Head Above Water (Nightshade MC Book 4) (12 page)

“And you are?”

“I've never claimed to be a bad ass, I simply can take care of myself.”

“I'm sure you can,” Monroe said diplomatically, realizing that they were heading into choppy waters if the look that she gave him was any indication. “I'm just saying, you don't have to do it alone.”

“I'm not some damsel in distress, Monroe. If you've got some sort of desire to play white knight, you're barking up the wrong tree.” Her body was as stiff as her words. He didn't know what nerve he'd just hit, but apparently it had been a sensitive one.

“Guess I'm going to have to return the big white cowboy hat and spurs I picked up the other day,” Monroe joked. He watched for her reaction, relieved when a smile crossed her face. “I know that you are very capable, Drea. I'm just trying to say that I'm here for you.”

“I know,” she sighed. “Maybe that scares me some because I believe you.”

“Why is that scary?”

“We're just getting to know each other, but it feels like we already.  It feels like... you know what? I don't know what it feels like, because I've never felt anything like it before. It's just been a couple of weeks, we're not even exclusive, and I can't stop thinking about you, which might be more crazy than scary.”

“I don't think it's crazy. I get how it's scary,” he replied.

“I'm not sure if we're moving too fast or too slow,” she said with a sigh. “All I know for sure is that I really like having you around.”

“I like being around,” he answered, and it was the truth.

“For tonight, that's enough,” she said. “So, want to watch a movie or something?”

“Something sounds good.” Monroe reached out so he could pull her close to him. “Let's go do something upstairs.”

Chapter Nine

Drea took a deep breath and braced herself for what was about to happen as she opened the door to a red-faced, obviously fuming, Frankie. “What the fuck did you do, Drea?” he demanded as he tried to muscle his way inside. It was true that he was taller than her, but she doubted he was stronger. She pushed back, got him on the right side of the door.

“I didn't invite you in, Frankie. Stay the fuck back. To answer your question, I did just what I had to do to keep you from getting all of us killed when we couldn't make the payments.” Drea shoved at his chest as he moved forward again. “Stay the fuck back,” she repeated, wishing that she'd brought her gun over to the door, but she'd known that she'd have been tempted to use it.

“I can't even use my company card to get coffee. Do you know how embarrassing that is?”

“I don't care how embarrassing it is. You won't be able to use that card for anything except maybe a bookmark. The free ride is over for you and Matt.”

“You can't do this,” he protested.

“I can and I have,” Drea replied. She'd been waiting for this conversation since she finalized everything. It had taken longer than she expected for Frankie to realize the changes.

“You don't know how to run a company. You couldn't even run your little hobby shop.” Frankie had mayhem in his eyes as he stepped closer. “You're not going to get away with this.”

“Who exactly is going to stop me?”

“We made a deal with them, that deal involved the both of us. Do you know what happens when you go back on terms with them?”

“They way that they see it, Frankie, is that they're getting paid. Do you think I didn't go to them? Explain that you're as much of a fuck-up as you've always been? They understood. Once again, you're getting your ass bailed out, but this is the last time, so my advice to you is get your shit together and stay far the fuck away from me.”

“You're a bitch. Stupid bitch! This isn't over. You think that you're smarter than me but you're not,” Frankie shouted.

Drea knew that she was smarter than he was, but she figured he was right that this wasn't over; he'd try to get back at her. Hell, he might even try to kill her, but she wasn't overly worried. Everything she had said to Monroe a few nights before was true; she could handle Frankie at his worst. “Whatever, Frankie.” She slammed the door in his face. He continued to rant and rave on the other side of the door for several minutes, but she paid no attention to him. Eventually, he left. She heard the squeal of his tires from the living room, where she'd returned to finish working on the paperwork she'd brought home.

GP was doing really well. They'd filmed the first two movies the day before; they were already in post-production and would be on the website sometime during the weekend. There would eventually be actual videos to sell in a store, but for the first runs, Drea was leaning heavily on the internet and hoping the new videos would increase subscribers to the site. They'd just have to keep the movies coming.

Drea checked the calendar for the rest of the week. There were going to be six other movies shot the following day and just as many on Friday. It was almost impossible to keep track of the details, but she was going to do her best. The idea of hiring someone had crossed her mind; it was an extra expense but might be worth it to not have to wake up randomly through the night wondering what she'd forgotten. Her phone chirped, and she reached for it with a sigh. She figured it was Frankie with a threat, but it wasn't. It was Monroe; he was doing something with the club or the construction business and wouldn't be back in town until really late, so he'd call her in the morning, maybe they could have breakfast.

