Two
The place I wanted to go to was packed when we got there, so we were stuck waiting, sitting by the door, where the draft was. Hayes suggested we try someplace else, but Michelle said it wasn’t possible once I got something stuck in my head.
“It’s true,” I said, nodding. “I mean, if I don’t get it now, I’ll just want it, and so I’ll eat more stuff to try and fill the void of something I want with something I don’t, and we all know what that leads to.”
“No, what?”
“Overeating,” Lisa explained like he was stupid.
“If you have what you want, then you’re sated and eat only that.
If you don’t, you just eat and eat and eat until you finally just go back to what you really wanted and have that, but meanwhile, you’ve stuffed your face with every other thing that looked decent. ”
“It’s true,” Lily chimed in.
“It is,” Greg validated.
Michelle grunted her agreement.
He threw up his hands as my phone rang.
“Hello?”
“Is this Jory?”
“Yeah. Who’s this?”
“This is Eddie Liron, from last night.”
“Oh, hey.” I smiled into the phone. “How are you?”
“I’m better’n Josh Peretti—that’s for sure.” He snickered.
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t see the paper this morning, huh?”
“No. Why?”
“I guess Josh took that dive off his balcony that you saved me from.”
I was stunned. “Holy shit.”
“I know, right? What are the odds?”
I had a pretty good idea. “Your brother was mad that you had been threatened at Peretti’s place. He’d expected you to be safe there, and then you weren’t. He had to have been pissed.”
“He was.”
Older brothers got that way. They were protective. Not normally homicidally protective, but the point had been made. Perhaps I was jumping to conclusions though. I had never even met Eddie’s brother.
“Hey, so I was calling to invite you over to my brother’s place tonight. He wants to meet you and thank you for saving my ass.”
“Oh, that’s not really—”
“Yeah, it is. You saved my life.”
“I didn’t really do—”
“Yeah, ya did. Come on. I wanna see ya, so show up, all right? I want my brother to see that not all my pals are losers.”
I had to smile. Since when were we friends? “Okay, sure.”
“I’ll text you directions, all right?”
I agreed, and when I hung up, I asked Michelle if Joshua Peretti was really dead.
She scowled at me. “Who?”
“Yes,” Lisa answered me, pointing.
Turning, I saw the stack of newspapers for sale beside the cash register. As I moved closer, I saw the headline, and when I could, I briefly scanned the article.
Joshua Peretti had been drunk the night before and fallen from his penthouse. It was a horrible accident, and he would be missed by his family and friends and many colleagues. As a top philanthropist, his many civic improvements would be remembered.
“Holy shit,” I breathed out.
“Since when do you know Joshua Peretti?” Michelle asked suspiciously.
I knew the grin I gave her must have looked guilty from her immediate scowl.
“Jory?”
“I was working the Dunbar event last night with Jeff Franklin, and when it was done, the two of us were invited upstairs to an after-party.”
“But you know we’re not supposed to mix with cli—”
“Yeah, I know, but Jeff was going, and I didn’t want him to go alone.”
She pointed at me. “You—”
“Do you wanna hear the story or not?”
She growled at me.
I smiled back. There was nothing like a good story.
Truthfully, I had just wanted to see the view of Lake Michigan from the thirty-fifth floor. Even my brother, the high-profile architect, did not have a place that Bill Gates would have been at home in. At least not yet.
I was surprised my coworker, down-to-earth Jeffrey Franklin, wanted to go and mingle with people who sipped Cristal out of Baccarat goblets, did lines of cocaine in the living room, and danced the night away so far above the city, but he did.
And when I looked around half an hour after we got there and he was gone, that surprised me as well.
Who knew the man was going to forget about his wingman so quickly?
Stepping out onto the balcony, I heard the yell immediately.
It was just one of those things. It was not cold like it was in January, but March in Chicago was still blustery, still rainy.
One year, it had actually snowed right before Easter, so really, there was no reason to go out on the balcony.
But I liked lights—all shiny, sparkly things actually, and I was fairly certain I had been a crow in my former life—so when the gleaming skyline beckoned, I answered the siren call.
I was the only one out there, or so I thought, until I noticed five other guys.
From the living room, there was no way to see them. It was necessary to walk out onto the balcony and turn a corner to see the four men holding the fifth over the railing.
“I guess you won’t see your brother to tell him, Eddie.”
It was done. He was falling if I didn’t do … “Eddie, goddamn it!” I yelled.
Four heads turned to me. Eddie himself just screamed.
