The Greatest Risk

“I’ve no earthly clue,” he admitted.

  She smiled a smile at him that was the first he’d ever gotten from a Sixx who was openly Simone.

  It was the brightest, most beautiful thing he’d seen in his life.

  Like flying right to the sun.

  * * *

  “Holy Moses, what are you going to do?” Susan asked.

  It was after dinner. They were still sitting at the dining room table. Susan had a drooping Crosby in her arms, giving him his bottle.

  And Stellan had just learned what Simone had told him earlier he would not believe, but never shared what that was.

  Simone shrugged. “Nothing much I can do. It isn’t like a lot of our clients aren’t schmucks,” she answered Susan’s question.

  “That’s gotta suck,” Harry noted.

  Simone gave her attention to Harry. “Usually, the other guy is a schmuck too so it doesn’t. But this time, all I’m getting from the guy we’re suing is that he’s a decent person. It was our guy who syphoned off the top, regularly blew everything they made, from what was in petty cash to expensing his fantasy football draw party in Vegas and made deals with his buds the business couldn’t support,” Simone explained.

  “And you broke into the good guy’s house and saw all his notes on this?” Harry asked.

  Simone grinned at him “Not officially. Officially, we have no idea that our opponent has kept profuse notes throughout their deteriorating personal and professional relationship. Notes that are of significant detriment to the case. But unofficially, his lawyer is pouring over every word I took pictures of in hopes of coming up with good answers for all this stuff when it’s introduced in court.”

  “Is he gonna come up with good answers?” Harry queried, and Simone’s grin turned into a smile.

  “Nope. But all the time he’s spending on it is billable hours, so it’s a win for the firm either way. But it’ll eventually be a loss for the client in two ways, and it’s appearing he deserves that double-whammy.”

  Harry chuckled.

  “If this guy is such a jerk and did such jerky things, why would he sue his ex-business partner?” Susan asked.

  Simone lifted her drink from the table, answering before taking a sip, “The sun rises, and a variety of jerks rise with it. Who knows why they do what they do? In this case, the only thing that’s important is prompt payment of bills.”

  Susan looked shocked. “Your attorney won’t advise him to drop the suit?”

  Simone put her drink down. “Our attorney spent two hours this afternoon trying to convince him his case is weak at best, and he should reconsider this course of action. He refused and accused the firm of not preparing appropriately to efficiently put forth his suit. I think at this point no one will be too cut up to mark one in the loss column.”

  “People,” Susan muttered, “I don’t get them.”

  “You and me both, sister,” Simone muttered back.

  They shared a small smile.

  Stellan looked from them to Harry, and then the men shared a small smile.

  “Should I break out those chocolates you brought?” Simone offered.

  Susan groaned.

  “Totally,” Harry answered.

  Simone shot Harry a huge smile. “Where did you hide them?”

  “Pantry, behind the olives. And just to say, you guys got a lot of olives.”

  “We both drink martinis,” Stellan muttered.

  “That explains it,” Harry muttered in return.

  Simone got up, and Stellan, lounged back in his chair that was across the table from Harry and Susan—not at the head, so no one was odd man out in seating—turned his head to watch her move to the pantry.

  He felt something and looked to Susan.

  His gut didn’t drop at witnessing her look.

  It warmed.

  “Just in case, you know…” Harry started quietly, gaining Stellan’s attention, “you didn’t get it from the drama we walked in on and the night being a good one, we approve.”

  Stellan inclined his head.

  “We better be seriously in the black this year, boss man, because I’m totally going five carats for that girl,” Susan shared.

  “You have an unlimited budget,” Stellan told her.

  She beamed.

  The beam died and she asked, “You okay about your mother?”

  “Absolutely,” he answered, turning his head as he sensed Simone coming back. He caught her eyes, gave her a soft look, and then he again gave Susan his attention. “The only thing troubling me is the fact that I realized I should have done it a long time ago.”

