LITMIR.BIZ

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friends stepped into my path. “She wants to leave. Let her go.” I didn’t have the coherence to form words, but my fists flew on instinct. I’d bloodied Kristopher’s nose and laid one of his friends out cold before the other two managed to toss me onto the front porch. But by then, Liv was gone. Along with our car.

      I sank onto the steps, colder inside than out, reeling from what she’d said, but I still hadn’t truly heard. She’d dumped me. In the middle of a party full of people I’d never met. Ten minutes before I was going to ask her to marry me. It didn’t make any sense.

      The front door opened behind me, and I shifted to make room for whoever wanted past.

       “You okay?” Liv’s friend Anne sat next to me on the top step, tucking a strand of red hair behind her ear. “I saw what happened.”

       “Then you know I’m not okay.”

       “Liv took the car?”

       And everything else that had ever mattered to me. But I could only nod. “Want a ride?”

       “No, I want a drink. Lots of them. “

       Anne nodded, as if she could taste the truth in my words. She probably could. “There’s a Hudson’s half a mile from here.” She stood, wobbling on her feet—she’d probably already had too much. “That’s where I’m headed. You’re welcome to come.”

      I stared up at her, and I could see the pain on her face. Whatever this asshole had done to her had hurt her. A lot. I could sympathize—there was now a gaping hole where my own heart had been minutes earlier.

      “I’m driving …” I pulled the keys from her hand, and she only smiled and led me to her car. I started the engine as the guy on the radio counted down the last three seconds of the year.

       “It was a shitty year anyway.” Anne punched the radio power button. “Maybe this one will be better. “

       “Not likely,” I mumbled, as I pulled away from the curb. “Happy fucking New Year.”

       Four

      “Hey, Liv,” Tomas said, as I pulled open the heavy back door before he could push it open for me. You’d think he’d quit trying. “You’re late.”

      “Yup. Passive resistance.” I put my hands behind my head and spread my feet so he could pat me down, then clomped across the kitchen, my boots echoing on the marble tile.

      “He doesn’t like it when you’re late,” Tomas called out from behind me, unwilling—or maybe disallowed—to leave his post at the back door.

      I turned to face him, walking backward as he rubbed the row of three interlocking blue rings tattooed on his exposed left bicep, indicating his midlevel rank in the organization and his position as syndicate muscle. “Exactly.”

      Tomas shook his head slowly, half amused, half worried, and I wondered how much shit he’d had to take because of my twenty-minute tardy. East of the river, the concept of not shooting messengers was unpopular at best. I felt kinda bad about that. Really.

      I crossed the foyer and ignored the main staircase in favor of the dim hallway beyond, where two of the three doors were closed. Bypassing the open guest bathroom, I stopped in front of the only door on the left and paused for a deep breath. The kind of breath you take before you step into the sewer, hoping you won’t have to inhale again before you’re out. But you will have to, and every breath you take will remind you that you’re standing knee-deep in someone else’s filth, and that no matter how hard you scrub afterward, you’re never going to feel truly clean again.

      Then I pushed the door open and walked in without knocking.

      Confusion sparked in the disconnect between my eyes and my brain, before comprehension was rerouted through my ears. It was the heavy breathing that finally clued me in. There was a girl in his lap, behind his desk, nibbling—or maybe sucking—on his neck. Or maybe his ear. And the rhythmic rise and fall of her body said that kissing wasn’t the extent of this little demonstration.

      They knew I’d come in, but the show didn’t stop—a consequence of those twenty minutes I’d made him wait—and it wouldn’t stop until I officially acknowledged that I’d seen. But the joke was on him. I didn’t care who he screwed, and the sight of him being ridden by the nanny, or the maid, or whoever it was this week wasn’t going to improve my punctuality. Quite the opposite, in fact.

      But since I was already there.

      “Ahem.” I cleared my throat loudly, one hand still on the door handle. They both froze, pretending to be surprised, and the girl lifted her head, tossing long, straight black hair over her shoulder. And that’s when I saw her arm.

      Oh, shit.

      Beneath the usual interlocking rings, two in this case, her left bicep was tattooed with three beautifully lettered words in a golden band all the way around her arm—a sealed oath and a symbolic wedding ring she could never take off.

      Fidelitas. Muneris. Oboedientia.

      Fidelity. Service. Obedience.

      Michaela. Shit, shit, shit! He wasn’t fucking the staff, he was fucking his wife.

      That was new.

      Ruben Cavazos peered at me over her shoulder, dark eyes shining. He looked at least a decade younger than his age—his early fifties—yet easily a decade older than his wife. “Olivia. Join us?”

      I raised one brow. “Is that an invitation or an order?”

      “It is an option.”

      “Then this is my refusal.”

      He laughed, and Mrs. Cavazos scowled in profile at the room in general. He couldn’t actually order me to sleep with him—or them—a fact I reminded him of often. But I wasn’t sure if his wife knew that.

      He patted her thigh, bared by the skirt hiked up to her waist and trailing between his legs. When she only leaned down for another kiss, his expression hardened, and the next slap was hard enough to make me wince.

      Michaela stood, and her skirt fell to her knees, covering the fresh red splotch from his hand. She straightened the blue gauzy material as she turned to me, dark eyes blazing with a fury she probably had no idea we shared. “You’re late,” she spat, by way of greeting, excuse, explanation and a general “fuck you.”

      “Mea culpa.” I didn’t hate her like she hated me. I’d tried, over and over, and failed every time. Instead, I pitied her, and that just pissed her off even more.

      “Meika, bring in a glass of Scotch for Ms. Warren,” Cavazos said, and his wife stopped two feet from the door, glaring at me openly.

      “Ruben, it’s ten in the morning,” I said, then glanced at her, trying not to let pity leak into my expression.

      “Coffee’s fine.”

      She stomped past me, muttering angrily in Spanish, too fast for me to pick up anything more than bitch. I heard that one a lot.

      Cavazos laughed. “Close the door,” he called after her, and she slammed it hard enough to shake the framed photos on the wall—a gallery of Ruben Cavazos, pictured with every city official and national and foreign dignitary he’d ever met.

      He stood, zipped his black slacks and circled his desk to sit on the front corner.

      I dropped into one of the leather chairs in front of his desk. “She hates me.”

      “With a rather colorful intensity.” He chuckled again. “Do you blame her?”

      “I blame you.”

      More laughter. His good moods were scarier than

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