Claiming My Vengeance

by Jessica Blake

  I lowered my voice and gave him my sweetest smile, stepping closer. “It’s okay. I promise I’m not a serial killer.”

  He blushed a little and lowered his own voice. “She actually works mornings now,” he confided. “She got promoted last week. Some dude called the main boss and chewed out the hotel manager on how our place isn’t diverse enough in its hiring practices and how could we have overlooked Latrisha for management when she was so capable and blah, blah. Freaked the boss right the hell out and boom. She’s now management.”

  “Good for Latrisha. Thanks for letting me know. I’d put in a good word for you, but I’m absolutely no one with a worthless opinion,” I shrugged with a grin.

  It had to have been Gabe. My throat felt tight, and I deliberately pushed thoughts of him to the side before I began crying like a child in the middle of this beautiful hotel.

  Turning around, desperately looking for something to distract me, I spotted it.

  “Roxy, check it out.” She turned around to see where I was pointing and burst into laughter. In the front window of the gift shop was an array of MGM-branded bikinis.

  She held up a hand, and I high-fived her.

  “Let’s do it,” she said, and I didn’t hesitate to follow.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Gabe

  “What the fuck do you mean she’s gone?”

  Heedless of the people that surrounded me at the conference table littered with dirty coffee cups and reams of printouts, I shot to my feet.

  Olivia was gone.

  “You didn’t say you wanted me to keep her in one place. The security personnel I assigned to her said that she requested to be driven back to Detroit.” Jason’s voice was businesslike and emotionless. It was hard to read the former Marine in person, and even harder to read him over the phone. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

  Was it?

  After all, this was what I wanted. This was why I had left without seeing her. No scenes. Just Olivia disappearing from my life conveniently and as suddenly as she’d showed up.

  She’d been a major help, sure. But the whole situation had been temporary, and the sex had just complicated things. So, why did I feel like telling Jason to have his security person bring her back?

  Now.

  “She’s probably safer at home,” Jason added in the wake of my silence. There was definitely a sharp point hidden inside that statement, even with the flat delivery. I felt like the unspoken accusation was that I’d gotten her hurt, and she was better off away from me.

  Behind me, someone cleared their throat, and I heard shuffling papers. An awkward tension had settled over the room, and awareness of where I was came back in a rush.

  I really didn’t need witnesses to this phone conversation, so I wrapped it up as casually as I could. “Yeah, you’re right. That’s fine. Thanks for all your help. I owe you.”

  I hung up and turned to face seven startled pairs of eyes watching me from around the command center table. My team was obviously surprised by the savageness of my outburst. This wasn’t me. I was always calm and fucking controlled, especially at work. I was the boss. And if the boss was freaking out, everyone would freak out.

  “Ah, anything I can do?” Brian asked tentatively.

  “No. Thanks. Everything’s fine.” I sat down and turned my attention back to my computer screen, struggling to act like it was when that couldn’t be further from the truth. Like I wasn’t tied in knots by one skinny, black-haired witch.

  Turning my attention back to the spreadsheets again, I wanted to throw my computer across the table. The past several hours had been nothing but an exercise in frustration. Schedule and follow-through of new inspections for every single Ainsley building Devlin Cunningham had even the most remote involvement with was taking forever, and I figured we were going to need to hire more staff at the rate we were going. It felt like a race against time to check that all of our buildings were safe, and I had the horrible feeling that if we missed even one, more innocent people could be hurt.

  I toggled over to the email system to shoot off an email to one of my contractors, and there was an email from Olivia sitting in my inbox. Clicking on it quickly, spoiling for an argument, some kind of outlet for the unreasonable anger I was feeling at her defection, I realized that she hadn’t sent me a rant or a tirade or even a hurt and spiteful message. There was no personal note at all. Just screenshots and brief explanations of information that changed everything.

  While I’d been skipping out, she’d apparently been hard at work connecting dots, and she’d found the missing link. Dammit. I felt like a total shitheel as I forwarded the email to Brian.

