by Meghan March
“This is ridiculous,” my father says. “Chadwick doesn’t have time to threaten you. He’s busy working, Scarlett. I can’t believe you’d waste our time with some petty little matter.”
My lower lip trembles. Petty little matter. My father thinks my safety is a petty little matter.
I look over his shoulder to Hal, who has one hand tucked underneath his suit jacket. I’d be willing to bet that his fingers are resting on the grip of a gun.
But I don’t have time to say anything because the roar of an engine fills the air, just before Gabriel’s Bronco charges down the street and screeches to a halt in front of my building.
When he jumps out, he’s shirtless, shiny with sweat, and running toward us.
Fifteen
Legend
Both men spin around, staring at me like I’m Tarzan, about to beat my fists against my chest. Good, because that’s exactly how I fucking feel right now seeing them standing between me and my woman.
I was exhausted after training, but as soon as I got that text from Hal, it was like mainlining adrenaline.
These two assholes, two men who should have protected Scarlett, are standing on her doorstep, and according to Hal, yelling at her.
Not on my fucking watch.
“Hey!” I yell as I point to the younger one. “You got no reason to ever come near this building or Scarlett again. Get the fuck out of here while you’re still able to walk, or I’ll remove you in a way that ensures you never will again.”
At least the shithead has the sense to step away from her and throw his hands in the air. “I didn’t do anything. I didn’t touch her. I swear.”
The older man, Scarlett’s father, steps in front of Chadwick. “I don’t know who you think you are, but this is a family matter, and you are not family.”
Oh, this motherfucker.
“Family? Family shows up when your girl is in the hospital getting cut open and sewn back up. Family is there to make sure she gets home safe and is taken care of. Family is there for her every fucking day while she’s recovering, making sure she takes her meds and isn’t in pain. I don’t remember seeing you here while I was doing all that, old man. So step the fuck down and don’t tell me any goddamned thing that has to do with Scarlett isn’t my business. She’s my woman, and if you so much as make her shed another fucking tear, so help me God, I will make you regret that decision for the rest of your life.”
A cold, calculating gleam comes to life in his gray eyes, which are the only damn thing he gave his daughter. “If you touch me, I’ll make sure you spend the rest of your worthless life as a guest of the State of New York. I hear Rikers is lovely this time of year. Don’t test me, because I will bury you.”
“Dad!” Scarlett comes forward a step, but I don’t need her to shield me from her father or his threats.
I open my mouth, about to tell him exactly how things are about to go, when I notice the wet spot on the front of Chadwick’s tan suit pants that’s growing larger by the second.
Instead of yelling, laughter booms from my lips.
“Are you fucking kidding me? You pissed yourself? Jesus Christ, I knew you were a piece of shit, but I didn’t realize you were a gutless coward too. Makes sense how you could stoop to harassing her online. Too big of a pussy to say a goddamned word to her face.”
Scarlett sucks in a breath as Hal laughs beside me. Chadwick’s face turns a mottled red as Lawrence Priest whips his head to the side to look at his crotch.
An expression of complete and total disgust crosses his face. “Whatever Chadwick is, he is not harassing my daughter. I provided his alibi to the police for the time periods in question.”
“Was he even with you, Dad?” This comes from Scarlett, her words rife with betrayal. “Or did you just cover for him because that’s what you do for your buddies? Even when it’s your daughter who is being threatened?”
Scarlett’s father turns so that he’s able to see both of us, and I decide I’ll make it even easier for him. I shove past him and take my position next to her. He shifts with a sneer on his face, recognizing the move for what it is—a power play.
With Hal at his back and me next to Scarlett, there’s not shit he can do.
“Chadwick isn’t behind any threats. He’s much too busy with company matters to bother you. Whatever the police think, you need to tell them they are mistaken.”
“Scarlett doesn’t take orders from you, old man. And she wasn’t fucking mistaken about anything. If your boy here didn’t do anything, then he’s got no reason to be pissing himself.” I look pointedly at the wetness on Chadwick’s pants and shake my head. “You might think I’m shit, but, man, you gotta recognize that your daughter leveled up.”
I take a step toward him, and impressively, the old man doesn’t back away. “Because I ain’t pissed myself since I was in diapers, and it would take an army to get between me and my woman. Whatever you came here for, it ain’t happening. So you better leave before we call the cops and have them question you again right now.”
Lawrence straightens and his jaw rocks from side to side. He cuts his attention from me to Scarlett. “I don’t even know who you are anymore, Scarlett. Come on, Chadwick. We have business to take care of. This was obviously a waste of time.”
Sixteen
Scarlett
My father turns and strides down the sidewalk with his head held high and not a single care in it for me.
My knees go weak, but Gabriel’s arm wraps around my waist, and I lean into his strength. Never before has a man stood up for me like that . . . and it kills me that it had to be Gabriel defending me from my own father.
“Let’s go inside,” he whispers into my ear.
I nod woodenly. “Okay.”
He walks me in the front door of Curated and leads me to the sofa. I collapse onto it, but the tears don’t come like I thought they would. I’m just . . . empty.
