Chapter 4
FOUR
marlowe
What?
What the fuck?
My body shakes, hands forming into tight fists.
They disappeared into Mom’s study and I can hear them talking through the closed door. Muffled voices, Mom’s sharp tone, Declan’s Irish lilt.
What?
He’s actually in there negotiating with her?
I have to take a moment in the living room to gather myself, to get all the sparking emotions, wants, and desires under control.
I want to take his gun and shoot him. I want to tackle him to the ground and fuck him senseless and then leave him wanting.
And I want to not feel a thing but the anger about yet another bodyguard.
I thought I’d burned through them all. Every last one of them. And now, the only person worse than a bodyguard, someone who’s an actual real-life criminal, is off with my mom planning to be my bodyguard.
I can guard my own body.
Fuck.
He’s up to something. He’s into playing games, toying with me, and while I don’t know why, it’s more than clear I’m some sort of cross between a challenge and a source of amusement.
Feeling me up in the car earlier, kissing me on the street after I left the club.
All of that wasn’t real, it was just for Declan’s amusement.
Can I despise him anymore?
I turn, then hurry off to the study. “Mother, I don’t want—“
“The grown-ups are talking here,” Declan says, sounding so Irish it’s ridiculous. Like he’s a leprechaun about to hold up a pot of gold or something. “Mind yer manners and yer mam, here, or you’ll be wanting a spanking.”
And then he winks at me.
My temperature shoots up. I laser him with a glare. But it rolls off him as he turns back to my mom, holding a bunch of notes in a folder.
“It might be a twenty-four-hour job, Mr. Murphy,” Mom says, tidying up some papers on her desk. I look longingly at the letter opener.
He looks at it, too, and then he picks it up, examining it, but not letting it go.
Asshole.
“Of course,” he says.
She frowns. “Not inside with her—outside.”
The meaning’s clear. With the rest of the riff raff.
“Oh, of course,” he says, “And you should know that every job I take becomes my life. This threat...?”
Mom nods. “She has a stalker.”
I roll my eyes. She is so dramatic. I have fans as a ballerina with the Manhattan Ballet, and this one in particular likes to send flowers, chocolates, and tiny presents to me. That’s all. He’s never threatened me at all.
Jesus. If he’s a stalker, then I’m the Queen of England.
I’m just a pawn to my mother. She has a need to control every bit of my life from the dance career I don’t want, to a marriage she knows I would never agree to.
She’ll do anything to strengthen Briggs Energy into a mega conglomerate with her in control of absolutely everything she can sink her claws into.
Now that Daddy is gone, she can take the reins.
“Then that’s who was following her. She said she was meeting this boyfriend of hers,” Declan says cheerfully.
“No boyfriends allowed,” Mom says sharply.
She folds a piece of paper and hands it to Declan.
He pockets it without looking and snaps the folder shut.
“Be here tomorrow. Seven a.m. We’ll talk terms and the pay at the end of the day. If you can keep track of her.”
“And want to keep working for us,” I say.
Declan holds out his hand and keeps it there until Mom shakes it. “Deal.”
Then he turns to me, handing me the letter opener.
“I should stab you,” I whisper.
He shifts the slightest bit closer. “Too blunt. Won’t do much. But don’t worry, sounds like you’ll have plenty of opportunity to kill me.”
“And Mr. Murphy?” Mom says.
He turns back.
“Wear a suit.”
I stand at Mom’s doorway at five-forty-five the next morning in my ballet rehearsal gear, hair in a bun, sweats and sneakers on. One hand holds my oats, fruit, grains, and chia mix.
Mom sighs heavily as she straightens her Chanel suit. This is no houndstooth jacket and skirt number. It’s modern, black, and screams boss-bitch vibes, vibes she’d still give off if she were wearing a tutu and holding a wand instead.
Pepper hasn’t blown the roof off with his screeching, so he must still be sleeping. Fiona sits at the window in the living room. Lola’s off doing Lola things, and Monarch, Mom’s Pomeranian, sits in its bed, watching Mom dress with rapt attention.
“Stop staring at me, Marlowe. I said you’ll have a bodyguard, and that’s what you’re getting. He’ll be here soon.” She comes over to me, but her hands shake slightly as she adjusts her Chanel suit. She catches me noticing and clasps them together.
“I don’t want, or need, another bodyguard. And how did you decide to hire him, anyway? He could be a serial killer for all you know.”
“I know of the Murphy name. And I made some calls, vetted him with some others who do business with their family. Your father’s situation is... complicated,” she says, voice tight. “Until he returns, we’re taking precautions. There have been... incidents.”
“Incidents?”