  “Preach that, my man, so maybe my woman will officially break ties with that ahsweepay she calls a father,” Harry put in.

  Stellan’s attention riveted on Susan.

  “Oh boy,” Simone muttered at his side, flipping open the box of chocolates on the table.

  “You’re speaking to him again?” Stellan asked.

  “I had to tell him he was going to be a grandfather … again,” Susan answered.

  “Considering all the love and devotion he’s given Crosby, and obviously you, but of course,” Stellan drawled sarcastically.

  “That’s it, bro. Tell it like it is,” Harry said.

  “Shut up, Harry,” Susan hissed.

  “No way, baby,” Harry returned.

  “He’s my father,” Susan reminded her husband.

  “I’m a father,” Harry retorted. “So I know what a father is, babe. And that man is no father.”

  “Damn right,” Stellan agreed.

  Susan’s narrowed eyes came to him. “You can pipe down too.”

  Stellan opened his mouth.

  But got nothing out.

  “Leave her be.”

  He looked to his side and watched Simone pop a chocolate in her mouth.

  “Darling, you don’t know the story,” he pointed out.

  “Nope, I don’t,” she agreed after swallowing. “What I do know is her telling her dad about the baby is not for her dad. It’s for her. She’s a good person doing the right thing. The right thing sometimes is not easy but it’s still right, and the goal is for her to be able to rest her head on her pillow and sleep at night because she did right even to a man who has done her wrong. So stand down, big brother. She’s got the real kind of love, so she can deal with him and be all right.”

  Before Stellan could kiss her terribly inappropriately in front of Susan and Harry, Susan spoke.

  “I am soooooooo seeing how having another being with female parts in our little family is going to work for me. Which means I soooooo hope this new one is a girl so she can totally even out the numbers.” Susan smiled at Simone. “And check it, baby-girl shopping and then toddler-girl shopping and then little-girl shopping followed by teenage-girl shopping. I mean, decades of that goodness. I’m going to be drowning in princess dresses until she gets married.”

  “If it’s a girl, I’m throwing it back,” Harry declared.

  That was when Stellan chuckled, he heard Simone’s soft laughter, and Susan looked in pain because with a now sleeping Crosby in her arms, she couldn’t punch her husband.

  Stellan stretched an arm along Simone’s shoulders and pulled her to his side.

  She didn’t resist. She rested into him and reached for another chocolate.

  “Shove those closer to me, Sixx,” Susan ordered, Simone complied, and Susan reached for one, telling Harry, “I’m totally ballooning up with this one and doing it with forethought.”

  “Baby, I don’t care if I have to cut a new door for you to get through, just deliver me a healthy kid with you the same and it’s all good.”

  Simone melted closer to Stellan’s side as Susan’s pique vanished.

  They enjoyed more easy conversation, but with a sleeping baby who needed his bed, it didn’t last long.

  However, this time, when Stellan stood on his front walk after saying his goodbyes, and while watching Susan and Harry load up and drive away, Simone stood in th
e curve of his arm at his side.

  After the brake lights dimmed when Harry pulled out onto the road, Stellan guided Simone into the house. He closed the door. He locked it.

  Then he pulled her in front of him and pushed her back into it, moving in close to her front, his hands coming to her jaw, bending his neck so his face was close to hers.

  “Well, hello there,” she murmured, her brown eyes warm and dancing.

  “Susan hates my father and has little time for my mother, most likely that will be even less now. Margarita hates my mother and doesn’t even mention my father. But neither of them has confronted her. Perhaps they feel it isn’t their place. Perhaps there’s been no opportunity to do so. You could have felt both those things, but you didn’t. You just did it. And thus there has been no one in my entire life, even Silie when she was alive, who stood up for me against either of my parents when they were treating me like shit … except you.”

  She stared up at him, looking shocked, then panicked, then angry.

  “No one?” she asked.

