“Are you done?” I asked, sitting perfectly still in my seat, rejecting any sentiment that stemmed from Troy looking royally and thoroughly pissed at me. This was a first. We’d had our arguments before, of course we had, but we always ended up seeing eye to eye. Not this time. “Because if so, you know where the fucking door is. I’m sorry the student outdid the master, but sometimes, old man, that’s just the way it is.”

He stared at me with a look of complete disbelief. Despite myself, I felt my stomach roiling, turning over and over, like it was folding into a small origami square.

He offered me a noncommittal grunt and dashed away, leaving the faint scent of his cologne and a hell of a headline on the newspaper.

I turned my attention back to the Excel sheet, noticing, for the first time, a company trip to the Maldives I could use to max out the expenses proportion. An easy eight-hundred-thousand-dollar hole in the budget to throw the IRS off.

I started making the necessary moves.

Gerald would pay for what he did with his blood.

Even if it cost me my relationship with my adoptive father.

After working into the wee hours, I stopped by the card rooms again, checking on the tables, making sure we were making killer profits before locking up my office door.

The night turned from black to blue by the time I made my way to my (newly fixed) Porsche. I unlocked the doors and put my hand on the handle when the cold barrel of a gun dug between my shoulder blades, biting into my skin.

The voice that came after it was unmistakable.

I would recognize it anywhere because I’d spent nearly a decade listening to it wail.

“Busted, kiddo.”

Gerald.

“Now get into the car, nice and easy. I’ll take the passenger’s seat,” he instructed, his voice and the gun quaking with both adrenaline and fear.

I lifted my hands haphazardly, smirking.

“Do you even know how to use a gun, Gerry?”

“Don’t call me Gerry.” He dug the metal into my skin. “My name is Gerald. You’re the only person to call me Gerry, and I despise it. I only let you get away with it because I thought it was a term of endearment.”

“You were wrong,” I deadpanned.

“Tell me about. In the car. Now. No funny business. I will shoot to kill, Brennan. You’ve left me with nothing. Not my family, not my business, and not my pride.”

I slid into the Porsche calmly, not breaking a sweat. My fear of being shot by him was somewhere below zero. Firstly, because I didn’t think he had the guts to pull the trigger, and, secondly, because even if he did shoot, which was unlikely, he would miss. He didn’t have a steady hand, and all I needed was one small error to snatch the gun from between his sweaty fingers.

Thirdly, and most importantly, I didn’t care if I died. I never was much of a fan of living in the first place. I enjoyed very few things, and one of them was Gerald’s daughter, who did not want anything to do with me anymore. My fault, of course, for pushing her away, knowing beyond reasonable doubt that her family would never let her flaunt the help in high society.

“Put the gun down, Gerry. I’ll take us to your apartment, but not because you’re threatening me with a gun. I can grab it from you blindfolded with my arms tied behind my back. I’ll come willingly because I’m interested in what you have to say and how much you know,” I said, my voice soaked with amusement. It was high time we had a conversation about what mattered.

“B-b-bullshit!” he stuttered. “You will do as I say because I—”

I had no interest in letting him finish that sentence. I turned around quickly, elbowing the gun and sending it careening across the road. Gerald let out a high-pitched moan of surprise, making a beeline to seize it, squatting down to the ground. I was taller, leaner, and faster. I sauntered my way to him as he bent down to take the weapon, pressed my loafer onto his hand—breaking a few small bones in the process, no doubt—just as his fingers curled around the base of the gun.

I smacked my lips together.

“You rich pricks aren’t very good at listening.”

“You will do as I say, goddammit!” He wiggled under my foot desperately. I grabbed him by the shirt, dragging him toward my car as he kicked and grunted in annoyance, pocketing his gun after checking if it was cocked (shocker: it was not).

I hurled Gerald inside and slammed the door, getting into the driver’s seat next to him and starting the car.

“Where to?” I grumbled.

“The penthouse. The one Hunter and Sailor lived in before moving into their own house.”

I nodded, noticing that he shook beside me. Unbelievable. I put his daughter through so much shit, and she always gave me one hell of a fight. But this guy, he couldn’t even sit still without wanting to piss his pants. I didn’t know where Aisling got her strength, but it sure wasn’t from her fucking parents.

When we got to the penthouse and Gerald pushed the door open and started his verbal diarrhea, I pressed my finger to my mouth then started looking around the living room to see if it was bugged. As far as I could tell, it wasn’t. I sat at the dining table, smiling sardonically at him.

“You may continue with your meltdown now, Gerry.”

Gerald erected himself to his full height, jutting his chin out, trying to appear braver than he was. The weight loss made him slightly less deplorable physically, but I still knew that behind the exterior was a man who deserved a slow and painful death.

“You’ve been caught, Sam Brennan. I set a trap for you, and you fell for it,” Gerald boasted, still standing up, for some reason beyond my grasp.

“You already said,” I yawned. “Care to elaborate?”

Gerald leaned forward, pressing his fingers to the oak dining table as he spoke.

“When you asked me to give you a list of all the women I’d had an affair with, I got suspicious. It seemed farfetched, and as time went by and you dragged your feet about my little problem, I got even more suspicious. You’d never failed a mission I’d given you before, and suddenly, you didn’t have as much as a lead. I couldn’t understand why you left me to drown. Then the poisoning happened. And the cufflinks …”

“Christ, Gerry, I was there when all of this happened. Get to the juicy part. My time is precious.” I looked around, wondering if he had any good coffee.

He straightened his spine.

“Aisling made me do it. She told her mother and me what to do, that way we could know for sure.”

“Made you do what?” I spat out, losing patience.

The mention of her name made me nauseous. This was outrageous. I couldn’t be nauseous. I wasn’t a fucking damsel in distress.

“Plant a bug. A mole. A trap. See, Aisling said that the only way to outsmart you is to beat you at your own game. Together, we found a woman from my past—Barbara McAllister, in this case—and had her assist us. We knew if you contacted her, that would mean that you were after my throat and not those who harmed me.”

I stared at him, speechless.

Aisling played me.

And she fucking won, too.

She loved me, yes, but not so much that she was blinded by my actions.

Even more than her affections for me, she was loyal to her family, and hell if it didn’t make me miss her even more.