“Well good luck with that, Mister. I’ve been called a lot of things, but compliant has never been one of them.”
I guessed we couldn’t be far apart in age, but he made me feel like an ornery little kid standing there waiting for a nice word. I didn’t wait for anything for any man—so he was just shit out of luck. “I live pretty close. I’m just going to finish my run and head back to my apartment.” Shit, I said apartment. There were only two apartment buildings in the vicinity and I pretty much just outed myself if he wanted to find me. Once again, I forgot that I didn’t live in NYC anymore. I didn’t live in a high rise, and there was no doorman or 24 hour security in my building. It was nice, but it was northwest Ohio nice, not Manhattan nice. You picked this life, stupid. Get used to it.
Hell, he could follow me home if he wanted. I wasn’t making it hard for him. I wasn’t scared of the junkie, but having the gigantic man who’d “saved” me follow me home made me nervous in ways I didn’t really want to dissect.
To my surprise, he didn’t argue with me. “I’ll stay here with him. You take off.” He nudged the still unconscious pile of rags not so gently with the toe of his shoe. Damn, it had to be a size thirteen at least.
“What are you going to do about him?” I really didn’t want to know. I could have called the police but, honestly, I didn’t want to stick around. I wanted to go home and take four steaming hot showers and gargle salt water, Listerine, and colloidal silver to disinfect myself from every part of me he touched. “What if he tries to hit you again?”
The Viking looked at me like I had grown another head while I’d been speaking, his face took on a dark shadow, and lines appeared on his face. “If he knows what’s good for him, he won’t move until you’re long gone. If he wants to keep his bones intact, he won’t move until I’m gone either.” His eyes shone wildly in the dim light of the church and his nostrils flared like a bull about to charge, making me wonder just how safe I was with my savior.
A shudder crept up my spine. I mumbled some form of thanks and quickly turned my back to him and ran. I ran all the way to my apartment, up the stairs to the third floor, and fumbled in my tiny waist pocket for the apartment key.
That guy might have saved me from someone who wanted to hurt me. But the look in his eyes when I was leaving was feral. They were definitely the eyes of another kind of monster.
2
Ash
“Absofuckinglutely not, Gabe.” The dumbass wearing basketball shorts and a cotton t-shirt didn’t even look like he was paying attention, so I enunciated each syllable. It didn’t matter that he was my boss, or that he had more money than he knew what to do with. I still wasn’t taking his shit. “When you asked me to take over as primary shareholder and head of Anderson Investments, I said it was under the condition I do it my way. You hiring a bitch boy to help me do my job is not my way.”
I was furious. Made even more so by the unaffected expression on Gabriel Anderson’s face. He had stepped down from primary at the firm after his dad died, and I get that. He opened the security firm and spent most of his time with that venture, which I also understood. I could definitely respect a man that didn’t put all his eggs in one basket. Or had his fingers in more than one pie. Or however the fuck the saying goes. What I didn’t like was being told how to do my job.
All the employees under me were hired and vetted. By me. I ran a tight ship and my circle of trust was small. Especially when dealing with money, other’s and mine. My job was to manage the money for the entire firm, which built its floors on managing the money of other’s. That’s how I made my increasingly large salary, and I ruled it all with absolute authority.
Not only did I not need an assistant, I did not want one. Much less someone I didn’t get to choose or even see their credentials.
“Ashley-”
“Don’t fucking call me that.” I growled, and he grinned. That prick. My full name was horrid and completely off limits.
Gabe muted the grin. “Ash, this is a favor for me, and I am still the boss no matter how much you want me to forget it. No matter how much I wish I could forget it sometimes.” Gabe sighed and shook his head, a ghost of a smile on his face. It was easy to forget he was in charge of a dynasty. He’d ditched the suit and tie a while ago. Now I only ever saw him in athletic clothes or his new work uniform, which generally entailed lots of black, and many hidden weapons. I wish he’d at least dress better when he came to the top floor of the Anderson building, though. For fuck’s sake, let’s keep up appearances.
“I don’t do favors.”
“Yeah, no shit. I was just trying to avoid telling you to do it because I said so, you salty asshole. To be honest, this person is over-qualified for the job and just looking for something fast and away from home. Honestly, I’m lucky to have someone with those qualifications here. With those connections Gower could work in any firm in any state. Probably on the board. So don’t be a cock face and accept the help.” Gabe grimaced. “Also, what crawled up your ass and farted? You never smile but you’re especially foul today. Everything okay with your grandmother?”
At the mention of my Gigi some tension left my shoulders and I leaned back into the soft black leather of my chair, feeling the cushioned back squeak a little against my back.
“Gigi’s fine.” And she was. As fine as she could be, anyway. Alzheimer’s was rotting her brain slowly, taking her heartbreakingly further away from me every day. But as of right now, I had her in the best care facility in Toledo, and the work I did for Gabe allowed me to make sure she wanted for nothing.
“But?” Gabe leaned back on the corner of one of the solid wood chairs across from me, crossing his arms across his chest and propping one of his Air Jordans on the corner of my desk. My freshly polished desk.