  “You can’t imagine, and I cannot describe, how beautiful it was to watch you get that angry and protective on my behalf, sweetheart.”

  The panic was edging back. “I—”

  He touched his mouth to hers to stop her from talking, moved away, and whispered, “Don’t. Don’t pollute that either, Simone. If you fight me on everything we have until you finally bow fully to your feelings for me, I don’t care. But don’t pollute that. It was too beautiful, and I need it to be exactly that for the rest of my days.”

  She held her body tense and held his gaze, so he watched as thoughts and feelings chased themselves through her eyes.

  He could not read all of them and didn’t try. He stayed silent and gave her time.

  Finally, she came to where she needed to be and gave him what that was.

  “I need you to fuck me now, Stellan, and do it hard.”

  “That will not be difficult to oblige,” he replied.

  “Then oblige,” she ordered.

  He quirked his brows. “Here at the door, or on the floor, or can you make it to our bed?”

  “Your choice.”

  He smiled.

  Her eyes dropped to his mouth to watch.

  And that decided it.

  He fucked her against the door.

  seventeen

  Two Halves Made Whole

  SIXX

  Saturday night, Sixx sat in her Cayenne with her Nikon binoculars to her eyes, watching through a window the not-so-riveting show of a broken man sitting alone in his living room watching the Investigation Discovery Channel.

  She’d searched his house. She’d searched his car. She’d again run his finances, his credit, his cell records, criminal records, civil records. She’d even done a social security trace, run a driver’s history, and hacked into the electronic employee records of two past employers. And she’d followed him now for days.

  But the plaintiff in the case her firm was working had a job in the garden department at Lowe’s and was barely scraping by due to the loss of pretty much everything considering his best friend fucked him over so badly. He’d had to sell his house and move into a one-bedroom condo. His girlfriend had even dumped him.

  He certainly wasn’t sitting on a mountain of money he’d scavenged from the company. In fact, the equipment they both owned that needed selling now that the company was dissolved but was in limbo due to the lawsuit would go a long way for the guy.

  Most specifically, paying his legal bills, which were eating him alive.

  Yeah, some of their clients were schmucks.

  And that was being nice.

  She set aside her binoculars, started up her car, drove two blocks, hooked a right, and drove two more blocks before she pulled over, grabbed her phone, and texted Topher, the attorney on the case.

  I’m closing this down. There’s nothing else to get on this guy. If you have any ideas, I’m game to check them out. But I’m clearing out for tonight. Good luck with this one.

  She hit “send,” eased her baby back on the road, and picked up her phone to read the return text sitting at a stoplight.

  Gotcha. At least I’m not going to be blindsided in the courtroom. Thanks again.

  She tossed her phone back to the seat, and when the light turned green, headed home to Stellan.

  The good news was, though she had some investigative work to do for another case, that wasn’t pressing and would be mostly computer work, so she could start it on Monday.

  This meant she and Stellan would have all day Sunday to do whatever it was Stellan wanted to do.

  And Sixx was looking forward to it.

  She was just there, in the zone.

  Not in the zone in their sex lives (though she was there too, totally).

  But their lives.

  And for now she told herself to do what Stellan asked her to do.

  Not question it.

  Not pollute it.

  Not fuck it up.

  Just let it be.

  Strangely, getting back to her life as it had been, with her work being a large part of it, the only change being going back to Stellan’s house with Stellan in it at night, it became just what she did, who she was, a way of life.

  It made being with Stellan easier.

  No, that wasn’t it.

  It made being with Stellan just …

  Life.

  More important, it made Stellan happy.

  She had two more weeks of making him happy.

  And then …

  A call coming in stopped her thoughts and set her to glancing at her dash.

  It told her Jokerman was calling.

  Carlo.

  She hit the button on her steering wheel to take the call.

  “Yo, asshole,” she answered.

  “In the immortal words of David Cassidy, I think I love you, and I’m always reminded of that especially when you call me ‘asshole.’”

