Chapter Eleven
Nixon
Michael Alexander McDermot, The Third, was the biggest douchebag I’d ever met in my life.
That was saying a lot since I’d known a lot of fucking douches.
Sure, my standards were high. I had an almost nonexistent tolerance for people as a whole.
All you have to do is take a walk in a grocery store on a busy Sunday to see why most people missed the memo on how not to be a complete and utter pain in the ass to all of your fellow humankind.
Was it so hard not to leave your cart in the center of the whole friggen aisle?
Anyway, yeah, he was a real piece of work.
I hated him.
Almost as much as I hated the phrase “piece of work.”
It wasn’t that he was rich. Most of the clients who walked through the doors were rich.
Let’s face it, the average person didn’t have need of a personal security team.
Or the pockets deep enough to hire them.
I didn’t begrudge someone their wealth. Though an argument could be made for some rich people being condescending pricks.
Which Michael McDermot absolutely was. He’d somehow managed to mention his Porsche, his Rolex, and how many square feet his McMansion was in the span of a twenty-minute conversation.
It wasn’t even that he immediately treated me like I worked for him—and was therefore beneath him—from the moment he stepped foot in the office. I would be working for him. And I had gotten somewhat used to being treated with a certain level of disrespect when it came to some clients.
No.
What bothered me most was the fact that he thought it was appropriate—in mixed company—to refer to his secretary as a “useless bitch” like it was completely acceptable to do so.
Were it not for the dozen or so lectures my brother Kingston, who happened to own the security business, had given me about my sometimes nonexistent manners, I would have tossed him out onto the sidewalk. Right onto the ass of his Armani suit.
But, if I was going to keep working for King, I had to toe the line a little better than I had in the past.
So I clenched my jaw and tried not to grab the asshole by the throat as he spoke.
I got all the paperwork written up, told him I would consult with Kingston, then get back to him.
I had every intention of dumping the whole case on his desk, washing my hands of it, and hitting the gym to sweat out my frustration at the entire interaction.
“I am already working two cases, man,” Kingston said, shaking his head. “And Atlas is off chasing waves somewhere. Rush can’t work at night. You’re going to have to do it.”
Just when I thought the day couldn’t get any worse.
“I can’t work for that asshole, King.”
“You won’t even need to be near him.”
Technically, that was probably true. We didn’t even really know there was an actual case to work on.
The guy thought he was being followed. He had no proof of it.
He just had a feeling. Most of the work would involve following Mike around to see if someone else was following him around or not.
My money was on him being paranoid. Though, when you were such a colossal jackass, there was a chance you had a lot of enemies who wanted to—at the very least—scare you.
We got paid whether there was some stalker or not.
And I guess I could tolerate following the guy around for a week, so long as I got to keep the face-to-face contact to a minimum.
At least it was out of the office.
I had to admit, the walls were pinching in a bit.
I’d been trying to convince myself for the past few years that it was growing pains, that I just had to adjust to the new lifestyle, but the longer it went on, the tighter it got, and the more I wondered if it simply wasn’t the place for me.
If it was the place for any of us, save for Kingston who built it.
We all loved our brother, and helped him develop his business, but I don’t think any of us were meant to be there for the long-term.
This was why Atlas was always flying off to some new land, never getting his wanderlust under control, and why Rush was pulling longer and longer hours at his phone sex business.
The problem was, I had no fucking idea what else to do with my life.
So I stayed.
I was starting to wonder, though, if I was just one bad job, one shit client, away from throwing in the towel for good.
There was a good chance that if I had to deal with Michael McDermot for any extended period of time, he could be the final straw.
Then what?
I had no idea.
I had no backup plan.
Before King got the place up and running, I bounced around.
Let’s just say that when you spent most of your adult life doing illegal shit with all your siblings, you didn’t exactly have a solid work history.
So I did some work for King’s in-laws—The Mallick family who worked as loan sharks, but had other legitimate businesses—or found my own odd jobs.
I kept a roof over my head, but I had never exactly been rolling in it.
King’s private security firm brought stability I hadn’t realized was craving.
