Chapter Two #3
“And like I've told you before, I'm not your puppet.
You got your marriage. I wear the ring, show up where I'm supposed to show up, smile for the pictures and play devoted husband whenever you've got an audience that needs convincing.
I'm in this for the next two years, to the fucking day, and I'll count every one of them out loud if you want.”
His mouth flattened.
“But if a friend needs me, I'll go. If I need a night away from your high-and-drunk-half-the-time daughter, I'll take one. You bought the arrangement, Frank. You didn't buy every fucking minute of my life.”
“Watch yourself, son.”
Son.
It hits me the way it always does. A little proprietary, a little fond, like he built me himself and occasionally likes to admire the craftsmanship.
I push off the door.
“That all? Because I've actually got a job to do.” I reach for the handle. “You might mention the concept to your daughter sometime. See if it fits.”
“Get the hell out of my office.”
“Gladly.”
My hand closes around the handle.
“Before you make me forget this whole arrangement and send your daddy away for the rest of his natural life," he adds with a smugness that makes me want to put my fucking fist through his face.
For a second, I keep my hand exactly where it is and stare at the door.
I tell myself not to turn around, because that's exactly what he wants. He wants to see the threat land across my face. Wants the reminder that he still owns the one piece of me I haven't managed to buy back from him.
Yet, I turn anyway.
Frank is sitting behind his desk with his hands folded comfortably over his stomach.
Calm.
The motherfucker is always calm when he reminds me why I'm married to his daughter.
“You got something else to say, Marc?”
The leash goes tighter.
The leash Frank knows I'll wear to keep the old man out of a cell. God help me, I will. I don't even fully understand why anymore. Some debts you pay because they're owed. Some you pay because you can't stand to become the kind of man who wouldn't.
But... fuck. This.
I push off the door and take a few threatening steps toward his desk, and something in Frank's expression shifts when he realizes I'm not leaving.
Good. I plant both palms on the polished wood and lean down until we're eye to eye, keeping my voice low because yelling would give him too much satisfaction.
“The threats are getting old, Franklyn. You forget that I have just as much leverage as you do, and I won't hesitate to put your daughter on the cover of every tabloid in the goddamn checkout line.” His mouth opens, but I don't give him the opportunity.
“Every rehab stay. Every drug-fueled blackout.
Every arrest she managed to keep out of the papers.
I'll call every friend she's ever had with a phone and a grudge.
I'll hand immigration a roadmap and let them decide what kind of moral character she has. Two can play this goddamn game. Do not fucking threaten me again. That part of your power play ends right the fuck now.”
I straighten and walk out, fighting like hell not to slam the door behind me and give the floor a scene when our voices have already carried plenty.
I don't need to look back to know he's sitting there furious, probably already cataloguing every way he could make me regret what I just said.
That's what Frank does. It's what we both do with each other, really.
We inventory weapons and occasionally remind the other man that they're still loaded.
Mutually assured destruction.
It's the only language Frank and I have ever been fluent in, and the marriage is just the treaty we signed over it.
The day doesn't improve from there.
Later, after I peel Bennet off the wall in the men's room and get whatever was riding him talked back down into something that can sit in a chair, we manage to salvage what remains of the meeting with Monroe Communications.
Barely, and only because Ms. Monroe is made of sterner stuff than my best friend gave her credit for.
She comes back into the room composed enough that anyone who hadn't seen her hand trembling on the way out would probably believe none of it touched her.
I saw it.
So did Rose.
Which explains why Rose spends the rest of the meeting looking at her brother like she's considering whether thirty years is too late to put him up for adoption.
From there, it's the usual avalanche, one fire handed off to the next before the first one's even out.
Legal wants the language approved. PR wants Bennet's schedule.
The board wants reassurance. Investors want to hear directly from someone whose naked ass isn't currently circulating online.
I spend most of the afternoon with a phone pressed to my ear, telling people everything is under control in a voice I've gotten very good at faking while simultaneously answering emails about problems I didn't create.