  She grinned at the windshield.

  “To what do I owe the honor of you remembering I exist?” she asked.

  “You know a place called the Bolt?”

  Her attention to the conversation increased.

  The Bolt was another sex club in Phoenix. Not nearly as nice as the Honey, but it didn’t suck. She’d heard it used to be a lot worse, got new management, was cleaned up and slightly classed up.

  She’d trolled the Bolt only after that had occurred, and since she started at the Honey, it was definitely a step down, and that was a steep step. But it wasn’t a pit.

  “Yes,” she answered. “Why?”

  “Well, got a friend who’s a friend of a friend of a friend who part-owns the joint, and my friend knows what I do for shits and giggles. This guy who part-owns the place has got two other partners. One is solid. Real solid. Good guy, and from what I can tell from what I’ve been told, it’s him that keeps the place running. The friend of a friend of a friend of my friend is a flake. But not so flakey he isn’t worried the last partner isn’t up to some fucked-up shit and using the club to facilitate it.”

  When he said no more, Sixx prompted, “And?”

  “And, the good guy partner isn’t a big fan of the bad guy partner and the man in the middle wants to keep things as copacetic as he can, so he doesn’t want to go to the good guy partner unless he’s got something concrete to show him. I’m not a stranger to Phoenix, so my friend contacted me to see if I’d poke around. But I’m nowhere near there right now without any plans to get there so…”

  “Enter me,” she said.

  “Yeah, if you can take it on. He doesn’t have your usual deposit because, from what I can tell, he spends all his extra cash on weed, X, various hallucinogens and sex toys. But my friend says he might be a flake, he’s also a decent guy, and he’d be good for your normal fee on a payment-plan basis. And if you find something, the good guy partner is gonna have to be brought in, and he’ll undoubtedly cover you through the club.”

  If this was c
oming from anyone but Carlo, she’d hang up on him.

  But it was coming from Carlo, and she was facing a slowdown from firm work. On top of that, firm work was never very exciting, so having something juicy to sink her teeth into worked in a big way.

  “What’s the fucked-up shit the bad guy partner is using the club to facilitate?” Sixx asked.

  “Prostitution.”

  Oh shit.

  “On club premises?” she inquired.

  “Yeah,” Carlo told her. “Books their private rooms in the club, his girls work them, mostly giving, not getting.”

  “So they’re subs,” Sixx surmised.

  “Nope, they’re paid whores who this guy keeps jacked up on meth or smack and pimps out. This doesn’t appear to be entirely voluntary, or, say, voluntary at all if you factor out them being slaves to their addiction. An addiction it’s considered this guy enables so he can get them to work for him.”

  Oh man.

  Now she was getting pissed.

  “Does the paid play get extreme?” she queried.

  “No clue about that life but the words ‘blood play,’ ‘burn play,’ and ‘branding’ were said during my brief. I’m taking a wild stab, but I think that would mean a yes.”

  “It would mean a yes,” she muttered.

  “You up for a meet with this guy?”

  “Can’t do anything until Monday, but yes.”

  “Great. I’ll set it up. His name is Josh. Last name Coates, if you want to dig into him in the meantime.”

  Oh, she’d be digging into him all right.

  The problem was, she was in the scene, knew the scene, and was known in the scene. She couldn’t go undercover to set herself up to maybe be taken in by this BDSM pimp.

  But Sylvie could.

  She grinned at the windshield again.

  “Keep in touch,” she said to Carlo.

  “Will do. In other news, things good?”

  They were fantastic.

  “I haven’t handed anyone their ass in months, so I’m getting jittery,” she told him. “Other than that, they’re what they are.”

  Which would be fantastic.

  “Love a girl who loves to bust asses,” Carlo replied.

  “That bus with all the squares on it is rolling out, David. Time to grab your microphone, puka shells, feather your hair, and head out.”