And for a long time, that was enough. It got me out of my shitty apartment and into a house.
Sure, it was a shoebox, but it was mine.
It paid off my car. It allowed me to grow some credit, and sock some money into savings, some into investments.
Grown-up, boring-ass shit.
But grown-up, boring-ass shit was important too.
That was what kept me firmly planted where I was even though I wasn’t passionate about it, it wasn’t what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
Until I figured out what I did want to do with it, though, this was my work. And work sucked sometimes. Or a lot of the time. But anytime you got to get paid while not having to sit in the office all day was a minor win. I would take it.
“Fine,” I said, taking back the file.
“He’s that bad?” King asked, leaning back in his chair, giving me that look he’d given all of us growing up.
The dad-look. Since we didn’t have one. And then we didn’t have a mom either, so he became our only parental figure, even if he was only a few years older than most of us.
When he gave each of us that look, it meant something different.
With Atlas or Rush, it was about them being immature, about not thinking shit through.
When it was with our sister Scotti, it was typically about her guards and why she had them up.
With me, it was about him doubting that the people I came into contact with were as bad as I said, and that I was probably judging them too harshly.
“He called his secretary a ‘useless bitch’ to my face.”
“You’re shitting me,” King said, brows scrunching up.
What could I say, times had changed. No one called women bitches anymore. Especially not anyone in our circle. We had a little sister. She meant the world to us. We couldn’t fathom someone saying it about her, so we didn’t say it about other women.
“Nope. And it slid right off his tongue. Like he called her that frequently enough that it wasn’t awkward to do it.”
“Another dick of a client. I wish I could say I was surprised at this point…”
“But a certain level of assholeness can come with the tax bracket, I guess,” I agreed, shrugging. “It’s probably just paranoia. I can tail him for a week, talk him into a security system, take his five-figure check, and call it a week.”
“Hey,” King called as I started out of his office.
“Yeah?”
“You good?” he asked, always having a sixth sense when something was off with one of us. Probably more of that parental figure nonsense. “You’ve been pulling a lot of hours lately. If you want some time off, I can ask one of the Mallicks to pitch in, or can just cancel the client. Not a big deal.”
I could use some time off, but there was no reason to let that kind of money go to waste just because I was not feeling in the zone.
Beside that, I knew my brother. I knew that he wouldn’t call one of the Mallicks.
He would find a way to work the case himself.
Which wasn’t fair. He had just barely started a relationship with Savea, who he had been head-over for about as long as she had been head-over for him.
And after waiting fucking years to get into a relationship, I figured they deserved as much free time together as possible.
I had to step up.
And since I had nothing else to do with my time, I figured I had to nut up about it.
“I’m good,” I told him, nodding. “Just in a shit mood after that interview. I’ll hit the gym and feel better tomorrow.”
“Alright. If you’re sure. I will call the client back and let him know things are all set up, that you will be tailing him, so he knows that if he sees your car following, not to panic.”
“Sounds good. Say hi to Savvs for me,” I tossed back at him as I made my way through the office, going for the front door.
I made my way to my car—a black Ford Explorer, one of the most common vehicles on the road, so people wouldn’t pick it out if they saw it hanging around too often, which made it possible for me to be invisible—thinking about King and Savvs, thinking about how he’d practically been floating around since they shacked up.
I saw a lot of that.
It was in King and Savvs, in the Mallick guys and their women, even to the patriarchs of my extended family—Charlie and Helen Mallick.
They were placing their bets on me.
About when I would find someone.
I think it was proof that they all needed some goddamn hobbies. Especially seeing as I had shown exactly no interest in things like getting serious or settling down. Hell, I didn’t even date casually all that much.
Maybe you wouldn’t be so fucking grumpy if you were getting some on a regular basis.
That was Shane, the youngest Mallick, a giant wall of a man who worked as a loan shark enforcer.
And also happened to own the gym I worked out at.
Charged full price, I might add. Shane didn’t believe in family and friend discounts.
“You look pissier than usual,” Shane greeted me from the front desk, shooting me a raised brow.