I took three steps back, closer to the door, still too far to make it if someone had a gun, but my odds were better. At twenty-seven, which I had just turned in January, I was in the best shape of my life. I would match my sprint with that of most people.
“Who the fuck are you?” the first guy yelled.
I pointed at Eddie. “That asshole gave my sister the clap!”
It was all I could think of. I hadn’t wanted to say he gave me the clap because that would have opened up a whole other can of worms. I’d blurted, as usual, and I was betting that of all the things I could have said, that was the one no one had seen coming. The looks on their faces said as much.
“I need to talk to that fucker now!”
“You need to get the hell out of—”
“Now!” I yelled before whirling around and stalking back over to the sliding glass door. “I am so fuckin’ pissed! You’d better drag his lame ass in here!”
My hand was on the door handle when I was grabbed from behind and yanked back around to face the man who had yelled at me.
“What?” I barked at him, rolling my shoulder so he had to let go of me or make it obvious that he was holding me.
“Calm down,” he said, his voice low and ominous as the other three men pushed Eddie at me, shoving him so hard that I had to get both hands on him to keep him from plowing into the door. “Here’s lover boy.”
They swarmed around us with vulgar and vivid comments about how easy my fictitious sister had to be to fuck a guy like Eddie. I warned them all to shut their fucking mouths as they bumped Eddie with their shoulders as they walked by.
“Don’t look so scared, kid. We weren’t actually gonna do nothin’. If I wanted you dead, you’d be dead. No pissed-off big brother of some slut you banged changes that.”
“Fuck you!” I yelled at the guy’s retreating back to drill my point home.
“Your sister’s a whore,” he snarled back, but didn’t turn around.
The door opened and closed, and the last guy said that if Eddie was smart, Cristo would never know about what just happened.
I watched the men go, and when the door slid closed, I turned immediately to Eddie.
“Who are you?” he breathed out.
“You know, you gotta tell your brother, like, now, right? Honesty is always the best policy, and having an older brother myself, I know they get all weird if you lie.”
His eyes absorbed my face. “Jesus Christ, man, if you hadn’t come out here, I’d be kissin’ the pavement right fuckin’ now.”
“Potentially.” I smiled at him, grabbing his shoulder and pulling him inside after me. “Where are the people you came with?”
He didn’t answer, just stared at me hard.
“Are you okay?”
The shivering came fast, and I grabbed him, hugging him tight, tucking his head down into my shoulder. It was only then, when he moved suddenly, twisted so I was the one slammed against his chest, that I understood he was bigger than me.
“You’re all right.” I soothed him gently, molding my body to his, pressing close so he could feel how warm and alive I was.
“You … saved my life.”
“It’s okay.”
I could feel his hand fisted in the back of my hair, the other braced against my back. He was not letting go.
“Give it a second.”
“Eddie?”
We both turned to the man in the suit standing beside us. It was a nice bit of tailoring, designer-label wool suit that had been custom-made to fit broad shoulders and a wide chest. I was betting it cost as much as my mortgage payment.
“You ready to go, kid?”
“Where were you?” he gasped, leaning out of my arms, but immediately taking hold of the back of my leather racing jacket.
“I was here,” the man answered, his eyes darting between me and Eddie.
“No,” he said, shaking his head, “I don’t think so.”
“C’mon, kid. Whatever happened—”
“I was almost killed, you son of a bitch!” he roared at the man, who, even though he was bigger, took a step back. “And now I dunno what the fuck to do.”
He was scared and panicky and ready to start hyperventilating at any minute. I knew the signs. I had, in the past, had similar reactions.
“Excuse me,” I said to the man. “Eddie’s brother.”
“What about him?”
“Could you call him and tell him to meet him here?”
“Why would I do that? The man doesn’t like to be disturbed.”
“He’s gonna wanna know what just happened to his baby brother.”
“What happened?” he asked warily.
I explained fast, and he nodded, his heavy hand dropping down onto my shoulder as he listened to my halting explanation.
“Who are you?”
“Jory Harcourt.”
I smiled at him, watching him calm—shoulders going first, dropping, the release of breath, and then the stance relaxing. I could do that sometimes when I tried—calm people. My brother said it was a gift. Sam assured me it was misery waiting to happen.
“How do you know Eddie?” he asked at the same time he dialed and put the phone to his ear, half his attention on me, the rest on listening.
“We go to the same gym,” I lied smoothly.
He nodded, hand tightening as he looked away from me. “Cris, it’s Paz. I’m gonna bring Eddie by your place. We had some trouble at Peretti’s.”