There’s an unwritten rule about confrontation. The last one to speak usually won. Or, at the very least, the last one to speak normally didn’t lose. I wanted to be that person, so I did the only thing I saw fit. I smiled, like he’d just offered me a deal that was way too easy to refuse, when in reality, I knew that I was no longer drowning in deep shit. I was already half-dead.

I sent a hand to his neck, running my fingers through his tie, then yanking the tip. Hard. Not to choke him, but enough to show him that I could. And that I would, if need be. My face was so close to his, I saw the panic swimming in his pupils. He may have faked a lisp, but he couldn’t fake bravery. He was scared. Rightly so.

“I think you didn’t take one thing into consideration, Morgansen. I grew up here. I know this place. I am the place. You may have the money, but not the respect. Or the friends. Or the connections. You have zero power over me, and if you think I will cower and bow down to you, get lawyered up right now.” I let go of his tie, letting him drop like a sack of potatoes back to his executive chair, gagging a little. I paced to the door, easy, unconcerned, and smiling, though I felt none of those things. I stopped at the threshold and turned around. “You messed with the wrong motherfucker, Darren.”

“Dump her.”

“I’m sorry. Are you deaf now? Did you not hear my last sentence?”

“You’ll regret it, son.”

I hadn’t had the best history with dads in general, but I was pretty sure I’d rather pluck off my balls than ever hear Darren refer to me as his son. I slammed the door in his face, letting it rattle on its hinges in my wake.

Like hell I will.

I barely made the trip down in the elevator before bile glazed my throat. I threw my breakfast up into a manicured rosebush outside Darren’s corporate building, then wobbled my way to the nearest BevMo and bought a bottle of vodka to wash down a pack of Tylenols. Class before ass. After washing down two pills with a swig of the good stuff and discarding the rest of the bottle into a trash can, I leaned against my Harley, elbows-on-handles, trying to figure out what the hell I was going to say to Jesse.

The truth, you liar. How about you start being honest?

But the truth was complicated. It was messy and uncomfortable. And even I couldn’t fathom it all the way. For one thing, Jesse and I were kind of stepsiblings. Artem and I didn’t share any genes. In fact, he hadn’t even married my mom, but he’d played daddy when I’d needed him to, which was more often than not. Even though my mother hadn’t known he had a family until it was too late—I’m sure she figured it out when she went to his funeral and was too much of a saint to share with me, not wanting to tarnish his reputation in my eyes—she felt close to him. Bright side to this bombshell: at least now I had a definite answer to my mom’s question whether she was going to meet Jesse anytime soon: hard pass.

I was pretty sure Jesse would want nothing to do with my mother and me, and even if she could overcome the twisted misfortune of our connection, there was still the deceit factor. I was going to have to own up to signing a contract where she was pretty much nothing more than a pawn. A means to an end. Then, finally, there was the money issue. I was officially indebted to Darren—millions upon millions of dollars I did not have. I could sell Café Diem, and the new hotel definitely had to go. Without a doubt, I was going to lose my pants in the upcoming months—probably the houseboat, too. I tried to tell myself that I would eventually reinvent myself. I always had.

The liar. The con. The thief. The escort.

I wore many hats, playing people like they were my favorite instrument. They say you win some, you lose some, but the latter, I’d never really experienced. Not until I’d gained something that actually mattered.

Fuck it. I would lose my pants, and my properties, and my business, but not her. Not Jesse.

With that in mind, I hopped on my bike and headed toward her house. The plan was to come clean, and maybe try to convince her not to kill me. I was hoping my pissing all over Darren’s threats and choosing her over the money was going to earn me some bonus points. Of course, I’d never been fucked by a guy who agreed to take me out for money, so what the fuck did I know?

Shit.

When I arrived at El Dorado, I pushed the automatic button for the neighborhood’s gate and watched as it remained locked. Jesus fuck. They’d changed it. They’d changed the electronic system. Didn’t take a genius to know who’d done it.

Samantha was the only person who’d given the key to an outsider.

Now, she was no longer a client.

What she was, was: pissed, vindictive, and no longer of use to me.

I parked my Harley in front of the gate. My foot was already on the first black railing, when I heard someone behind me.

“Trespassing in broad daylight. If you want to buy your lawyer their next Cabo villa, just open a GoFundMe account,” Vicious practically yawned.

I turned around, tipping my chin down to inspect him. He was tucked inside his silver Aston Martin One-77, one arm resting on the edge of his open window.

