Chapter 9
NINE
Davis
“Hey Davis,” Rowan says quietly as I walk into the office. She extends her hand to offer me an energy drink. “I figured you would probably need a little more than coffee this morning.”
I crack open the can, flinching at the hiss that comes out of it before I bring it to my mouth and chug the bitter, horribly-flavored caffeine and who gives a shit what else.
I silently nod my thanks to her and trudge through the hall, hoping no one will stop me for conversation until I get to the darkness of my own office.
I shouldn’t have had so much to drink last night; I knew today was going to be an obnoxious day, but I was having fun. It’s fine. I can manage, I’ve been through the same meeting at least fifty times before, probably hungover at least once or twice somewhere in there.
All that’s going to happen is the usual biweekly meeting with Nash Montgomery – he’ll waltz into the conference room, swing his dick around and make a big show of being the big man he thinks he is, then he’ll leave like nothing happened, because nothing will have happened.
The man’s a real revolving son of a bitch.
Sitting across from Nash, I’m reminded once again of how much I hate him. He brought backup – because of course he did – and the three of them sit together in a row.
“Explain to me again what your problem is?” Colt asks him, and I pinch my brow.
“The problem,” Nash explains, “is that you’re trying to step into my territory, Fowler.”
Oh, be serious. The man owns a handful of nightclubs and thinks he owns the fucking world because of it. Does he give this speech to everyone who opens an establishment that has its lights on past ten, or do we just intimidate him that much?
It’s nice to have fans, I guess.
“Oh? We weren’t aware that you held a monopoly over the nightlife of the city,” Colt muses.
“I own half of the clubs in this city, and I own everyone in them,” he says. “If you continue this little project of yours—”
I laugh, bracing my palms on the table as I stand from my chair. “Threats? Really, Nash? Is that how you want to do this?”
The asshole stands on the opposite side of the table, followed by his little groupies. What purpose do they even serve? They look fucking ridiculous, sandwiching him between their short frames.
We stand for a while, staring each other down, while I silently beg him to make the first move. Give me an excuse to put you on the ground, man, and I won’t think twice.
“Gentleman,” Colt chimes in. “Can we be civil, for once?”
The corner of Nash’s mouth ticks up into a cocky smirk. “This is civil,” he says.
“Then both of you – sit. Down.”
As Nash lowers himself into his seat, I grit my teeth and do the same, not taking my glare off of him.
“I’m sure that we can reach a compromise that works for everyone,” Colt tells all of us.
From the corner of my eye, I see Emmett completely zoned the fuck out. This might have been a little too much for the kid’s first big meeting as a shareholder, but he needed to be here. All of us were at Arcane, and all of us are responsible for what happens to the company.
“Just keep your people out of my clubs until yours is finished,” Nash finally says. “I don’t want a single one of you in my buildings, taking the ideas that I came up with. There are plenty of others out there, stay the fuck out of mine if you’re looking for inspiration.”
Emmett is still not present, so I knock my knee against his under the table and use my eyes to tell him to pay fucking attention to the conversation going on around him.
“That sounds fine,” Colt shrugs. Poor dude just wants to get this shit over with, and I don’t blame him. “Is everyone in agreement, then?”
“I can live with it,” I tell him.
Somehow not seeming pleased, despite getting exactly what he wanted, Nash says, “Sure.”
“Yeah,” Emmett finally pipes up, “that sounds good to me.”
Montgomery and his buddies are the first to leave, the rest of us following closely behind, and Emmett rushes to catch up with me, looking like he’s just been slapped in the face.
I feel a little bad for him, he hasn’t been doing this more than a couple of months and it’s not easy to navigate.
Hell, I still hardly know what I’m doing, and I’ve been at it for years.
·
About half of our employees finish their days around four, so by five, there’s just about a third of us left in the office and it’s always too damn quiet.
This is usually around the time I’ll wander around, trying to find something else to do with my time, because if I have to answer one more goddamn email or sit in silence for another minute, I might actually lose my shit.
I grab a bottle of whiskey from under my desk and pour myself a few fingers’ worth into my empty coffee mug before getting up and strutting out of my office and into the main building, heading for my best friend’s office.
We’re basically stuck sitting with our thumbs up our asses like a pair of idiots, waiting on a conference call that we’re not sure will even actually happen today, and it’s got me anxious, so I want to check in.
Walking through the building, I see some guy wandering the halls. I know everyone who works here, but I’m especially familiar with the people who stay past five, and he’s not one of them. There’s something familiar about him, but I can’t put a finger on it.
“Hey man,” I say, clapping him on the shoulder. “Can I help you with something?”
“Yeah, um, I’m looking for someone.” He looks around, fiddling with a purple coin in his hand. I’m not sure if he’s trying to get his bearings or if he’s trying to find the person he needs and get out of here. “My daughter? She works here, I think.”
Oh shit, that’s why he looks familiar. He looks cleaned up; he’s got on a button up shirt and a pair of slacks, his hair is clean, freshly cut, and combed back with product.
He’s skinnier than he was when I knew him, by a lot, and his eyes are kind of yellowed out, but I do know this asshole. He used to fucking work for me.
He’s Colt’s father in law.
“Oh, she’s not here anymore,” I lie, fighting the tension in my jaw. “Real sad story, that one. She had this shitty dad who did a number on her. Drunk, abusive, you know the type. Followed in her daddy’s footsteps so we had to let her go. Dunno where she ended up.”