  “Everyone stop,” I announced to the room in general. “You can stop what you’re doing. Brian, I just sent you some new information. Parse it all out and then get to work filtering out the properties that this CoC inspector went through. Split them up between everybody here and prioritize those inspections first. I’ve got some phone calls to make.”

  I stood up and headed for the door. Pausing on a thought, I turned around and addressed my baffled team. “Bonuses. Watch for them on your next paychecks. For now, order in some pizza and beer to celebrate. And thank you all for your help. I appreciate all the hours you’ve put in on this.”

  I closed the door on their cheers.

  ***

  I was sending the email to the accounting department when Brian buzzed to let me know that Detective Kincaid had arrived. I told Brian to send him in. Kincaid and I got along pretty well. He was a thirty-year veteran with the Chicago police and a straight-shooter, which I appreciated.

  He came in a few moments later, his weathered face looking uncharacteristically cheerful. I offered him a Coke from the stocked mini-fridge in my office, and he accepted, settling comfortably in the chair across from my desk, the leather creaking under his weight. I took a Coke too, hoping the caffeine would head off the headache that was pounding at the back of my skull.

  “Good to see you, Gabe. Sorry about the circumstances.”

  “Yeah, well, meeting someone in a good situation is probably pretty rare for you.”

  “True.” He let out a raspy chuckle. “I gotta tell you, I was pretty excited to get that information from you on Christopher Isaacson. We’ve been watching that little shit for months, for completely different reasons. That was some good work, putting together that he was taking payments from Cunningham.”

  I shrugged. “Can’t take credit for that one.”

  “Oh?”

  “Olivia Redmond. Devlin’s stepsister.”

  He gave me a speculative look, and I hoped my face wasn’t too transparent. Olivia was the last person I wanted to talk about right then. “Ah, the subject of our near-hit-and-run and the passenger in your car yesterday. I’ve been hearing a lot about Olivia lately. She good on computers?”

  “Yeah. She was the anonymous source that was responsible for taking down Joel.”

  Kincaid gave an almost soundless whistle and leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “I saw copies of those reports when the FBI guys got done going through them. Pretty fucking professional. It drove us all nuts that we didn’t know who’d put them together. She’d be a formidable addition to our department.”

  “She left town this morning, so you missed your chance to recruit her. Sorry.” I picked up a pen from my desk and ran it through my fingers. I needed something to do with my hands.

  “Probably not a bad thing that she’s out of Chicago. With the near misses she’s had, she’s likely safer.” That was basically what Jason had said too, and hearing it again just rankled. It wasn’t like I’d been able to keep her safe.

  “Speaking of those near misses, did you find anything tying the two incidences to Devlin?”

  “Well, good news and bad news. The good news is that our guys were able to get enough ballistics info from your vehicle to hook an attempted murder charge to Cunningham, provided he’s still got the weapon. It was clear that Olivia was the targ
et.”

  My grip tightened abruptly, and the plastic pen snapped in two. “That’s the good news? You know that gun’s probably at the bottom of the Chicago River by now.”

  Kincaid nodded, not unsympathetic. “We can only hope he hasn’t ditched it yet, or that we get enough other evidence. Bad news is we think we found the vehicle he used to try and run down Olivia abandoned in an overnight lot, clean of prints and wearing stolen plates.” His cell phone rang, and he glanced at the display. “I’ve got to take this. Excuse me a sec.”

  I pushed back from my desk and stalked like an irate lion to the bank of windows that looked out over the city. Great news was all over the place. Things had improved far beyond where they had been just a couple of weeks ago. Granted, no one actually had Devlin yet, but at least we were in the process of putting a stop to the damage he’d caused to the company. Things were finally looking up for Ainsley Holdings, and that had been my primary goal.

  As for Olivia, I’d brought her here so she could stir up shit, basically out herself as the source of the information on Joel, solve some of my trickiest problems and be made a target for her wannabe-rapist’s revenge. Twice. Oh, and I’d also fucked her but good, basically using her for sex the entire time she was in town.

