Fuck.
She seemed so worried I was going to turn her down.
Like I could say no to her.
She didn’t understand that, though.
How could she? When I barely even understood it myself.
But, the fact of the matter was, if she asked it of me, I would charge right out of her apartment, grab Berat and the younger Polat brother, string them up, and peel off their skin inch by inch as they screamed for mercy.
“What do you want help with?” I asked, my hand running across the counter on my way toward the coffee machine, slipping in a pod then searching for a mug.
“I want to figure out how to see what percent owner Eren—and therefore me—is in the restaurants compared to Berat and Deniz.”
“I can figure that out,” I told her, turning back to find her standing there, arms crossed as she thought through her options.
“And then I want to find out how I can kick them out as owners.”
“That might not be as easy,” I warned her. “But I can look into it. If it was a public company, a hostile takeover would be easy. But since it’s private, I don’t know how that works. Why bother? You know you could just ask me to handle Berat and Deniz.”
“I want them to sweat and suffer,” she said, chin lifting. “I understand if, ultimately, your Family decides something needs to be done about them. But I want them to struggle first.”
“Okay. I get that,” I agreed. And, fuck if she didn’t earn that. After everything she’d been through. Everything they had watched Eren put her through.
If her life story needed a revenge arc, then so be it.
“You realize the restaurants aren’t all the income he has coming in, right?”
“Yes. He has the whole… taking money from businesses thing,” she said, likely thinking of her parents and their struggles.
“Extortion,” I explained. “And that is where a fuckton of money is to be found. All the shit that never ends up in his bank account.”
“I changed his bank account passwords and requested a new card,” she admitted.
“Good. Protect what you can. The cash is harder to lock down. If there is any of it left.”
“Do you think there is more here?”
“I know it is hard as fuck to hide millions of dollars. Knew a guy who gutted out some of his walls to stack cash in when he ran out of other places.”
“Should we look? Since the jammer thing is on?” she asked, motioning toward it.
“Yeah. We can do that,” I agreed, nodding.
“Do you want to start? I have no idea about any of this. I looked through the drawers and such today.”
“Yeah, no. He wouldn’t be that obvious about it,” I said, taking a sip of my coffee then leaving it on the counter to follow her as she moved out of the kitchen.
Before she could get too far, though, I reached out, grabbing her arm, and turning her back toward me.
My other hand shot out, grabbing the back of her neck, and pulling her in for a quick, hard kiss.
That was all I meant for it to be.
Just a reminder that while a big part of what was going on with us right then had to do with work type shit, that it was more than that to me.
And since I was shit with the talking thing, I figured the easiest way to do it was to show her.
The problem was, she fucking melted into me as soon as my lips found hers.
And it wasn’t long before her hands were roaming all over me, slipping under my shirt, creating little fires all over my skin.
I didn’t even flinch when her hand slid up my back, her fingertips whispering over the scars I’d never let anyone else touch without a barrier before.
It had always been a hard boundary before.
But then she’d gone and pressed her lips to those marks that made me who I was—for better and often worse—it had changed something in me.
It wasn’t long before all thoughts of looking for Eren’s illegal cash flew out of my head as my hands yanked at her pants and panties, pulling them down and off her.
My hands sank into her hips, yanking her up and off her feet, then dropping her ass down on the countertop right about where Eren’s hands had been just a few days before.
Her lips ripped from mine to hiss at the cold sensation on her overheated skin.
“We can look later,” I told her as my hands pressed into her shoulders, pushing her flat. “I think I need something to eat first,” I said, sending her a smirk as my hands pressed her thighs wide for me just a moment before I buried my face in between.
Her hands slapped down on the back of my head the second my tongue started tracing around her clit, and it wasn’t long until she was writhing and moaning against my mouth.