Total pages in book: 38
Estimated words: 35174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 35174 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 176(@200wpm)___ 141(@250wpm)___ 117(@300wpm)
Never one to back down, Livingston merely cocked an eyebrow. “I’m long past the age where you can scare me, or even threaten me.”
Instead of being shocked by his defiance or even, dare he say it, put out by the action, his old man gave him a look that sent chills up his spine. The bastard was up to something.
“You forget, son, there are others whose lives you interact with that I’m sure you care about. My reach is long.” He looked deliberately to the door.
The one that Daisy had just gone out of. The fear he’d experienced when she had slipped into the crowd was minuscule to what slammed him now. His father could ruin her.
Chester and Quincy stood in his doorway. “Get him out of here. Pass the word, next one to let him in my property loses their job and will not be able to get work not only in this state, but in the fucking country.” They both nodded without blinking and took his father out of the room.
Livingston snapped his gaze to his father. “You mess with her, in any manner, and I will make you rue the day you fucked my mother and impregnated her with me. Trust me when I say you’ll wish you’d been a eunuch, or at the very least covered up your dick. Are we clear on this?” He closed the door on his answer.
Back at his desk, he returned to his email and got into the one that Daisy had sent him. After digging the paper out of his pocket, he typed in the code and settled in to read. Once he’d finished her report, anger was a living, breathing pulse beneath his skin.
He checked the cameras and confirmed his old man had been escorted off the premises then went to the door even as he paged two more security officers, and had the cops called. Monica looked up at him, phone to her ear, her expression blank. He’d used to admire the look but now wanted to yell and demand something. Anything.
She hung up the phone and tilted her head to the side. “Something I can get you, Mr. Rhodes?”
He walked up to her desk and pushed his hands into his pants pockets. “Why?”
She blinked and shook her head. “Why? Why what?”
The last thing he wanted to do was play any more games. “The money you stole from me. Why?”
He didn’t look away from her but studied her expression. Her bright red lips flattened a bit before she actually looked put out.
“I was bored and I deserved the money. Do you know what it’s like working for you? All the times you changed your plans at a whim. The never having a day or even a weekend to myself. Dropping my plans at the sound of your specific ringtone and running to your side? Do you know how that fucked up my life?”
“You could have quit.”
She snorted. “You couldn’t live without me.”
“So you figured you would steal from me? And why did you try to pin this on Bradford?”
“He teased me.”
The guards and the cops strode off the elevator.
Livingston blinked. “He teased you? Like, flirted with you? Bradford flirts with everything and pretty much fucks anything on two legs.”
Her expression soured. “Not me. He told me I was off limits because of who my boss was.”
Look at that, his brother had some morals after all. Once he found him, and kicked his ass for vanishing like this, he would thank him.
“And because of that you set him up to take the fall for embezzling from my company?”
“He fucked my sister! In my bed. Seems the least he could have done was share the dick with me. I’m better than her, I’m the one with a steady job, I’m not dancing my ass around a pole while men shove singles in my G-string. We had a connection, him and I. Plus your father said when we got married, he would give me a large allowance for helping split you two up.” She shoved to her feet. “Then that bitch showed up and started digging. I didn’t think she would find anything. When the other one looked, well, he told me that I was safe.” A shudder. “It was worth having to put out for him.”
How she said ‘he’ told him what man she spoke of. “My father? You’ve been working with him this whole time?”
“Yes.” A brief simpering grin. “I gave him whatever he wanted and he paid me. Money and sex. But that woman you brought in, she played everything close to the chest and when you put her beside you, I had to try other ways to get to her.” She propped her hands on her hips, accentuating the narrow tuck of her waist in the dark blue dress she wore. “I don’t know how she figured it out, her kind aren’t that smart.”