Just a Bit Heartless (Straight Guys 13)

Chapter 1

“The boss is expecting you. Good luck.”

Jordan Gates gave the secretary a faint smile before opening the door and going inside.

There were very few things Jordan disliked as much as being called to his boss’s office. As a department head, he saw him more often than the average employee, but being unexpectedly summoned to Raffaele Ferrara’s office was never a good sign. Thankfully, it hadn’t happened all that often in the years that he’d worked for the company.

Jordan came to a halt, his face carefully schooled into a mask of polite attention as Ferrara looked at him from across the desk.

“Sit,” Ferrara said tersely.

Jordan didn’t take the tone personally. Ferrara’s abrupt, harsh manner was rather legendary. The vice president of the Caldwell Group wasn’t one for small talk.

Jordan sat down in one of the chairs. “You wanted to see me, sir?” Ferrara was just a year older than he was, thirty-three, but his very presence seemed to demand respect, so it wasn’t all that off-putting to have to address his peer as sir. Ferrara had men twice his age addressing him that way.

His boss regarded him for a moment, his black eyes rather unnerving—if Jordan were prone to feeling unnerved.

“I need your help.”

Jordan blinked. Until now, he had been sure those words weren’t in his boss’s vocabulary. “Of course. How can I help?”

Ferrara folded his hands on the desk, his expression sharp and assessing.

Meeting his gaze calmly, Jordan kept himself still as the silence stretched. He refused to let Ferrara intimidate him.

“You might have heard of the incident that happened to me three days ago,” Ferrara said at last.

Jordan raised his eyebrows. Incident? That was what Ferrara was calling an attempted murder? The entire company had been buzzing with speculation since someone had shot Ferrara. The bullet had just grazed his head, but there was still a lot of blood, and yet Ferrara was back at work the next day as if nothing had happened. The man truly was a workaholic.

“I’ve heard,” Jordan said dryly. He didn’t think there was anyone in Boston who hadn’t heard of it. Ferrara was one of the most successful businessmen in the city. It didn’t help that he was heavily rumored to have family links to the Italian mafia—the rumor that had been around for years and was a hot topic again.

“What you don’t know is that it was the third attempt on my life this month,” Ferrara said, his tone mild, as if he were talking about the weather.

Third?

Ferrara pinched the bridge of his nose and leaned back in his chair. “There’s more,” he said with obvious reluctance. “There has been a kidnapping attempt on Nate.”

Jordan frowned. It was widely known in the company that Nate Parrish was Ferrara’s lover. It had been a subject of much gossip last year. Although fraternization in the company was frowned upon, it wasn’t forbidden as long as it wasn’t within the same department. People still gossiped, of course. A lot of people disapproved, considering that Nate had been Ferrara’s PA before he was transferred to Jordan’s department to work as a level designer. Personally, Jordan didn’t give a shit. Nate was a good dev and he got the job done. Jordan didn’t care if Nate was also sucking their boss’s cock.