I followed him into the kitchen. He was at the sink washing his hands when I moved up behind him and mirroring Wynona, I hugged him, around the waist because I was taller. “I loved every second of that.”
“It’s just a pumpkin.”
I pressed a kiss right where I knew his devil tattoo was. “It was so much more than that and you know it.”
I didn’t wait for his reply and left the kitchen, wiping my happy tears from my eyes.
Toward the end of the evening I was sitting around the fire pit with Ricki and Missy. The guys were inside watching a game. We were bundled in blankets, hats and gloves, but it was such a beautiful evening with the clearest sky above, that we weren’t ready to go in.
“It’s so beautiful here.”
“I told you.” Missy’s comment brought a smile.
“I didn’t know Damian was Amelia’s brother,” Ricki said.
My eyes moved from the star-filled sky to Ricki. “Did you know Amelia?”
“Yeah. She hired me. Great lady. It was so sad watching her fight so hard only to lose. The bar was amazing when she owned it.”
“How so?”
“She had the coolest stuff, vintage—an old jukebox, framed baseball cards. She was a collector and most of her stuff she kept at the bar. It made sense because she was there all the time.”
“Where’s the stuff now?”
“Piece by piece it’s been removed.”
I didn’t like where this was going. “By Janice.”
“That would be my guess. She’s selling it and pocketing the money, which makes her lowering our wages just bitchy.”
“She lowered your wages?”
“When she took over, she dropped it to just over minimum wage, said we would make it up in tips. The tips are great, but with the amount of money that flows through that place why is she docking us a couple dollars an hour?”
Because she was a greedy bitch.
“She docked their pay. She’s selling off your sister’s things.”
Damian and I were in the kitchen after everyone left. He didn’t seem surprised by the news.
“You knew?”
“I suspected. She’s been selling off the stock too. She’s getting ready to run.”
“What the hell was that scene then the other day?”
“She’s not one to take things lying down. She thought to intimidate you to get me to back off.”
“That didn’t work.”
His smile was wicked. “No it didn’t.”
“So what are we going to do?”
His expression changed for just a second or two, the way he studied me left me feeling all gooey inside. “The sheriff should be picking her up soon for felony fraud and theft.”
I was sure I looked like a guppy, but I shouldn’t have been surprised that Damian was on top of this, that he could multitask. Still it felt good knowing Janice wouldn’t be getting away with it.
“So it hasn’t just been Cam’s stuff you’ve been working on.”
“She went about it underhandedly, but she was the right person to run the place. She knew Amelia, she knew the bar so I sat back and waited to see how it would play out. In the beginning she kept to the status quo, but she got comfortable and cocky. I have a list of every item sold and to whom.”
“How’s that possible?”
“Mic. I did some recon, discovered he was ex-military and offered him a side job.”
“To keep an eye on Janice.”
“He was a computer systems specialist, so he’s compiled quite a nice dossier on her. She’s getting ready to run, but she’s not going anywhere.” He grinned then said, “I like hearing you say what are we going to do about it.”
“We’ve been a we since we were seventeen.”
The light kept flickering, the fluorescent bulb humming as it illuminated Federico at his favorite table, at his favorite restaurant. As was his way, the place was closed so he had the whole restaurant to himself. The man was wearing a bib, a fucking paper bib as he cracked the shells of the crab and slurped the meat into his mouth. Juice dripped down his chin onto that bib, but fucking hell, he was grown man. His security team surrounded him, providing him a false sense of security…a man past his prime but holding on too tightly to the last threads of his glory days. He had finally agreed to talk with Lucien and I, but I should have known the man wouldn’t make it easy. He cracked another crab leg and sucked up the meat.
“You’ve got to have rocks in your heads thinking I’m going to discuss my business with you. That first meeting I gave you as a courtesy. You shouldn’t have asked for a second.”