Page 21 of Take Her
Iwas in the stable working on Gracie’s hooves with a knife the next day when I heard the crunch of unfamiliar tires on my gravel and braced.
Killing me was one thing, but if anyone hurt Gracie—I let go of her hoof and went for the tack room, lifting up a board I’d purposefully kept loose, so that I could get at a combination lock box underneath holding a Glock 19, and then carefully peered outside.
Nero Ferreo was getting out of a car by himself.
Alone.
I supposed I should feel honored. I tucked the gun into my waistband, pulled my flannel over it, and shoved the hoof knife up my sleeve, before coming out of the stable seemingly empty handed.
“Figures,” Nero said, eyeing the structure behind me.
Because the first time I’d met him, I’d been a stableboy. One of a fleet of semi-urchins that did what we were told around the racetrack on weekend race days for scraps from the concession stands and twenty-dollar bills if we were lucky. I’d gone to sleep in a stall, wanting to keep my money away from my drunken father to give to my mother in the morning, and when I’d heard a fight break out I’d come running, without a lick of self-preservation, just in time to get spattered with a stranger’s blood—and see Nero Ferreo standing over a newly dead body, breathing hard and holding a knife in his hand.
Underneath the bare bulb light of the stable his eyes had looked practically black as they’d shifted to me, and he said just two words. “You in?”
I wanted to live. How could I not be?
But after that, there was no going back—and I’d worked my way up with him, through the horses, to the docks, to large-scale money laundering.
Everything in my life leading to this one moment here, and Nero brushing impatiently around me, walking into my stable by his lonesome.
I jogged after him and caught Gracie giving him a once over with her ears flattened back. He clucked at her though, and she got over it, suddenly more curious about the state of his pockets than the intrusion of his sharply scented cologne.
“I’d forgotten she was such a good-looking horse,” he said, running his hands across the well-brushed fur over her withers. He’d been a horse man too, once upon a time. Then he caught sight of the floorboard I hadn’t had time to replace. “Expecting someone?”
I shrugged one shoulder. “In our line of work, you never know.”
“Indeed.”
It wasn’t worth pretending anymore. “Come to put me out to pasture too?”
Nero looked sharply at me. “You think I’m going to kill you, just because you have my daughter cleaning toilets?” He blew air through pursed lips, sounding not unlike a frustrated stallion. “A fact she didn’t tell me, by the way—it wasn’t until HR realized they were going to be writing her name on checks that they contacted me and asked me what the fuck it was she’d been doing for the company.” He turned and walked away from Gracie and toward me. “Don’t get me wrong, I did think about killing you before that, just for being such a pissbaby when you left town. Did you entirely forget about the Frazetta meeting?”
I hadn’t forgotten—I just didn’t care. “No.”
“So, what, you wanted to lash out at me? But instead of taking it to me, like a man, you took it out on my little girl?” Nero’s head tilted as his eyes squinted, telegraphing obscenities.
And that was the instant I knew—Lia hadn’t told him a goddamned thing.
“Maybe,” I confessed.
“You and your stupid fucking pride, Rhaim,” he said, gravely shaking your head. “It’s going to get you killed someday—and I can’t believe you didn’t think to come to me, first.”
“You sounded pretty certain of things in my office,” I snapped.
“It was ten-fucking-thirty a.m.,” he complained, palming the lower half of his face in exasperation. “You of all people should know I never make any business decisions before lunch.”
Because he was often hungover—that was a fact. He’d been drinking way too much lately; it was making him look tired and thin.
“Look, get your head out of your ass and come back. We can still make this deal happen. We’ll tell them your appendix burst or something?—”
“Come back to teach her?” I asked, my voice rising. “Everything I know?” I said, in a fair imitation of him the other morning.
Nero looked at me blankly, and then barked a laugh, tossing his head back so that the burn scars on his neck shone beneath the barn light. “Jesus Christ, Rhaim, no. Fuck no—I just need you to keep her out of my hair. Lia’s too smart for her own good—she was valedictorian of her program—did she tell you that?” he asked, and I shook my head as he abruptly continued. “I made the mistake of letting her finish too much schooling. She’s smart, but she’s crazy—just like her mother. But you and I both know she’s not going to ever run the company. Come on now,” he said, lowering both his brows and his voice. “You know who’ve dealt with and what we’ve done,” he said, with a snort. “She doesn’t have the stomach for our past, or the endurance for our future.”
I blinked as his confession continued.
“Just—show her some of the clean shit. Maybe let her pretend to run the distillery. I’ll get her married off here in a few months—maybe I’ll make that a part of her dowry.” He paused to consider that before looking me in the eyes. “Just babysit her for me, until I can sort through the best angles—but by this time next year, she’ll be knocked up, and the word ‘office’ won’t even be in her vocabulary.”