Gabriel waves at Hal and says something to him, but the white noise in my head drowns them out.
My father doesn’t give a damn about me. I might as well be a stranger on the street.
It hurts, but the parts of my heart that used to feel like they would bleed from that knowledge are numb. Or maybe they’re getting harder? Either way, I couldn’t cry if I tried.
Gabriel locks the front door and comes to sit next to me on the couch, pulling me onto his lap. He holds me there, rocking me against his bare chest, while I sit in silence for long moments.
“Did he break me?” I whisper the question. “Because I can’t cry.”
Gabriel shifts and tilts my chin up toward his face with his knuckles. “No one could break you, ladybug. Not your ex. Not your father. Not me. No one. You’re too fucking strong to let any man do that. You hear me? You are a fucking warrior, and this shit might hurt like a motherfucker, but it will not break you.”
I swallow, processing his words. “How is it possible not to care about your only child?”
Gabriel looks down at me with knowledge in his gaze that stabs at the unguarded part of my heart.
“I don’t know, but if we get to the point where we have kids, they will never know anything but love from both of us. They will never feel the things we’ve felt, ladybug. The cycle ends here. I swear that on my life.”
Seventeen
Legend
I’m beyond sore after two days of training, but I’m so fucking excited about Jeb’s plan of attack for taking on Bodhi that I don’t even mind. I welcome the burn and the ache. It means progress. Getting ready for a fight this big in such a short period of time felt overwhelming until I had a team on my side that knew how to win and wouldn’t stop at anything to get me where I need to be. Protesting muscles aside, I feel amazing when I walk into my office at the club.
Except, I don’t even make it through an hour of work before Q is in my doorway.
“You’ve got a meeting you need to take.”
“When?”
“Now. You’re being summoned.”
I look past him, into the hall, but I don’t see anyone else. “By who? What the hell are you talking about?”
He rolls his bottom lip between his teeth. “There’s a black car out front that’s here to take you to the Upper Ten to meet with Creighton Karas.”
I lean back in my desk chair and shake my head. “That’s not how shit works. I’m nobody’s lapdog. I don’t come when I’m called.”
Q shoves his hands in the pockets of his slacks. “You really want me to send him away and tell him you’re too busy?”
The very idea of being summoned pushes all my fucking buttons. Then I remember—I did this to myself when I asked for other people’s money. I may walk around thinking I’m beholden to no one, but that’s not the truth. Not once I brought on investors to make the club happen.
I look down at my sweats and T-shirt. They’re clean since I changed into them after my shower at the gym, but they sure as hell aren’t up to the dress code of Legend or the Upper Ten, the most exclusive cigar bar in the city, run by none other than Cannon Freeman.
“This is some shit, man. But if he wants me, then he’s going to get me.” I push off the arms of my chair and rise to my feet. I take a few steps toward Q, and he holds up a palm.
“Tell me you’re not going like that. You’ve got a suit here somewhere. I know you do.”
“No. This is me. If that’s not good enough for Creighton Karas, then he can go fuck himself.”
Q pales beneath that swarthy Puerto Rican skin of his. “He’s a fucking billionaire and one of our biggest investors, Gabe. You’ve got to at least pretend to show him some respect.”
“Like he’s doing by sending a car to pick me up like I’m a kid at day care? I don’t think so.”
His head falls to the side, and his shoulders slump. “They won’t even let you through the front door of that place in sweats. It’ll be a wasted trip.”
“We’ll see.” I clap a hand on Q’s upper arm. “If he’s got a problem with it, then he should’ve made a fucking appointment like anyone else.” I glance over at Roux, where she’s curled up in her bed in the corner. “You wanna come, girl? That’d make a statement.”
My dog shoves her snout farther into the cushion. I’ll take that as a no.
I leave my best friend and my dog staring after me as I stride out of the office.
You want to see me, Mr. Karas? Well, here I fucking come.
Eighteen
Scarlett
“It’s a pleasure to welcome you to Curated, Meryl.” I open the door myself to greet her and let her inside.
As Meryl steps across the threshold, I watch her face for reactions to the main floor of the store. With bright eyes, she scans the room and grins. “This is lovely. And it’s all for sale?”
“Almost everything. Some of the furniture is from my personal collection and not available for purchase.”
She wanders inside and turns in a circle, stopping to look more closely at a pair of sterling silver ballet slippers sitting on the end table. “My daughter would love those. She’s in her fourth year of ballet.”
“According to our records, they used to belong to one of the members of a dance company in Moscow.”
Meryl smiles. “In that case, I must have them.” A light laugh follows. “And to think I was resistant about coming. I’ve hardly made it through the front door and already found something I can’t live without. This is going to be dangerous, isn’t it?”
My grin is so wide, it almost hurts. “I’m not sure what you were expecting, but we pride ourselves on having a unique collection of one-of-a-kind items that will tempt you unmercifully because once they’re gone—they’re gone forever.”