It was the first time in about a week that he wasn't going to be sleeping in her bed. Sometimes, she actually forgot they'd only been seeing each other for less than a month. They'd fallen into a routine of seeing each other every day. When Drea's brain was being broody, she wondered if they'd fallen into the routine because the sex was so good. Good wasn't even the right word. As cliché as it sounded, sex with Monroe was earth-shattering. Every time was better than the time before, and he seemed to know what she wanted before she did.

She sent a text back to him that she wanted to go somewhere with waffles for breakfast and for him to be safe. Drea replaced the phone on the table and picked up the next piece of paper in her file. It just happened to be the estimate Nightshade Construction had given her for the warehouse. There were two options: rebuilding the existing structure, or ripping it apart and starting from scratch. Her gut told her to take the place down to the ground and start again, but her head, and bank account, said it was ridiculous to spend the extra money; to rebuild the existing structure would be cheaper by nearly fifty thousand dollars, half of one of her payments.

Drea took her favorite pen and signed the contract that would allow Nightshade Construction to begin the rebuild. She wrote a check, wincing at the total, and set both aside. She felt a little sick at the money she was spending, but it was necessary. Filming at Love and Lace wasn't ideal; apparently the background mattered in porn.

With thoughts of the newly renovated warehouse on her mind, Drea made some very rough sketches of what she was thinking. Her father had only utilized the second floor for filming. The first floor was simply to show off the women who starred in them to people who came in, and the third was his office. If she made more rooms, it meant more movies could be shot at once. There could even be themes to some of them. Hours passed by as Drea went over and over the plans again. Finally, she was satisfied that she had gotten everything the way she wanted. The sketches were obviously really rough, she wouldn't blame whoever reviewed them if they laughed, but she'd gotten the point across.

As she tucked the drawings and contracts into a folder, she realized that her father would probably be horrified at all the changes she'd already made to his company. Drea smiled at the thought. “Fuck you, Dad. Fuck you.” She spoke to the empty house. There had never been anything close to love between the two. She'd often thought that her grandmother, Grace, exaggerated when she'd called Carmine Gagliardi the devil; it only took getting to know him to realize that it was true. He was truly a despicable man.

Grace had worked for the Gagliardi family for years as their housekeeper. She'd been a single parent, so one of the draws of the job was that she could bring her daughter, Mary, along. When Mary had turned fourteen, Carmine, who was already in his twenties, had taken a liking to her. By the time that she was fifteen, she was pregnant with Drea. Carmine was sent away. The family offered a very generous, very secret, settlement for Grace and Mary to disappear.

When Mary died in childbirth, they'd doubled the offer.

She had grown up in a drafty farmhouse, miles outside of the nearest town, with Grace. Drea had never been allowed to call her grandmom, abuela or any other variation; she'd simply been Grace. Once Grace Vargas might have been a kind and caring woman, but the death of her only child, her precious baby girl, had changed her. She was cold, hard, and she'd always made it clear that Drea was her duty.

There were kids who had it worse; Drea had always had a roof over her head, clothes on her back and food in her stomach, but she'd never known kindness. Grace had even homeschooled her. The few times that she attempted to rebel, she'd been severely beaten, and that had taken the fight out of her. Shortly before her eleventh birthday, she had woken to find that Grace hadn't. The old woman had died in her sleep, warm in her bed. All Drea could remember feeling was relief; whatever came next had to be better than what she'd already lived.

After much searching, the police and social worker had found Uncle Tony's information, tucked into Grace's bible along with her will. They called and he'd come. At first, she'd been terrified of him. He was a big man, tall and broad. A stranger with the name of the devil, Gagliardi. His soft-spoken way had put her at ease. When he told her to get her things together, that he'd send someone to pick up anything she had to leave behind, Drea had gone and packed. He'd been shocked when she'd appeared with a single pillowcase, stuffed with her other outfit, pajamas and her blanket. Even all these years later, she could still see the look on his face; it made her heart hurt.

