Up to Me(23)

I know he didn’t. But that does nothing to appease my anger. Watching Olivia smile like that for someone else was…was…

“You can’t act like that around employees, Gavin. Do you know the kind of legal shit storm you could cause?”

He holds up his hands in surrender. “My bad, Cash. It won’t happen again. I just wasn’t thinking.”

“Don’t let it happen again. I mean it.”

“It won’t,” he assures me solemnly. After a few seconds of silence, he makes mistake number two. “But damn that’s one hot sheila!”

His accent seems more pronounced, which only makes me angrier. It’s like he’s slipped into some mode where he’s trying to be more appealing to the women.

“That’s enough!” I snap.

Gavin grins and nods slowly, like he’s discovered something.

“Ahh, so you are seeing her.”

“I didn’t—”

“You didn’t have to. Don’t forget that I know you, mate. For a while now. I’ve seen you with your flavor of the month before and you’ve never given a shit if I flirt with them or not.”

“You’ve never—”

“The hell I haven’t! You’ve just never noticed before.”

I can’t even clear my mind enough to think back and determine whether it’s true or not. But I decide it doesn’t matter. What matters is that he keeps his hands off Olivia. His eyes, too.

“Olivia’s…she’s…it’s just…”

“Say no more. From now on, she’s my little sister.”

I look at him. Really look at him. In his eyes, I see my best friend. My business partner. One of the few people on the planet I actually trust. And I know he’s telling the truth.

I nod, too. “Good enough.”

Gavin sinks down in his chair a little, propping one ankle on his knee and lacing his fingers together behind his head. He’s back to his old comfortable self.

“So, what’s going on? From what I’m gathering, it must be pretty important.”

I’m sure he’s referring to my short temper. At least partly. Gavin is a very perceptive guy. His father was military and they moved around a lot. The family was stationed in Australia for several years when Gavin was young, which is where the trace of an accent comes from.

By the time Gavin was a teenager, they were living in Ireland. His father somehow got caught in the middle of two nasty groups of rebels and ended up getting himself, Gavin’s mom and Gavin’s older sister killed. It wasn’t long after that when Gavin went on to serve in a different kind of military. The kind that doesn’t go on resumes and people sometimes die after finding out about.

He was a mercenary for several years. He’s a few years older than me—around thirty, I think—but he’s got some of the best tactical skills I’ve ever seen. He’s pretty bad ass and I’m glad he’s my friend and on my side.

Aside from his keen intellect and…other experience, he’s a pilot. He can fly virtually anything with wings, from Cessnas, to small jets, to helicopters. In fact, now that he’s no longer a merc, that’s what he does when he’s not helping me with the club—he has a charter business for his chopper.

We met through my father. Dad used Gavin’s piloting services a few times when he first started getting things in order to break ties with the Bratva, the Russian mafia. Gavin was competent and discreet, and Dad learned quickly that he was a man who could be trusted, especially when it came to doing the right thing, despite the consequences.

Gavin kept in touch with Dad when he went to prison, so when the economy tanked and Gavin’s business started dropping off, Dad put him in touch with me for some extra work. We hit it off instantly. Since that day, Gavin has been my best friend and the closest thing to non-imprisoned family I’ve had for years.

And now I’m going to need his experience and his discretion more than ever before.

“How much did Dad tell you about what happened?”

Gavin relays what Dad told him and I fill in the blanks. Well, most of them anyway. I don’t tell him about Nash’s death, or that I’m living as both brothers and have been for seven years. That’s information I’d like to keep to myself as long as possible. That’s a level of trust I have in few people. Actually, more like one person.

Olivia.

“So, you have no idea who’s gonna be showing up here in the next…” Gavin looks at his watch. “Twenty minutes or so?”

“Not a clue. Dad must think or know that they either have some kind of information that can help me or that they have some way of getting us out of this without giving up valuable, one-of-a-kind leverage or somebody’s life.”