A part of me was relieved. The other part was upset for her sake. Regardless of my love for my Family and my understanding that to operate the way we did, sometimes we needed to grease palms, a woman who was in need of help and protection should have been able to find that in this town.
But if she hadn’t been able to find the help she needed with the police, why the hell would she come back to work?
Shouldn’t she have been forty-eight hours out of town, running for her life by now? Wasn’t that what any sane person would do?
This made no fucking sense.
Taking a deep breath, wanting to gauge her reaction to seeing me again, I made my way across the hall toward the break room.
I usually didn’t go into the break room.
The way I saw it, that was the employees’ space. They got to relax and bullshit there. They didn’t want their boss breathing down their necks.
I wasn’t surprised when the conversation paused as soon as I stepped inside, making my way over toward the coffee machine which was three feet or so away from Josie.
Who made absolutely no indication that she even noticed my presence.
What the hell was going on?
Even more confused than before, I made my coffee, and was about to walk out when my office manager called my name.
“Yeah?” I asked, turning back.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah, Cara, I’m fine,” I said, brows drawing together.
“You have a crazy black eye,” she said.
“Oh, yeah,” I said, shaking my head. “I have been working on some home improvement projects,” I told her. “Had a little mishap.”
I could tell by her nod that she didn’t believe me.
It wasn’t like I thought I could keep my connection to the mafia a secret. I was sure my whole staff knew. And that they speculated about me and my business practices all the time.
They probably imagined I’d gotten into a fight.
They never could have guessed that a woman standing there in that very room with the two of us was the one who had done the damage. Or why she’d thought it was necessary to do so.
“You should ice it,” Cara said, giving me a smile, but her eyes were alive, making it clear I was going to be the topic of hushed conversation and speculation as soon as I walked out of the room.
“I’ll do that,” I agreed, giving her a nod, then moving back across the hall to my office, closing the door, and making my way behind my desk.
I’d just gotten behind my desk when the door opened.
No knock.
Everyone knocked.
No one just walked into the boss’s closed office without an invitation.
Well, apparently, Josie Pearson did.
She said nothing as she moved inside, closing the door behind her, standing there for a long moment with her chin raised as she looked at me. Trying, I imagined, to seem cool and confident. Which, admittedly, she was pulling off rather well. If I didn’t know that she had a reason to be anxious, I never would have noticed the tell-tale signs in the way she was rolling a ring around on her finger over and over, or how she was slowly and carefully focusing on her breathing, expanding her chest and belly fully each time.
“Miss Pearson,” I greeted her when she refused to break the silence first.
“Mr. Grassi,” she called back, voice cool.
“Can I help you with something?” I asked, sitting down, motioning toward the two chairs across from my desk.
“Yes, in fact,” she agreed, moving forward, but not sitting. She stood between the chairs instead, placing a hand gently on the back of each of them. “We need to discuss our new arrangement.”
“Our new arrangement,” I repeated.
“Yes.”
“What new arrangement, Miss Pearson?” I asked, a mix of confused and intrigued.
To that, Josie’s chin raised just a tiny bit more.
“The one where you pay me for my silence,” she said.
And I swear to fuck, it was the last thing I thought was going to come out of her mouth.
Nothing about the woman before me—cool, calm, and collected—matched the woman in my basement the night before who had been almost comically upset about a made-up cave cricket.
“Excuse me?” I asked, not sure I heard her correctly.
“Well, the way I see it, Mr. Grassi, you murdered a man in front of me, then kidnapped and held me against my will. Keeping my silence on all of that is not free.”
“You think I’m going to pay you?” I asked, mostly to push her buttons.
“I know you are. Because if you don’t, I will go ahead and skip right over the local NBPD who your Family likely has in their pockets, and I will go right to the closest FBI building and report everything I saw and experienced.”
“To make this clear. You’re blackmailing me,” I said, actually having to fight to keep my lips from curving up into a smile at this sudden and unexpected change in dynamics.