfectly mine.
Ben stood, taking me from my thoughts, which was probably a good thing. “There a reason you’ve been avoiding me?”
Never mind, this entire visit wasn’t a good thing.
And I didn’t really have a good excuse for avoiding Ben.
Other than the fact that he could read me well, and he’d be able to tell that my mind was preoccupied.
I continued my study of the city outside my window and shrugged. “I wasn’t avoiding you.”
“Try again.”
“I was busy.”
“Uh, try again, loser.”
This prying. Always with the prying. My temper flared with a sudden burst that surprised me, and I turned. “It’s just been a week, and answering your calls about your dirty club wasn’t high on my priority list.”
As soon as I hissed the words at my best friend, I regretted them. Hurt shone in his eyes for just a minute before the muscles in his face tightened. “Wow, okay.”
Fuck. “Ben, I didn’t—”
He held up a hand. “It’s fine. I’m going to let you sit with whatever is bothering you, because I know it’s not me, since I’m very lovable. Then, when you’re ready to be an adult, I’ll listen.”
“Oh, fuck off, Ben.” My laugh was dry. “Why can’t you just call me an asshole?”
He grinned. “Okay, you’re definitely an asshole.” He waved a hand. “I’ll leave you to your important task of staring out of the window. Return my calls or don’t. I’ll still be your friend, and you’ll still be an asshole, which means all is right in the world.”
He had his hand on the doorknob when I cleared my throat. He turned and glanced at me over his shoulder with one eyebrow raised.
I refused to fidget. “You’re going to want to gut Collar. But the staff are good, so find a way not to lose them. And find a better DJ, for Christ’s sake.”
He grinned. “See, there’s my Conrad.”
“I’m not your Conrad!” I called after him as he left my office, shutting the door behind him.
A few minutes later, I was at my desk trying to get work done when I heard footsteps. “You forget something?” I asked without looking up.
“You wanted information.”
I turned around at the sound of Nik’s voice. He wore a pair of dark jeans and a white button down under a long wool coat, collar turned up. An unlit cigarette dangled from his lips. He nodded to a folder he slapped on my desk. “There.”
I sat down in my chair and ran my finger along the edge of the folder. “Will this make me unhappy?”
He sat down on a chair across from my desk and placed an ankle on the opposite knee. “Very.”
Nik was sixteen when I met him. I’d been barely twenty, and running the streets with Devlin and Ben, looking for any hustle we could to make money and get a foothold of power in this city.
Nik had been a Russian immigrant, abused by an alcoholic father and neglected by a drug addict mother.
He’d been on the streets trading blow jobs for cash when I gave him a job.
It wasn’t a legal job, but it was better than him being on his knees without protection.
He’d been with me ever since. Sometimes I felt guilty for trapping him into the life I’d created for myself, but the one time I’d offered him an out, a new identity and enough money to start over, he’d punched me in the mouth so hard, he knocked out a molar.
I never asked again.
He was twenty kinds of shady and secretive, and God knew what he did in his free time, but he was loyal to me, so that was all that mattered.
I opened the folder, scanned Nik’s chicken-scratched notes in his spiky handwriting along with the grainy photos. Then I slammed the folder shut and jammed the heels of my palms into my eye sockets. “Fuck.”
“Should have let me deal with Devlin my way,” Nik muttered.
I didn’t look up. “Yeah, you bring that up a lot.”
He didn’t answer.
It had been a decade since Ben and I finally split from the toxic friendship we’d had with Devlin.
We’d both gone legitimate… mostly. But without Ben and I to tame the worst of Devlin’s nature, he’d gone off the deep end.
He probably hadn’t paid taxes in eight years.
He existed in the violent and twisted shadows of Detroit, a level I vowed never to descend into.
And Devlin was the king of those shadows.