“Get your fucking foot off my desk, you goon.” Technically it was his desk, as was everything in the building, but this was my space. And I took care of the shit in my space.
He dropped his foot but stayed leaning against the chair like it didn’t cost a thousand dollars. He kept his arms across his chest and looked at me, eyes flat, waiting for a response.
“It’s the dickhead again.” I didn’t even want to talk about it, but I’d known Gabe my whole adult life, since he’d come back from the military, and while he’d been out doing crazy soldier for hire shit before settling down with Angel. If there was anyone on the planet I could talk about this kind of shit with, it was Gabe Anderson.
“Oh, him.” He knew better than to say his name. The name that never failed to send me into a rage. “What’d he do this time?”
“He paid for an entire year of Gigi’s assisted living stay, upped her round-the-clock care by another two full-time aides and had her meals prepped by a third party delivery company. All organic, of course.” God, I fucking hated that guy.
Gabe rolled his eyes. “The monster.” He didn’t even try to hide his smile, and I didn’t hide how badly I wanted to punch his kidney up through his nostrils. Gabe knew how I felt about that guy.
“Goddamit, Gabe, I take care of Gigi. You know that. I spare no expense for her. She has the best care and all of her needs are met. She’s my only living relative left. She’s my grandma, man. Not his. He’s not even related by blood—she was just his nanny, for fuck's sake.”
“I get that you don’t like the guy, Ash, but think about your situation for a minute.” Gabe finally sat in the chair like a respectable human being, and scrubbed his hands over his face to hide his smile, but failed. “Many people have a hard time providing for elderly relatives that need care. They struggle to afford what they need, or they’re dealing with a bad guy trying to take their house and sell their land out from under them. It just so happens your bad guy cares too much about the woman who raised him, and constantly tries to one up you by seeing who can take care of her better. This is kind of hysterical.”
“It’s not hysterical. I hate that guy. It’s not enough that he tried to throw money at her all the time, b
ut she calls me by his name whenever I call. Whenever I visit it’s his face she sees—not mine. Fuck. He doesn’t even call her Gigi, or Grandma even. He just calls her Suge. Fucking disrespectful.”
“You love your Gigi, man. I know that.” Gabe stared at me from across the desk, but I wouldn’t let him pin me down. I was pinned down by no man. If anything, we were equals. In my mind I was slightly above him, no matter his financial rank.
“I do.”
“But you have to realize it’s not your fault, and it’s not her fault she calls you by the wrong name. That disease—”
“I know.” I interrupted him, my fist banging on the heavy wooden desk in front of me.
“Then acknowledge it. Because it will only get worse. You can’t let that shit impede caring for her. It’s a long road man, and it’s ugly, and it hurts, and it will only get more brutal.”
“I know.” I knew. And I hated it. I also hated the way my voice broke on the words that already came out barely above a whisper. Gabe was a lot of things, but at least he was enough of a friend to know when I was about to break, and he didn’t push any more. That was a lot, coming from Gabe, because pushing buttons was like his second favorite thing to do besides beat up bad guys and talk about his wife.
I mean, I could be happy for him and everything, but she was a wild one. They had a weird relationship. I could never be with such a stubborn woman who did the exact opposite of what she was supposed to all the time. I’m pretty sure I remember her getting kidnapped in the parking lot, right in front of him because she pissed off a local crime boss. I’m not sure exactly what happened with that, but Gabe and Angel got married last year, and that crime boss doesn’t exist anymore. And now I sit in the big office on the top floor of Anderson Investments, so Gabe can do what he really loves, which was fuck off and hang out with his wife.
“So back to your new assistant.” And there it was, good old button pushing Gabe.
“I don’t want an assistant. Send him to work in the mail room. Have him answer the phones downstairs or something. You don’t just walk into this place and expect to be my right-hand man. It doesn’t work that way and I haven’t vetted him.”
“Our new employee starts on Monday, as an executive assistant.” He wasn’t smiling or kidding around anymore.
I almost swallowed my tongue. Fucking a—he was going to make it worse if I lost my cool now. Shit, if I said another word, the new guy would probably have my office and my desk.
“Gower will get the office next to yours. I have already negotiated salary. This will be a huge help to you. I told you, Gower is way over-qualified for the position. We’re lucky. Deal with your ego.”
Gabe finally lifted his lanky ass from the chair and tapped his knuckles on my desk as he walked past. “I’m serious about this, Ash. My family has been tight with the Gowers for a long time. This is not an alliance I’m willing to break because you got your feelings hurt. I didn’t ask your permission.”
Gabe strode towards the door without looking at me, but paused in the doorway to say one more thing.
“Be nice.”
The door clicked shut, but the silence left behind was louder than the ringing in my ears.
Be nice? I did not fucking think so. No trust fund baby would walk into my office like he owned the place. Just because you come from money doesn’t mean you know a damn thing about managing it. In my experience, it was actually the opposite. So the new guy was going to start on Monday? Okay. I’d give him work to do. I’d work his ass into the ground until he cried to go home to his mom and dad, begging them to pay his bills again. I got where I was by scratching from the bottom up. I learned everything from experience. That included my employees. Gabe wanted to slip a new guy in under my watch? Fine. But I’d break him in.
