Page 74 of Take Her

I know I’m not supposed to apologize—but I am sorry. I thought I’d sent that.

You’re fine

I messaged her back.

I’ll see you tomorrow morning. I’m not coming back to the office tonight. Take off early.

Because now that Nicholas Samson the Third was on my side—I knew I was.

I hopped back to the current camera feed, and saw her packing up her desk with alacrity.

Frightened to be alone without me.

Those fuckers.

I paid off my restaurant tab and hit the streets.

Instead of going back to Corvo, I took a detour to go to Blackwing Downtown. It was a gorgeous, palatial hotel that Freddie Junior was nominally in charge of, in the same way you could put a hat on a dog and call it a limo driver.

With only five percent of Corvo’s current shares, he was financially bound by the decisions Nero made, although I knew Nero had thrown me under the bus multiple times just to not hear anymore of Junior’s grating voice.

I walked into the lobby, gave an accommodating nod to the people behind the registration desk who recognized me, and then let myself into the back end of things, where I knew Junior’s windowless office was. He’d decided to ensconce himself here, away from his uncle’s pressing thumb, but in doing so he’d put his office in a cave.

“Mr. Selvaggio!” a secretary exclaimed—the same one who’d pulled me into Nero’s meeting the other day. Maybe she was passing messages back and forth; I didn’t care.

“He in?” I asked, and when she panicked, I knew he was, so I opened his door so hard the doorknob probably left a dent on the opposing wall.

Junior looked spooked for half a second, before exclaiming my name. “Rhaim! What on earth?—”

“I thought we were just visiting one another’s offices for funsies?” I said, striding up and sweeping half of his shit off his desk, so there was space on it for me to sit down, one knee bent slightly, so I could easily see him as I kept myself casual, like a cat.

I watched the muscle beneath his jaw crawl back and forth while he gritted his teeth, unable to chastise me. “I take it Lia told you I dropped by?”

“She didn’t have to. I could smell the stench of your cologne,” I said, then picked up a baseball cradled on a little stand on his desk. “That’s twice in a week’s space, Junior. I thought we had an understanding. I leave you alone, and you can go fuck yourself.”

He gave me a begrudging nod. “Maybe. Yeah. For now,” he said, then leaned forward. “But my dad won’t be stuck in Asia forever, Rhaim. And we have a controlling interest in Corvo—no matter how hard you swing your dick around, that’s never going to change. Blood is blood.”

“Which is why you’re so scared of a little girl,” I taunted him—but then I realized Nero’s actual plan. Not just to marry Lia off, but through her to find someone else to give his company to, while potentially breaking the vampiric hold Freddie Senior and Junior had on Corvo’s neck, without taking them on or disowning them in public, tarnishing Corvo’s reputation in the process.

Fuck.

Why could he not just tell me these things?

Goddammit.

“The second her old man dies, you’ll be out on the street,” Junior threatened—because he couldn’t see the forest for the trees.

“Out on a yacht, more like,” I muttered, getting up off his desk. “But until then, stay the fuck out of my building.” I walked for his office door, then turned back, remembering the baseball in my hand.

I lifted my arm and he flinched. And while the temptation to pitch the thing straight at his head to see how many of his teeth I could knock out was strong, my need to go confront Nero was slightly stronger. I gave him a disgusted sneer, then I switched throwing it back at him underhand—and he still fumbled the catch.

31

LIA

One thousand cranes decorated every single surface in the house.

One thousand separate creatures, yet none of them could fly away—and neither could I.