Damaged Grump (Bad Chicago Bosses)

“Harsh,” she whispers, her eyes fixed on me.

“However, it can’t stop itself, Miss Landry. It wouldn’t stop even if it understood its own damage. Murder hornets only care about doing whatever it takes to sate their hunger.” My jaw works from side to side as I pause. How do I put this? “Haydn is like those hornets. Let him loose near young rising talent, and he’ll abuse them until he sucks out their soul. All for his own sick ambitions. He has a taste for younger women when they’ll serve his other needs, but men are just as good if they’ll turn him a decent profit. He’s created a name as a star-maker. In fact, he’s a star-taker, and he’s ruined more than one hapless artist without a fucking care for the harm it does to them and anyone around them.”

I stop when I see her shoulders tremble. Subtle, but obvious.

She’s silent for so long I wonder if she’s fainted in the chair after her scathing day.

“It sounds like you’re speaking from personal experience,” she finally murmurs.

There’s a raw empathy in her voice. Like she wants to take my pain and soothe it with soft words and doe-eyed looks, begging me to be a normal man who could enjoy a pretty woman’s company again.

Hell no, Miss Landry.

This pain is mine, and sometimes it’s all I have to ground myself.

I snort bitterly, smiling at the angry phantom of my reflection in the window.

“My experience is irrelevant. Look, if you’re waiting for some woebegone story about how I was an aspiring young musician who crashed and burned after Haydn took advantage, you’ll be disappointed. I’ve never been anything but the creature you see now.”

“I don’t believe that,” Callie says sharply. “You have a grudge the size of the Mississippi on your shoulders. If not you...then why? If Haydn’s so dangerous, why even risk going after him?”

“Because it’s a good story. The fact that it needs to be done as a matter of principle is secondary,” I lie. “How familiar are you with The Chicago Tea’s legal records?”

Her brows go up.

“Well...it wasn’t in the new hire orientation.”

“Then you’ll have to trust me when I say we’ve never lost a defamation suit. Not one. Ever.” I shift my gaze to her reflection. Hazy and floating, her wide eyes watch me so intently. “It’s not defamation if it’s true. People—destroyers—no, worms like Vance Haydn hate being exposed to the light. Show the world what they truly are, and they shrivel up and die in the sun.” I shrug. “I’m not above a good redemption arc, but some people deserve to burn in the fires they’ve started.”

“Ever the valiant hero,” she retorts with such sweet insolence. “The vigilante with a pen and an empire of mud.”

“I’m neither.” Irritation stabs through me, and I swivel my chair back around to face her, locking eyes. “They do say the pen is mightier than the sword. Believe me, I will jab my pen right through Vance Haydn’s heart. Until then, I suggest you do what I’m paying you for. Get what you can from the interview with Easterly. Maintain strict confidentiality. Then report back to me, no matter what you find.”

I’m not angry.

There’s a secret I’ve learned to controlling people over the years, and it’s a lot like controlling my own secrets.

Simply make eye contact longer than they’re comfortable with.

Most people falsely believe that they maintain direct eye contact in a conversation at all times.

Actually, the average person is constantly looking around at their environment, their phones, every motion, at shifts in body language. They only look their company in the eye when a change in inflection or expression requires additional attention.

People spend more time looking away from each other than engaging, all while they’re convinced they’ve been staring the entire time.

Which is why it makes them so uncomfortable when someone does look at them unwaveringly, without breaking eye contact.

Call it my talent.

Not only does it grant me authority, but it prevents people from asking intimate questions I’d rather not answer.

I have yet to meet the soul who can hold unbroken eye contact with me for long. They can never quite explain why, but in less than a minute they look away.

Only, Caroline Landry doesn’t.

She watches me with that frank, unflinching gaze. So direct when I’ve roused her anger enough to get past the anxiety and shyness that sometimes overtakes her.

She’s flushed, and yet it’s not hard to tell it’s with irritation, no matter how lovely the rose-red circles haloing her cheeks are.

“Do you have any other orders for me, Master?” she flings at me—quiet, but chilly.

“Hmm. I usually only ask women to say that in bed,” I quip back.

Screw it. I have every intention of flustering her.

Of turning her annoyed blush into scandalized shock—if only to divert her from prying deeper into my past with Haydn, my motivations, why I need this more than I need my next breath.