And look, I love Bennet. Not a little, not as an obligation, and not because our names share space on corporate paperwork. I love him no less than I would a brother by blood, which is the only reason I haven't ninja’d his ass in a parking garage by now.
But there's a particular flavor of tired that comes from watching a man sit up on his throne while the rest of us run around underneath it with buckets, catching whatever he decides to throw at the press that week.
Leaving bars with a different woman on his arm every time a camera is pointed his way.
Getting tanked in a casino and swinging on the dealer.
The fountain, for fuck's sake. I don't think I'll ever be able to look at a public water feature again without getting a stress headache.
And now today, taking a swing at the one firm that's not only the best in the business but actually willing to wade into the swamp of his reputation and start draining it.
I know Bennet well enough to know this isn't just him being an asshole.
I've seen him be an asshole plenty of times.
Today was different. I saw it in that conference room when everything behind his eyes went somewhere else, and later in the men's room when I finally got him talking enough to bring him back down.
Whatever is happening with Ms. Monroe has roots I don't know about yet, and I'll give him the space to tell me when he's ready.
I spend more hours managing the fallout from Bennet Sullivan than I do running my own half of the company, and most days I don't even resent it.
Most days I know this is simply how we work.
He carries things for me that nobody else knows exist; I carry things for him, and somewhere in the middle we've managed to build a company big enough that thousands of people depend on us getting our shit together every morning.
Today's not most days. Today, the tank isn't just low. The motherfucker is running on fumes.
But the day's officially dead now, which means I get to go drown it the only two ways I know how: two fingers of bourbon and Stacy.
My favorite no-strings, no-questions, no-aftermath booty call. The one arrangement in my life that asks absolutely nothing of me and gives me exactly what it says on the label.
After a Monday like this one, that's not nothing. That's close to a fucking miracle.
“You look like you had a rough Monday too.”
I lift my head, and there's Rosalie in my doorway, leaning against the frame.
And there goes the blood pressure.
“If by rough you mean spending the better part of the afternoon wishing I had standing in organized crime so I could quietly have your brother sent to live with the fishes, then yes. Rough.”
I sit up and plant my elbows on the desk.
She crosses the office and drops into the chair across from me, looking like she's been on her feet since dawn, which I'm sure she has.
Some of the polish from this morning is gone.
Her hair's looser, exhaustion sitting around her eyes, and for the first time all day she isn't carrying a phone, a folder, or some other physical representation of a problem that needs solving.
“I'm sorry,” she says the way only a sibling can. “I don't know what got into him today.”
“He said something about knowing her. My guess is she's an ex, or something close enough to one to get under his skin. I told him to get his head out of his ass and deal with it like a grown man, which he received about as well as you'd expect.”
“Extremely.”
She smiles, and I check the time. The day's finally far enough into the ground that I can close the laptop on it.
“You headed home?” She tips her head. “Want some company?”
I stop with my laptop halfway into the bag, because yes.
God, yes.
I want her company so badly that the answer gets halfway up my throat before common sense tackles it from behind. Freshly heartbroken, dangerously vulnerable Rose alone with me for a second night in a row is a colossally, catastrophically bad idea.
Mostly because I'm not in the fucking mood to be noble.
"I, uh..." I keep packing, eyes down and away from hers. "I've actually got to get home to the wife."
I take the one thing in my life I can't stand and hold it up like a shield, because it's the only shield Rose will never try to take from me.
The disappointment hits her shoulders. Barely. A tiny drop before she catches it and straightens again, so quick that anyone who didn't spend an unreasonable amount of time watching her would've missed it.
“Right.” She smiles. “Of course.”
And God, I wish I could tell her.
All of it.
Frank. Elyse. The arrangement. The five years. My father's freedom hanging off the end of the whole thing like bait.
There have been times I've almost done it. Nights when Rose and I have been sitting somewhere with a bottle between us and I've thought, Just fucking tell her. She'd understand. She might be the only person in my life who actually would.
That's exactly why I don't.
Because I know what happens next.