“Just open the fucking gate.”

“Bane. Didn’t recognize your face without the pube hair. Where you headed?” He skipped the snarky comment, and that’s how I knew even he took pity on me. Wow. I must’ve looked like one pathetic piece of crap.

“The Morgansens’.” It pained me to even say Darren’s last name.

Vicious flicked his Ray-Bans down, scrutinizing me. “Business going well?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.” I was still hanging from the gate like a drunken monkey when he pushed his automatic button and the thing started moving. I hopped down. Vicious cocked his head to his right.

“Get in.”

“I have my bike.”

“They’ll see you with it inside—they’ll freak out. Samantha Haggins got a verbal spanking the other day for giving her boy toy the keys. Any guesses who he might be?”

Damn. I shook my head and got into his car.

Vicious didn’t try to coax any details out of me on our ride to the house, and I tried not to think about how nervous I was to see Jesse. When he dropped me off in front of the colonial mansion, he produced a joint from his pocket, lit it, took a hit, and handed it over to me.

“No longer strangers,” he said.

I stared at him impatiently, but took the joint, because I needed it. I shook my head. “I think I’m in deep trouble, Baron.”

“Good. That means that there’s someone in your life that’s worth the risk.”

There’s a saying in Russian. Trouble never comes alone. I should have known when I left Darren’s office that there was more to come. But I didn’t, because I was so fixated on the unfolding clusterfuck I’d gotten myself into, I hadn’t even bothered to return Jesse’s call.

She opened the door, her eyes and nose red, the rest of her face the palest I’d ever seen. Her hair was a mess, and her eyes lacked that mischievous zing that made my dick hard. I immediately forgot my long, elaborate speech and took a step in, jerking her into my arms.

“You okay?”

“Shadow died.”

“Fuck,” I breathed, clutching her harder, my nose buried in her hair. “When?”

“This morning. Pam found him, but didn’t call me. He had cancer. She’s known for…a while.”

Jesse delivered the news with the kind of detachment that showed me that she was still in shock. Now was not the time to drop another bomb on her ass, and definitely not the time to drag her into my war with Darren. At the same time, I was aware that he was about to arrive home sometime soon, and I needed her out of there. I pulled back, running my fingers over her eyes, hair, cheeks, lips. Doing inventory, making sure everything was intact. That my Jesse was still mine. She was. For now.

“Where is he now?”

She looked up to the belly of her stairway. “I carried him up to my room. I didn’t know what to do. I need to bury him. But, Roman…”

She burst into tears again, and I held her for a few minutes, feeling the blood roar in my ears, before marching in and going up the stairs. Pam was coming down as I was going up. Her face told me she no longer wanted to fuck me, or if she did, it was with a broomstick up my ass. I flipped her the finger and continued to Jesse’s room, picked Shadow up, wrapped him up in a sheet, and carried him downstairs.

“Where are you taking the dog?” Pam barked from the kitchen, fixing herself a drink. I didn’t answer. I wanted to kill her, her husband, and Dr. Wiese, who’d taken the shortcut and dropped the C-bomb on Pam, just because he’d known it would be easier, that Jesse was fragile and sensitive when it came to her dog.

“Come on, Snowflake.”

I hoisted Shadow to the trunk and climbed into the Rover. Jesse followed in silence. I drove to the reservoir on the outskirts of town, knowing there’d be plenty of land for me to bury him there. Snowflake sniffed and looked out the window. I didn’t want to force a conversation, knowing how many things were going through her head. Sometimes she held my hand. I wanted so bad to squeeze hard and tell her there was more. That she needed to be strong for me, because shit was about to get real complicated, real fast.

“Jesse.”

“Mrs. B is dying. Her kids don’t want to come to California to say goodbye,” she said flatly, staring out the window, flicking the glass with her thumb and forefinger.

I bit down on a string of curses. “Is that so?”

“Yeah. They said I should stop contacting them. I wanted them to come here while she was still lucid, but that’s not going to happen. Know what else is not going to happen? My going back to living with Pam. I’ve had enough of her bullshit. The only thing I really cared about in that house was Shadow, and he is gone now.”

I knew I was cooking up a disaster, considering the shit I was keeping from her, but couldn’t stop myself, anyway. “You’ll stay with me.” It wasn’t a question.

“I was thinking of asking Gail. She needs a roommate.”