I pull a sip of scotch from my mug while I watch his face fall, my jaw flexing.
I know Colt warned this bastard not to come around.
If I had it my way, he’d have been on the ground the second I recognized him; when Colt told me about this guy and how he treated his daughters, I was ready to go to his house with a golf club and fucking beat the life out of him.
People who hurt kids deserve to be pulled apart and allowed to rot, if you ask me.
“Thank you,” he tells me. “I’m sorry to bother you.”
As he turns to walk down the hall, I raise a hand up.
“Oh and Heath?” His head snaps around his neck like a fucking owl and I throw him a wide grin.
“If I hadn’t already been told you were off limits, I just want you to know I’d put a bullet in you for what you did to those girls.
You take care, now,” I tell him with a wave, pivoting to take a different route to Colt’s office.
The old bastard sits at his desk, picking at a salad while he stares at something on his screen; probably an email or some sort of request. I snatch the bowl of greens from him and inspect it, curling my lip.
“All you eat in here is fuckin’ rabbit food,” I tell him as I drop into the seat at the front of his desk, tossing the bowl back in front of him.
I stick my foot under the desk’s backing and give a little swipe across the carpet.
“Half expected your wife to be down there.”
“She wanted some time to get things ready for game night, which I don’t think we’re going to make,” he tells me. “She left at four.”
“Good thing, ‘cause her pop was just here looking for her.”
“What.”
“Yeah, I’m not sure what he wanted, but I set him straight.”
Colt stands from his desk, ready to tear out of here like a bat out of hell. “I told him not to come around her.”
“Oh heel, Fido, he’s gone already,” I tell him with a chuckle. “Besides, I want in on it if you do go after him.”
“Rowan asked me not to,” he says, lowering himself back into his chair with a breath, “but…”
“She didn’t ask me,” I shrug. “You did. She doesn’t know that. I could make a quick visit.”
“No, don’t.” A hand scrubs down his face; he’s torn, and I get it.
He wants to kill the guy as much as I do, but his wife still thinks there’s a chance at rebuilding something with her dad.
Can’t really fuck with that without risking his entire marriage.
“We’ll bring Logan in and ramp up security measures; I want his picture in the security booth so he can be stopped at the door before he tries to come in again.
Jesus, Macie just stopped wetting the bed. ”
“Wanna hit somethin’?”
“I want to get this call over with so that I can go home and get eyes on my wife.”
“We both know it ain’t your eyes you want on her, old bastard,” I cackle, pulling my mug to my lips for a drink. “I wanna hear about your one-sided angry fuck in the mornin’.”
“Do you remember all of the other times I’ve talked to you about Rowan and I’s sex life?”
“You haven’t.”
“Exactly,” he laughs.
It doesn’t happen often, maybe once every six months or so, but sometimes I get curious and wonder what it would be like to feel that way about another person.
I spent a year watching my best friend chase and fall in love with a woman he would do goddamn anything for, and two years watching them be so sickeningly in love with each other it’s like they would stop existing if they were separated.
Poof – they’d vaporize. I just can’t imagine loving someone so much that I could only think about getting home to her.
To be willing to risk everything to protect her – or to get revenge on the people who hurt her.
This is one of those times where I wanna know what that might feel like.
·
As soon as I’m through my front door, I kick off my shoes and strip off my suit jacket, tossing it over the sideboard next to me which houses nothing but my keys when I’m not using them.
I trek back to my room, unbuttoning my shirt and peeling it off of me as I walk, because I fucking hate dress shirts.
They’re too stiff and restrictive. I toss the shirt over my dresser, opening the top drawer of it.
I dig through the dresser to pull out a pair of jeans and a navy blue t-shirt to change into, shoving the discarded options back into place next to a crumpled piece of paper and a purple bottle of perfume.
I slide the drawer shut again, heading back out of the apartment and down to my truck.
I had planned to stop by the club and check on development earlier, but Colt and I didn’t get out of the damn office until almost nine, so it’ll just be me tonight. Logan and his crew would have cleared out just after six, and Colt had to go home to be the family man that he is.
It’s not that I mind being alone so much – even though I don’t care for it, it’s the quiet.
I fucking hate the quiet. Out of all of the places I spent time in growing up, only one of them was ever quiet.
My brain had adjusted to the chaos and noise constantly around me, so when I was shoved into a quiet house where noise meant punishment, it was overwhelming, and that shit stuck with me.
When there’s no sound or chaos around me, I can hear fucking everything; my blood pumping, my eyes blinking, my fucking bones moving. Drives me nuts.
Throw me into a space full of shouting and destruction – or a loud nightclub – and you’ve got me in my element. I can work with that.
The building isn’t necessarily a building yet, just a maze of walls and wires, which I carefully step over as I walk through, so as to not fuck up the work that’s been put in on it.
My phone’s flash doesn’t do a great job at lighting up the space, but it does enough for the quick video I take as I maneuver through what I’m pretty sure are going to be the main doorways.
Since Colt couldn’t come out tonight, I want to have something to show him in case he wants to make changes; even though I’ll pull my veto card on him if he does, because I’m absolutely fucking thrilled with how it looks so far.
The layout is exactly what I wanted, and I can see the final product taking shape when I shut my eyes.
After one more quick walkthrough, I pull up Colt’s contact page, OLD BASTARD, and send him the clips I grabbed, along with a few ideas I came up with for our opening night.
I want that shit to be so wild it wakes the fucking dead.