I’d break him in perfectly.
3
Caroline
I don’t know why my palms were sweating as I took the elevator to the top floor of the Anderson Building. I’d been in bigger buildings, fancier buildings. Hell, my family could buy and sell Anderson Investments if we wanted to. Which we didn’t. The Gowers and the Andersons went way back. Before our dads. Even before our grandfathers. Our companies were built by self-made immigrants in a time when immigrants had no power. It didn’t matter which family was in a higher level of power, the respect we had for each other was no small thing.
But I wasn’t here as a representative of my family. Actually, my family didn’t know I was here in this capacity at all. I’d cut communications with my parents when I told them I wanted to work for a living, use my multiple degrees, and move out of New York. My father accused me of having a fit because Dex dumped me and got together with Bianca. My mother couldn’t figure out why I didn’t just attach myself to another, more eligible, suitor. It’s not like there was a shortage of them. Neither one of them thought I could do anything on my own—and it pissed me off to no end.
It pissed me off because at one point in time I thought that way, too, content to live my life stepping on the ladder rungs my elders built. Wearing designer clothes and taking mini vacations to other countries. Having my meals cooked for me and my cars driven for me. Having my doors held open and my elevator buttons pushed.
Having sex for the simple purpose of something to do, and nothing more.
The truth was, I hated those parts of myself, and I wanted to change them. And maybe I was a little jealous of Dex and Bianca too—because he was just like me at one point in time. I’d send a message and he’d come running. We’d fuck our cares away and part ways, mutually satisfied. We’d show up to functions together because it was easier, and we got along just fine outside of the bedroom too. It was easy and comfortable, and we both enjoyed it.
Until he wanted something more with someone else. Someone else who wasn’t me. And he got it.
So maybe my father was partially right. I wanted to get away. Because while Dex had someone else on his arm at those social functions, I was still obligated to go to them. We still operated in the same circles. The same life. And every time I saw his happy face, the face he never showed me before, I was reminded that he wanted something more than me, and he got it. And it never occurred to him he might have gotten it from me if he’d asked.
I was a strong woman. But even I found it difficult to withstand the stares from others every time we were all in the same room together. Oh, it’s Caroline, Dex’s old girlfriend. Never mind we weren’t together that way. Forget that it was an equal coming together. He broke it off when he found someone new and I had no choice but to accept it. And it didn’t matter that I could have easily moved on to the next one. Moving on wouldn’t undo the hurt and humiliation I had to endure from a breakup via text message. Dex cutting me out fucking hurt. My heart. My pride. And despite the fact that I’d always felt like I was enough—I was more than enough—for anything and anyone. But this . . . this was painful.
The heart can hurt in a million different ways. It doesn’t have to be broken to feel pain. Sometimes it’s the slow squeezing agony of being made to feel not good enough that tightens and takes your breath away. That’s how it felt to me—the dull bottomless throbbing—the iron grip of loneliness threatening to push me to my knees.
I wanted to reach out to Dex a hundred times before I left town—to make sure he was doing well. But in truth, he was doing fine. He was more than fine. He’d moved on and I hadn’t. Reaching out would not only let him know that maybe we weren’t so equal after all, but that maybe my feelings were deeper than I’d expected. It would take too much of my energy to keep my voice from trembling, my breathing steady. And inside my head the voice that had once told me I was intelligent, capable . . . incredible, would shatter to pieces at the sound of his voice. A simple text message was all it took to unravel the tight ball of confidence woven by years of money and influence.
One man and one text had left me in pain. A pain so strong I’d wished my bones were made of it. I would wear it like a suit of armor that would hol
d me together while my insides splintered apart.
That’s why my hands were shaking now, I told myself, as I stood in the lobby to get my security badge, showing that I did, indeed, now work for Anderson Investments. Because I’d taken that leap to change myself. I hated the hurt. I hated thinking I wasn’t good enough for someone. I was good enough for anyone, I just needed to get out of my family’s web and figure out what it was I wanted—no—needed.
And if it took a pay cut, a smaller apartment, and me learning how to cook my own food, then that’s exactly what I would do. Because I was Caroline Fucking Gower, and from now on I did everything on my own. And no man was going to make me feel less than a goddess. And to hell with anyone who tried.
I psyched myself up as I stepped into the elevator and caught my reflection in the mirrored wall. Shit. The blouse I’d worn was a little too tight. My breasts pushed against the buttons in the middle, causing a gap. I shouldn’t have left so many of my clothes in storage when I moved. I pulled the sides of my jacket together and tied it closed. Still too tight. But it was my first day. I’d probably be filling out paperwork for most it. Maybe no one would notice. Hopefully.
My shoes were also a little less than ideal. Everything I owned had a stiletto heel on it, and it didn’t occur to me I’d be walking to work in them. I made a mental note to pick up some flats as I stepped off the elevator on the top floor. At least the shoes made my legs look good. My smart black tailored pencil skirt was probably the only part of my outfit that fit well. It was a power skirt. I organized a multimillion-dollar charity drive in that skirt. There was nothing I couldn’t do if I was wearing the appropriate clothes.
Mister Monster: A Hero Club Novel Page 2