Derek took out his anger on the steak on the grill. How could she? How dare she bring her lover to their house warming!
“Bro, that cow is as dead as it’s going to get.” Damien snickered behind him.
“Dude, what’s up?” Dale asked.
Derek turned to them holding up the barbecue fork tightly in his hand as if he was preparing to stab Daniel in the chest. It wasn’t such a bad idea either.
“Did you know Daniel is Elaine’s lover? And she invited him here, to our house warming family only party?”
They both stared at him like he had stupid written in capital letters on his forehead.
“What?” he barked at them.
“I remember you bringing your lover at the time to Dale’s birthday party,” Damien said.
“Elaine wasn’t there,” he spat out through clenched teeth.
“Are you sure they are lovers?” Dale asked rubbing his chin.
Hope! Pathetic but yes, he had his fingers crossed that the doubt in Dale’s voice had basis. He had been an idiot all those months ago when he threw Elaine’s American dream family in her face. He’d been stupid enough just a few hours ago when he hurt her with his words. He didn’t know her story, but it must have been bad enough for her to want something so different so badly. And as much as he would like to keep denying it, he wanted that crazy woman so much. A man didn’t stay in a monogamous relationship for three years, go through dangerous situations just to see his woman again if there wasn’t something close to if not love involved there somewhere. He always thought her incapable of love and that’s probably why he’d been able to convince himself that they just had an exciting lustful relationship. But seeing her with Katya the past few weeks and just a moment ago when she leaped into Daniel’s arms. He was happy about the former, but the latter made his blood boil. She’d greeted him in a number of ways, the most damn sexy greetings ever, but never once with such pure joy.
“Well for one, Daniel’s here with his girl and I can tell you now the man is in love. It was about damn time,” Dale sighed those last few words. If anyone could understand what Derek felt it was him. Daniel was Ellie’s best friend and had been secretly in love with her for years. “And the vibe I got from the three of them, Elaine is about to go back to her old ways to solve their problem.”
Derek tensed, “What?”
“Tomas Jones is the villain in their story. We’ve being trying to book him for money laundering for the mob but couldn’t get enough evidence. We did get fraud charges to stick though. I don’t know how Daniel ended up defending him but during the trial I noticed he and the Mrs were getting pretty close for comfort.” Damien commented then sipped his beer from the bottle.
Derek recognized that name and he silently cursed. If he wasn’t wrong, he would be getting a call about it soon. And right on the nose his phone rang.
He held out the fork to Dale, “Watch the steaks for me while I take this call would you?”
Derek walked a few feet to the fence and answered his phone waiting for the other person on the line to sound out his company code first before he did his. “What’s up boss?”
“We have a situation.”
Derek silently groaned, “Not my problem anymore, you know that.”
“Well, your resignation is taking longer than you expected to process so you are still on Company time.”
Fucking asswipe! Derek snarled, “What do you want?”
“Katarina Pajari. How long have you know she’s the one who killed Grayson?” Derek didn’t respond. “From your silence I’m guessing right from the start. I know who she is to you, but I’m stumped on one thing. Exactly what did you do or say to get close enough to knock her up without her slitting your throat wide open? How is your little girl anyway?”
“You son of a bitch! You go near my daughter and I swear I’ll come for you and if I know Katarina well she’ll target your family before I get my hands around your neck so be very careful with the next words you say to me!”
A silence followed. The line had been drawn in the sand, sides had been picked and whatever was said next would decide how many if anyone would die.
“I want Tomas Jones taken out before sun up tomorrow and find out why Jackie the Ripper killed Greyson.”
“No, you find someone else to kill Jones, but I will find out about Greyson,” a compromise as far as he was concerned.
‘Fine. But your resignation is going to take a lot longer to process now.”
“Well then, it looks like I’ll be sleeping with one eye open and with a gun under my pillow,” without waiting for a response he hung up and walked back to the house.
“Derek, what’s wrong?” Damien asked.
“Not now. I need to speak to my dad, then Katarina.”
The conversation with his father went as he expected. He cursed a few times before he said he’d look into it. Code for he’ll handle it and put the fear of God in Derek’s superior enough to process his resignation faster and lose his number. Derek considered the problem taken care of. He went to speak to Katarina, but she was busy introducing Katya to who he suspected was Tomas Jones’ wife. She was beautiful and considering how Daniel was staring at her, Dale was right. The look on his face was that of a man in love and that whole lovers’ thing earlier was just to annoy him. He hoped, or Daniel would be a rat bastard for sleeping with one woman when he declared his love for another.