Amy hovers a dozen feet behind Meryl, at the antique desk where we process payments from the general public when we’re open on Fridays. She’s been even more anxious than I have for this appointment, because she knows how much I’ve wanted Meryl as a customer for months. Even though I promised I could handle it on my own and Amy could take the afternoon off, she stayed to see exactly how it went.
“Would you like to follow me upstairs? The third floor is where all the newest items are displayed.”
Meryl glances around the room. “Do I get to come back down and pick from all of this as well? Because I’ve got my eye on a few other things, and we’ve barely scratched the surface.”
“Absolutely. The entire store is your playground for the afternoon, Meryl. We can take however long you want.”
She squeezes her hands in front of her, and I wonder if she’s secretly trying to stop herself from clapping them together like a kid standing in front of a bakery case. “All right. Show me the way.”
“If you’ll follow me.”
We reach the third floor, and Meryl’s mouth drops open.
As soon as she called on Monday afternoon to make this appointment for today, I pulled out all the stops in our restocking. Did I go a little overboard? Maybe. But I don’t care. I want to impress her—need to impress her. I’m not sure why I care so much, but it goes deeper than me seeking her approval.
I think . . . I think I want her friendship, and this is the best way I know how to start. There’s just something about Meryl Fosse and her commitment to her causes and her convictions that inspires me to grow and evolve.
Curated can’t just be about creating the perfect social media feed, and I’m starting to realize that it never was. It has always fed my need to make sure that unique and beautiful items aren’t lost and forgotten in our world where everything seems to be disposable and nothing is built to last anymore. I want people to appreciate amazing workmanship, and the time and effort it took to craft so many of our pieces by hand.
“Oh my word, it’s like Ali Baba’s cave—full of treasures,” Meryl says in a soft voice as she turns in a slow circle.
She walks toward the curio cabinet with mismatched hand-painted pieces of china displayed on delicately tatted lace. But before she reaches it, she stops next to the sofa and studies a blown glass lamp in the shape of water lilies.
“Scarlett . . . this, this is incredible.”
She stares at the lamp in awe, reaching out to touch it, but stops before her fingertips make contact.
“You can touch it. It’s delicate, but not that breakable. It makes me think of Monet.”
Meryl’s head turns toward me. “I learned how to paint by studying the water lilies. This takes me right back to my teenage years when the only thing that made any sense was a brush in my hand and paint on my smock.”
“I didn’t know you were an artist.”
Her fingertips gently skate across the green glass. “My mother told me I’d never make a living at it, and I’d be better off putting my efforts into finding a husband. She was probably right that I couldn’t make a living at it, but I wish I hadn’t packed up my paints quite so soon.” She retracts her hand and turns to face me. “I have a wall at the center that needs a mural, and I was going to commission someone to paint it for me. But this . . . this makes me wonder if I still have any skills left to do it myself.”
“All you can do is try,” I say with an understanding smile. “I’m sure the kids would love to see your work.”
Her eyes light up. “They’re the most wonderful group of children I’ve ever had the pleasure of meeting. Did I tell you we have a carnival Sunday afternoon? It’s open to the public . . .”
I know what she’s getting at. She wants us to bring Bump, and I think it could be amazing for him. “I don’t think we’re busy. I’ll talk to Gabriel and Bump, and see if we can make it work.”
Meryl’s teeth flash pearlescent white as she beams at me. “Excellent. Now, time for me to shop.”
Nineteen
Legend
When the Escalade Creighton Karas sent rolls to a stop in front of the building housing the Upper Ten, the driver climbs out of the front to come around and open my door, but I can manage myself. We meet on the sidewalk as I shut it behind me.
&nb
sp; “I’ll show you up, Mr. Legend.”
“I can find it,” I tell him.
The suit-clad man produces what looks like a credit card from his breast pocket. “You’ll need this to access the top floor of the building. If you leave with it, it’ll be deactivated within hours.”
“I’ll leave it with Karas. Don’t worry, I won’t be in a hurry to come back. This isn’t exactly my scene,” I say, glancing down at the sweats I’ve shoved up around my calves and the running shoes on my feet.
“Understood, sir. I’ll be out here to return you to Legend once Mr. Karas is finished with you.”
It’s on the tip of my tongue to tell him not to worry about it, but my promise to Scarlett won’t let me. No taking unnecessary chances with my safety.
“Thanks.”
He inclines his head, but I’m already striding toward the doors. Inside, the building looks like it’s been restored to its glory days of the Roaring Twenties. It definitely gives the right vibe for a high-end cigar club that even I can appreciate, although cigars have never been my thing.
The keycard gets me up the elevator, and the hair on the back of my neck stands up when I hit the top floor. They’ve gotta be watching me. I don’t look for the telltale signs of security cameras, though. There’s no point. They’re definitely here.
The elevator lobby leads to two massive wooden doors. I haul one open and find myself in an entryway with a high ceiling and a fancy-looking clock in the corner. One wall is glass, and through it I can see the crown jewels of the Upper Ten—boxes upon boxes of cigars in a big glass room that must be temperature and humidity controlled. Rumor on the street is that they’ve got millions of dollars’ worth of tobacco in this place, which seems fucking crazy to me. To each their own.