ARAWN
“Must have been a hell of a tea,” Jenson mocks, taking a sip of his beer bottle.
I throw down my cards with a shake of my head, taking my glass of bourbon from the table.
“Didn’t even ask what it was.”
“You should have! I’ll tell my wife I want the same too.” Harvey says, getting the table to laugh.
“You wish.” I grunt, and they continue to banter about my allegedly drugged tea and my amazing sleep experience.
It’s bad enough, and I didn’t mention that I slept in her bed rather than staying on the couch.
“It wasn’t drugged.” I state, picking up the newly dealt cards.
“I had my blood tested.”
Out of the 5 men, Jenson is the one to laugh the loudest.
I lower my head with a grin as I watch them crack up on my expenses. Although I would like them to stop, I have to realize that I’m taken aback by the fact as they are. I had really hoped that the tea was drugged.
This way, I would have gotten rid of her.
“Well, if she makes you feel good there is nothing wrong with it, right?” Mattia says with a big smile, and my expression darkens.
“What are you? My pastor?”
Harvey ruffles his light brown hair, making him flinch with a groan. While the other men join in a collective ‘aaw’, he clicks his tongue and straightens his hair back down.
“Stop it already!”
Mattia is the youngest of our round. As the son of an old boss that was called the king of the port, he took over his father’s reign, being a few years older than I was when I took mine. He is a good man, but he still has a long way to go.
If I was the one whose hair was to be ruffled, the one doing it would be drowning in acid the second his fingers would touch my hair. My mother used to shear my head as she retained it as bothersome, so I have kind of the ick with people touching my hair.
Well, all people except one, apparently.
“I will never ask you about anything ever again.” I murmur and Jensen laughs, his cigar clenched between his teeth.
“Bro, the sole thought of you thinking it was the herbs in the tea that made you sleep is hilarious.”
“Shut up already.” I growl, earning another round of laughter.
“Thank God that he needs us, guys.” Bernard snickers, waving at a hostess to get him another drink. “Otherwise, this would end in a massacre.”
I smirk, watching the young woman pouring his drink. “I’m just still figuring out how to replace you.”
His big grin grows as he points his index at me. “Good luck with that, boss.”
It is a real struggle to have them finally change the subject. They are rather determined to get more information about the girl out of me, but I’d rather cut my tongue out. Soon enough, we are talking about some idiotic sport again.
We have only one rule at our weekly poker round, and it’s not to talk about business. A stupid rule that was introduced by Jenson, as I would not talk about anything else.
Why is everybody so obsessed with what I want to talk about?
Hence, my stupid thought about satisfying my curiosity about herbs that might have granted me my first night of peaceful sleep.
The herbs.
Not that woman.
While they discuss some MVP, I lose myself in my thoughts of this morning. Taking a sip of my bourbon, I can’t prevent the image of her rising before my inner eye. I’ll be damned if I’ll get infatuated with some escort, but her face as I pushed into her, waking her up, just doesn’t stop haunting me. The way she clenched the sheets, buried her head back into the pillow, her creamy skin blushing.
Bloody hell.
The evening can’t finish soon enough. As we are waiting for the valets to get our cars, I put a cigarette between my lips.
“Do me a favor.” I say, lighting my cigarette.
“Shouldn’t you ask me to do you a favor?” Harvey tilts his head at me with a grin.
“There is a missing person’s report you should get rid of for me.”
“A missing person’s report?” He asks, taking the note that I’m handing him. “Did one of your soldiers fuck up?”
“No.” I push out the smoke, clenching my jaw as I watch the people scurry in front of the venue.
“It’s an old story that needs to be fixed.”
“Alright. I’ll take care of it.” He winks at me as he lets the note disappear into his coat.
“After all, there is nothing more reliable than the mayor’s chief of staff, right?”
***
“What do you mean, she hasn’t returned home?”
“She took a rental car and took off to a place in the mountains. Moss was following her but had to stop before she would discover him. The place she was going to would have blown his cover. He said that she was already getting suspicious, and he couldn’t risk following her into a place where there are no other people around. But he parked in an apparently good observation spot, and she hasn’t come back down yet.” Zack’s voice comes over the phone pragmatically, even if he seems worried.
Well, she is smart.
I sigh, playing with my pen. “Was she alone?”
“Yes, boss. For the much that we saw, she didn’t pick up anyone to take with her.”
Something rustles on his side before he speaks. “The man we saw enter the building with her a few weeks ago, wasn’t with her. And the one she was on the date with is still in the hospital, as we could gather.”
I scoff as the anger rising at my own thoughts is bugging me.
“But you didn’t see if there was already someone waiting for her.”
“No, boss.”
Taking a deep breath, I throw my pen on the desk. “Let Moss observe further and report to me.”
Disconnecting the call, rub my eyes with my hand. My sleep, which usually wasn’t anything that bothered me, other than making me tired, is now making me feel destructed. It seems like the few glimpses of good sleep have taken a toll on me, making me realize how bad my constitution has been before.
Such a crybaby.
What angers me most is that my brain can’t seem to find another reason for my good sleep as that woman. I can tell myself as much as I want that this can’t be, but it keeps overflowing my mind with fantastic memories that it gets hard to think. It got that worse that I even thought about texting her, to see her again after just one night without her. But fortunately, I could stop myself, before breaking my one-week rule as well.
Not that it was going so well with that before.
For some reason, I had her tailed since she left my penthouse the first night we met. And I keep telling myself that there must be something fishy about how she makes me feel.
There must be something behind it. And I’m sure there is someone paying her to get into my head.
Taking my phone, I call Dario, who answers right away.
“Boss.” He breathes out, and I’m sure that I interrupted him on a date.
“How come you didn’t find out who that man is?”
“What man?” It takes him a few seconds to connect the dots and I hear him shuffling through his clothes.
“Oh, we looked for him, but we couldn’t find him. He didn’t show up again. He didn’t come out of the building, so we were a bit taken by surprise.”
I groan, leaning back.
I must be out of my mind.
“Aren’t you with that woman? Ask her!”
He seems to be frozen for a second before he clears his throat.
“Babe, has your friend a boyfriend?”
Babe.
I laugh to myself as I hear a muffled voice answering.
“She has not, boss.”
“Who was he then?” I nearly shout, trying to overcome the feeling growing in my chest.
“She wouldn’t know. She knows about the light-haired gym guy, but there is no other man around, apparently.”
Scoffing again, I cut the call and put the phone down before I can catapult it against the wall.
I really thought he was her boyfriend.
He had waited for her in front of her building, got in with her and didn’t come back out. It was a few days before the marks on her neck appeared, and she had been evasive as I asked about them.
She normally wasn’t like that.
But on the other hand, she had lied about Francis, so what would I know?
I thought it was strange that she had me stay the night even if there was another man in the picture. But maybe he is out of town.
Hasn’t the key to her apartment.
Is waiting for her in a cabin in the mountains.
Damn it.