“That’s all you need to know.” The steel returns to her voice. “The housekeeper is here, so don’t even think of trying to sneak out of rehearsals early. You’ll be accompanied by the young man, and I’ll have his contract ready tonight.”
Mom checks her watch, even though he’s not due to arrive yet. That’s if Declan turns up at all.
“We both know you use my bodyguards as spies—”
Her sharp look kills the rest of my sentence. I walked right into her trap.
Then again, everything’s a trap. Tell her I just have an enthusiastic fan who likes to send gifts and flowers, and she’ll say who knows what someone like that’s capable of doing.
She’ll segue into Daddy missing, how the so-called threats to her might spill onto me.
Not that I know much about those because she’s shut me out of all discussions relating to his disappearance.
If she’s getting actual threats, Declan should guard her and not me.
So it’s definitely me she wants spied on.
“You wouldn’t need someone watching your every move if you weren’t up to something. Like that horrible Leon. Yes, I know his name. And he’s connected. I don’t want you hanging out with someone from the slums.”
The only reason she knows of Leon is her spies. The ex-bodyguards I drove to quitting. The ones who saw us meet and kept tabs on our drink and dinner meetups.
I could sink this Declan thing before it began, tell her he’s the guy Daddy had arrested for harassing me.
She never knew because Daddy didn’t want to worry her.
But if I tell her now, then I’d have to come clean about how I’ve been sneaking out to underground clubs since I was seventeen.
And I really don’t want to deal with her wrath over that.
So instead, I say, “I’m twenty-two. I want my own life.”
“Your life’s mine until you’re of age to get your inheritance, and that isn’t happening until you’re twenty-seven.”
I suck in a breath. “I want to live on my own, Mom. Daddy bought me that apartment—”
“Maybe...” She smiles, but it doesn’t reach her eyes. “You can live there if you don’t piss off this bodyguard.”
Like an annoying gnat, the intercom rings and Mom answers it. Henry’s voice filters through.
“Send him up,” Mom says as she gathers her coat and bag. “Early. I like that. I think this Murphy might be the one. Don’t ruin it.”
Then she calls the private elevator in our duplex and gets in just as someone knocks on the door. Maybe he got someone else to play bodyguard and—
Not even in my pipe dreams.
I put my hand on the handle.
My traitorous heart dips and swoops at the thought of him outside.
I’m not sure who I hate more. Declan or Mom.
I open the door and it’s a punch to my stomach, one so hard I can’t breathe.
Declan. I definitely hate him more.
Oh. God. As I struggle to get air in, I also struggle not to drool. He looks wickedly good in his suit.
It’s black, bespoke, and three pieces. His shirt is cream silk, tie gray, and my knees wobble as I take it in.
“Oh, it’s you,” I say.
He barely looks at me. My skin prickles as he passes, but he isn’t even paying me a sliver of attention.
“Where are the pets? Fiona? That beast, Lola?” he asks.
A yip comes from Mom’s room upstairs and little claws scurry on the stairs.
Monarch arrives in all her toy dog caramel beauty, looking up at him with big, liquid eyes, asking to be picked up and have his suit covered in fur. I want him to do it.
Instead, he crouches down and pets her, reads her diamond and gold collar. “Monarch, baby girl, do you like your ears scratched? Is Molly not nice to you? Do you want me to tell her off?”
I snort, because the dog licks his fingers and he scratches her, stroking over her eyes gently.
“Poor girl, bad Molly,” he says and my cheeks heat because that tone? I’ve heard it, between my legs, or when I’m wet and getting worked up, and the shame of it slides through me like an oily film. It makes me feel dirty. Used. “Do you want treats?”
The dog shakes her pompom tail and barks softly, following him as he stands and heads to the kitchen. I can’t help myself, I follow him.
He’s got a bag of bacon treats and he gives the dog one, then sees Fiona, picks her up, and gives her one, too. Then he looks for...
“Molly girl, that cat’s the spawn of Satan.”
I walk to the pantry to get cat treats for Lola. “He might show up. I’d be careful.”
I try to give them to Declan, but he takes the bag and waits. His gaze is so intense I lean against the kitchen counter as Lola stalks in and sits at Declan’s feet.
Declan ignores the cat, and the cat meows.
It’s the cutest he’s ever been.
Except Declan’s still ignoring the cat.
“Give the cat his treats,” I say.
“You do it. I don’t want to lose fingers, and the cat doesn’t like me.”
“Because you’re an asshole. That’s why he doesn’t like you.”
Declan raises a brow. “You want me to play nice with your animals? Ask nicely, Molly.”
“God. Fine. Declan, will you play nice and give Lola his treats, please?”