With a bag of Thai food in one hand, I unlock my door and push into my apartment. As the door slams shut behind me, a loud meow assaults my ears before Captain sprints from the hall to greet me.
“Hey, buddy. Give me half a minute to drop my shit, then we can share some Pad Thai.”
Captain is my best friend. He’s a normal cat. Nothing fancy. Just big. Like extra big. I think he was about 20 pounds on our last trip to the vet. He’s supposed to lose a few pounds, but hey, aren’t we all? Sure, he might be pudgy, but he can still haul ass to perform his daily after-work greeting. He’d probably greet me like this at other times too, but let’s face it, I don’t go anywhere but work.
True to my word, it only takes me a moment to kick off my shoes, drop my bag on the floor, yank my bra off, and plop my ass on the couch with a lapful of noodles. The post-meeting meeting that I had with Cheryl and Monica was surprisingly productive, given my state of mind. It was also long, so I have plenty to keep me busy over the next couple of days, including the weekend. Which is good since assistant-to-the-Devil, Brent, didn’t waste any time hunting me down. He has me on the books for my first meeting with Vincent, Monday at 2 o’ clock in the afternoon.
But I refuse to think about that anymore tonight. Tonight, I’m going to binge on carbs and pretend that my life isn’t crashing and burning around me.
My fork is inches from my face when my phone starts to ring. I shove the noodles into my mouth as I hesitate in answering. I ignored his call last night, not wanting to talk to him after the whole office sex incident. But if I ignore his call a second night in a row, he’ll go all stalker mode on me.
I hit answer and put it on speaker so I can keep eating.
“Hey, John.”
“Sister. You home?”
“Yep, just walked in a few minutes ago.”
John hums. “How’s the Cap?”
I glance down at Captain and smile. “Well, he’s currently sitting on my coffee table devouring a chunk of peanut crusted chicken, so I’d say he’s doing fine.”
“Sounds about right. Give his fat ass a scratch for me.”
My brother acts all tough, but he loves my cat almost as much as I do. “I’ll do that. How about you? You still at work?”
“Yeah. Just taking a food break. But don’t worry, my current project isn’t exciting.” Exciting is John’s code for dangerous. “How’d your meeting go today? This was your big intro thing for your new client, right?”
“It was okay.” I’m talking with my mouthful, but it doesn’t do much to cover my lack of enthusiasm.
Of course, John takes notice. “You don’t sound all that happy about it. Usually, you’re frothing at the mouth to give me details. Too many details.” I can picture him rolling his eyes.
“Yeah, well, this one is different.” I sigh and set down my fork.
“Different how?”
I don’t really want to tell him about this, but I want to talk to someone. I’ve become so much of a workaholic that almost all my friends are colleagues, and I can’t tell any of them about Vincent. I’m sure Jessica would just about die to hear my gossip, but then I’d be asking her to keep secrets from our boss and that’s not fair.
“Different how, Sasha?” John’s tone has turned concerned.
“It’s just that…” I huff out a breath. “You don’t want to hear about this.”
“Sasha.” He’s using his dad voice now.
“Fine. If you must know, I slept with the guy. But I didn’t know he was the guy at the time. I didn’t even know he was with the company! I mean I figured that out yesterday, but it’s not like I could have guessed who he really was! And now I have to work with him. And I can’t tell Cheryl. Or Jessica. And it’s a mess.” My voice loses its steam. “It’s a mess.”
John’s silent for a moment. “Uh, back up. What guy?”
I don’t really want to go there with John, but I don’t see another option since I already started. “He’s a guy at the company I’m consulting for.”
“No shit. I got that part. But can you avoid interacting with him?”
I scoff. “Not a chance.”
“And you didn’t think about that before you…” My 38-year-old brother has trouble referencing sex when he’s talking to me.
“It doesn’t matter.” I save him for saying the words. “You don’t want to talk about this. Let’s change the topic. Like I said, I didn’t know who he was at the time.” I realize my mistake as soon as I say it.
“You slept with someone you didn’t know! Don’t you know how dangerous that is? Did he give you a fake name?”
I groan and drop my head against the back of the couch. “Oh my god, you are so dramatic. He didn’t give me a fake name. I just didn’t…” Crap. No good way to say this. “I didn’t get his last name.”
“Jesus, Sasha. Where’d you meet this guy, at a fucking bar?”
He’s being sarcastic. I know he is since I never go out. But he’s not wrong.
He reads my silence correctly. “Seriously? Since when did you start trolling bars for tail?”
“Tail?” I scoff. “Really, John? And I wasn’t trolling for anything. We happened to meet on my one night of vacation.”
“Vegas! You hooked up with a complete stranger in Vegas? Goddamnit, that was after I talked to you, wasn’t it? You were all alone! Anything could have happened to you!” John nearly shouts. Shit, I really should’ve just ignored his call.
“I know. Okay, I know. But it was fine. I was fine. Clearly, I made it out alive and unharmed. Vincent isn’t a bad guy. We had a good time.” I cringe as I say good time, it sounds so sleazy.
“Vincent what?”
“Huh?”
“I’m assuming you’ve since found out his last name. What is it?”
“John, I know what you’re thinking, but I don’t need you to run a background check on him. I know everything there is to know.”
John sounds incredulous. “Oh, really. How do you figure that?”
I take a breath. “Because Vincent is my client. Vincent Mazzanti.”
John lets out a string of curses, but they’re muffled, like he pulled the phone away from his face. Then his voice comes back full force. “Fucking hell, Sasha. You basically live the life of a fucking nun, then you go out and bag yourself the patriarch of a goddamn crime syndicate. Without even realizing it!”
I can’t help it. I burst out laughing. I’m laughing so hard I have to move my takeout, so it doesn’t shake off my lap and onto the floor.
A solid minute later I’m catching my breath when John ends his silence.
“You done?” He does not sound amused.
“Thank you. I needed that.” I chuckle. “Patriarch of a goddamn crime syndicate.” I mimic John’s voice. “You’re so dramatic. Go ahead and run your background check. The whole point of my current project is to introduce Vincent to the world. Show that he’s a good guy. That the company is clean. I mean yes, clearly the mobster background is there, but we already knew that most of the organized crime stuff ended when Vincent’s dad was still in charge. He started turning the businesses legit even back then. Rumor is that’s why he was murdered.” My mood sobers at the reminder of that event. “Vincent was there. He witnessed his father’s murder when he was just a kid.”
“I remember reading about that.”
I shake off the dark cloud trying to settle on my shoulders. “Yeah, well they might be on the up-and-up now, but you may want to be careful about running a check on him. I’m not sure how all that stuff works but I imagine there’s a flag somewhere. They’ll probably know you’re looking.”
John grunts. “I’m not worried about that. But if I find so much as a toe out of line, I’ll come up there and arrest him myself.”
I smile. “I’m no expert, but I don’t think that’s how your jurisdiction works.”
“I’m not worried about it.” He repeats.
These damn alpha cavemen idiots.
“Alright, I gotta go.” John says, ending the conversation. “Take care of yourself.”
“Same to you.”
“Try to not sleep with any more mob bosses.”
I hang up on him.
Just when I think things couldn’t get more messed up. My special agent brother just found out that I’m sleeping with the newest head of the Mazzanti family.
Correction, I slept with. Past tense. Because that’s not happening ever again.