  Now, Olivia was back home at her shitty bar in Detroit, fending off drunks and serving up drinks for rough-edged assholes that probably would throw her down on the bar the first chance they got. But she was tough, had a baseball bat, and knew some karate moves, so little miss independent probably figured she’d be fine.

  I rubbed my forehead. So, what? If I hadn’t walked out on her, would I have asked her to stay? Asked her to give up everything she’d built so I could have a convenient lay here in Chicago? Put her up in an apartment somewhere like a mistress, since I wasn’t going to spring a trap for myself by moving her into my penthouse? Committing to anyone, even someone as complex and fascinating as she was, was not on my agenda.

  My headache had intensified, and shitheel wasn’t a strong enough word for what I was feeling like. Luckily for me, Kincaid came bursting back into my office, grinning, distracting me from the uncomfortable soul-searching I’d fallen into and had no intention of pursuing further.

  “Bingo. We picked up Isaacson with a nice, hefty amount of cocaine in his car, and my guys scared the ever-loving hell out of him. He’s going to sing like a canary. He’s making noises about lawyering up but has promised to roll on Devlin in exchange for lesser charges. I gotta get back and get in on the questioning.”

  “Good news all around,” I commented flatly as the older man headed out the door again. This was the kind of news that would have had me as revved-up as the detective just a matter of days ago. Now, I couldn’t bring myself to summon up any enthusiasm.

  Kincaid had promised to keep me posted and there was nothing to do but get back to work. Or try, anyway. I couldn’t stop thinking about Olivia. Part of me was tied up in unwanted guilt, and another part of me felt like I’d narrowly escaped a fall from a high cliff. Either way, after another hour of unfocused attempts, I wasn’t getting anything done.

  Restless, I decided to cut out early and take my laptop. I was the boss. There wasn’t any reason I couldn’t work from home.

  Until I got to the penthouse and realized that Liv had left her imprint on the place. Invisible, maybe, but in the bedroom, I could still smell her light, cinnamon fragrance, even though my housekeeper had stripped the sheets while I’d been gone.

  In the gym, our workout on the mat was crystal clear in my mind. Even all the food in the cupboards and in the stocked fridge wouldn’t have been there but for her, and God help me next time I wanted to take a shower… I’d have to use the one in the gym if I didn’t want to picture her bent over the bench in there, my hands on her sweet ass with its pale, smooth, perfect curves…

  Frustrated, pissed off, disgusted with myself, and getting a hard-on just from thinking about Olivia, I changed out of my suit and forced myself to work for a couple of hours on the couch. I didn’t want to sit at the desk in my office, with the bed in the next room as a constant reminder of her.

  I nuked something microwaveable for dinner and ate mechanically, not tasting any of it. Then I went downstairs to catch a taxi. I was going out drinking tonight, and not at the Velvet Hour. If I couldn’t get Olivia out of my mind with a bottle, I was going to find someone who wanted to fight.

  Either way, I wasn’t coming home until I’d erased this itchy, restless feeling she’d left me with. The feeling that something important had just moved outside of my reach.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Liv

  My house was still standing. My Ducati was in the back room where I’d left it. My downstairs toilet had somehow managed to clog itself while I was gone, but I liked to think that was just my house’s way of saying it appreciated me being around to fix it.

  Roxy had finally gotten the call to come back home, but not until we’d spent two days at the MGM, watching Pay-Per-View, ordering room service, using the gift shop like our own personal boutique. I’d finally gotten into the petty groove of things and tried to enjoy myself because I hated to see Roxy’s thirst for vengeance on my behalf disappointed, especially after I confessed everything that had happened between me and Gabe and how he’d left things.

  Things were much quieter after Roxy dropped me off at home. Everything seemed smaller. My house. My neighbors’ houses. The street even seemed narrower, dirtier. Would everything be dull like this, post-Gabe?

