Damaged Grump (Bad Chicago Bosses)

“I’m so hurt, dear Milah. What did I do to earn such venom?”

Milah’s face hardens instantly.

It’s Easterly’s face that captures me, though. For a moment, she flickers from confusion to fear, then brightens with a made-up smile.

“Vance!”

I turn to face the owner of that voice.

I recognize Vance Haydn’s broad build from a few photos Roland’s showed me and my own sleuthing, but static images don’t capture his presence.

He’s a tall, imposing man. Late forties, but he looks closer to sixty in the face with the silver hair of a man who’s twenty years older, cropped close to his blunt features in a Roman cut.

To some women, he’s got that tough-guy-turned-rich handsome vibe.

He’s wearing a flashy off-grey suit with no tie, the shirt unbuttoned over curls of silver chest hair. He might be attractive, but he’s also got the greasy look of a club promoter who deals drugs on the side.

Something about him whispers unclean.

Just like Osprey, Vance has an aura.

But Osprey’s is pure enigma, an energy that says he’s in complete control no matter how sinister he may be.

Vance’s aura oozes a kind of shallow, cold-edged greed. His pale-blue eyes are reflective and empty.

Those eyes dart over me briefly, assessing, making me feel dirty with the way they skim my body.

There’s something off about them for sure, his pupils too dilated...

...from that and his slightly unsteady hands, I think he might be high.

It’s almost a relief when he looks past me to Easterly.

I have to stop myself from pushing in front of her—and Milah looks like she’s vibrating in place, too—as Vance brushes past and darts toward Easterly.

“East,” he purrs.

East. The impersonal distance of a stage name.

Not Natalia or Nat like a real boyfriend, a lover, would use.

“I was looking for you,” he rumbles.

She goes to him like a willing pet, but when he takes her arm it looks more like a command, a demand rather than a courtly gesture.

Especially when he starts urging her toward the hall, her steps briefly stumbling before recovering.

And especially especially when he leans, murmuring in her ear, not quite as silent as he wants to be.

“...and watch out who you get so loose-lipped with,” I overhear him say.

My stomach sinks.

No.

No, this isn’t good at all.

My gaze rivets to where his fingers sink into her arm, her flesh going white under his grabby fingertips.

Yuck, yuck, yuck, and yuck.

I wish Osprey was wrong.

For Easterly’s sake, I wish he’d been so damned wrong.

I’m frozen in place while Milah drifts to my side, the two of us watching as Easterly disappears inside with Vance hovering over her like this freaky praying mantis.

“I would slap the ever-loving shit out of that man if I could,” the singer says bluntly. “Someday, I just might.”

I shake myself from my petrified trance and glance at her.

“What do you know about those two?” I ask.

“I know enough not to hurt Easterly by talking to a reporter, even if she’s from a decent rag,” Milah says dryly, but affably enough. “In this business, everyone has to make their own choices. We fight our own battles, and learn from our own mistakes—or we don’t. Then the cost is devastating.” She pushes past, her otherworldly hair swinging against her back, calling over her shoulder. “I learned once. I hope with time Easterly will, too.”

Maybe, I think uneasily as I remember the sick, grasping way Vance looked at me and the bruising of Easterly’s pale skin.

Or maybe she won’t get a chance to learn in the clutches of a monster.

Not unless someone steps in and wakes her up, and fast.

* * *

I can’t get that surreal encounter off my mind for the rest of the night.

Not even during Easterly’s live stage performance, where she seems to have shaken off Haydn and lights up the entire room doing what she does best.

The heartfelt song pairs grinding, slow-throbbing beats with a voice like the prettiest heartbreak in the world, melding in and out of backdrop instrumentals. Somehow, she makes singing about the uncertainty of her generation’s future and the apathy they face into something as melancholy-sweet as falling in love—only to fall right back out of it again.

She’s a real talent.

And I can’t stand the idea of her smothered by that creep of a manager.

I’m wrapped up in my own melancholy as the gathering breaks up at the end of the night.

I watch a few last desperate attempts from pushy journalists to get some good quotes while people struggle outside to their limos. I’ve already said goodbye to my team—all of them bursting with overloaded excitement after a productive evening—and I’m hovering in a corner, staring at my phone and trying to decide if I should text Osprey or just call an Uber so I can get home and gather my thoughts before reporting to him in the morning.

I’m hardly expecting a light touch on my arm.