  Damn, this was why I’d stuck to one-night stands in the past. If you didn’t give men too much, they couldn’t take it away or use it as a weapon. They couldn’t hurt you. I felt like even though I hadn’t given him the words, Gabriel had taken everything I’d offered him and then dropped me like I meant nothing at the first opportunity, leaving me floundering around trying to find a new equilibrium.

  But there was nothing I could do about it. My phone stayed silent, with the exception of hang-up calls from Devlin, which I immediately sent to voicemail each time. Gabriel knew I’d left and hadn’t even acknowledged the email I’d sent him with the Isaacson’s information. A clean break was apparently the way he wanted things, since he didn’t try to find out why I’d gone.

  Maybe he’d even picked up with someone else already. He’d bragged about the ease of finding a quick fuck when he wanted one, and a woman with as much baggage as I carried likely wasn’t all that appealing. I rotated between anger, sadness, depression, and straight-up self-pity for a few days, not even letting Freddie know I was back in town.

  I was used to building walls, though. I’d done it a long time ago, and no matter how much it hurt, I could do it again. I’d gotten along just fine without him before, and I didn’t need Gabriel now.

  Finally, after putting myself together again as much as I could, I kicked my own ass out of the house and went back to work.

  Freddie was happy to see me, but I also thought he might have been a little disappointed that he didn’t get to run things anymore. And to be honest, my spark for The Red Stripe hadn’t quite rekindled since my return.

  I loved the people who came in. Regulars wanted to know if I’d gone on vacation to Tahiti… gotten booked on an assault charge for kicking Bitchass Billy’s ass… gone to Japan to train with a Taekwondo master. Speculation was rife, and it was more fun to listen to the wild guesses than it would be to have everyone know the truth.

  The business itself, though, just didn’t feel as important anymore. I’d expanded my world a little bit, and now, the life I’d created for myself looked dingy. I resented Gabe for that but decided that things would get better. I just needed to get into my routine again.

  And I did.

  I got to see my godson in person again, finally. He had already put on two pounds and an inch, Rosalie told me proudly, her black eyes shining excitedly over little Mateo’s sweet little head as he nursed at her breast.

  I told myself I felt no envy for my friends, even tho
ugh my heart fluttered at the thought of a little one of my own. Pre-Gabe, other people’s kids were satisfying enough. You could hug them, cuddle them, spoil them, and most importantly, give them back. They didn’t depend on you for every little thing. But now, the idea of having my own little person… shit, I didn’t know how I felt about that or why the question was even on my mind. All I knew was that the idea wasn’t as scary as it used to be.

  The phone calls from the unlisted Chicago number and hang-up voicemail messages continued, day and night, so I finally changed my phone number, giving up on the idea that Gabe might call. I refused to be a weak little female and wait for him to gift me with the courtesy of a phone call.

  I went back to working out at the dojo. Spent my mornings at the bar. Held afternoon classes in un-air-conditioned school gyms, church basements or neighborhood basketball courts, out in the scorching sun or steaming humidity, as June bled into July. I fixed the toilet twice more, and without flooding the entire first floor of my house. Took long evening rides on the Ducati.

  Things slowly got better, but I still felt empty. Hollowed out. Bitter.

  All in all, I simply focused on existing. If I started leaving the music off and turning the dusty TV at the bar to news stations, hoping for an update from Chicago on Ainsley Holdings or news that Devlin had been caught, it wasn’t deliberate. At least that was what I told myself.

  Freddie, too, pretended not to notice the deviation in my old habits.

  At least for a while.

  ***

  Sometime during the third week, I stood in front of the TV, polishing the same beer glass for ten minutes, raptly watching a news story on how Christopher Isaacson, a crooked City of Chicago building inspector, had been arrested on multiple charges. Isaacson had agreed to provide information on Devlin Cunningham on a plea deal, and he didn’t disappoint.

  Devlin had apparently stayed with him for a few weeks, and since there was no honor among the two thieves, Isaacson had gone through Devlin’s things one night and found a book listing bank accounts. The building inspector turned it over to the police, presumably having helped himself to some of Devlin’s money first.