Two loud bangs, gunshots, drew Drea out of her thoughts. The sound had been somewhat muffled; it wasn't right in her front yard, but still too close for her comfort. While Frankie had been throwing his temper tantrum on her porch, she'd set the alarm, so she knew that no one else was in the house. Still, she retrieved the gun she kept in the living room from beneath the couch cushion and walked towards the back door.

If it was Frankie, he'd expect her to come out of the front door because that was what he would have done, but she knew better than that. The backyard was dark; the bulb over the door that came on automatically had blown the week before. Drea made another mental note to replace it as she pocketed her keys and slipped out the door.

The neighborhood was quiet, mostly because she didn't have many neighbors. Out of the six houses on the block, only two were occupied full time. Mr. and Mrs. Grant lived three houses down and had since they'd been married fifty years before; they were both as deaf as stones, so she doubted the shots had disturbed them. Drea swept the backyard, around the side of the house and to the front. Every nerve in her body was on high alert, but by the time she was done no one had taken a shot at her and there was no other noise. She returned to the house through the front door, reset the alarm and double-locked all of the doors. She kept the gun with her as she went about her nightly routine, carried it to the bedroom and set it on the bedside table when she climbed into bed.

Drea wasn't prone to having a problem falling asleep. She liked to sleep, it was an escape in some ways, but she just couldn't get comfortable or shut off her brain. For hours she tossed and turned. She saw the first light of dawn before she finally fell asleep, and her alarm woke her only a couple of hours later. She gave serious consideration to turning it off and just going back to sleep. In the end, she didn't because there was too much to do.

Finally she got up, headed for the shower in the hopes that it would improve her mood and clear some of the fog from her mind. Between the shower and coffee, it was almost felt like she'd actually slept the night before. Drea reached for her customary breakfast, a granola bar, when she remembered that she was supposed to join Monroe to have waffles. Except when she checked her phone, there was no word from him.

Breakfast probably wasn't going to happen. If he had to work, regardless of what that work was, she understood that. Even though she'd gone from job to job, when she was at work, she worked. Uncle Tony had instilled a strong work ethic in her. He'd tried to do the same for Frankie, but it had been a lost cause. Even though she understood, fully, that Monroe had responsibilities, Drea still felt a flutter of disappointment. She'd wanted waffles, but even more, she just wanted to see his face.

<#<#<#<#

“Mary, we signed a contract,” Drea spoke softly, sweetly even, but her fists were clenched; the tips of her nails dug into her palms. “I don't care what Frankie offered you. And let me be clear, he's broke. He couldn't borrow a dollar to buy a lottery ticket, so don't believe whatever bullshit he's feeding you.”

The blonde squirmed in the chair. “He said that you don't know what you're doing and if I stay with GP, I'll be a joke.”

“If I were to release you from the contract and you went with Frankie, you'd end up strung-out, dead or worse.” This was not the time to pull her punches, even as Mary squirmed more. “You're a smart woman. You don't want that. You want to earn. You want to be able to always take care of yourself.”

“And my son,” Mary replied.

“Stay with GP, Mary. Stay with me and you'll get what you want. You'll be safe doing it.” Drea didn't know what more she could promise. Really she just wanted to go find Frankie and stop him from breathing and trying to steal away the women she'd signed.

“Okay,” Mary said after a pause. “I'm going to trust you, Drea. I'll talk to the others,” she added. “I'm pretty sure he's called everyone.”

“Yeah, I figured he had.” Drea felt the first twinges of a migraine coming on. It was the last thing that she needed when she had a crisis on her hands. “If he calls you again, call me.” She walked Mary out, made sure that she got in her car without Frankie popping out, and went back inside to make calls and set up meetings.

It took nearly ten hours, but she managed to keep every woman on contract with GP from trying to jump ship. With each of them, she'd promised them the same thing she'd promised Mary. They'd have a place to earn that was safe, where they'd call the shots. By the time her last meeting ended, her throat was raw from all the talking she'd done.

Drea sat down on the couch in her office, took off her shoes and sighed with relief because she hated heels so very much. She was exhausted, starving, and the idea of having to get up and drive home made her want to cry a little. It would be the first time she'd stayed the night at the store, but the couch had provided her with plenty of comfortable naps, including the latest with Monroe.

There was still no word from him. Drea had a knot of worry inside of her over it. Of course, he could have finished whatever he was doing and just not called, which only made her worry more because she liked him. She really liked him in a way she hadn't thought herself capable of; it seemed he felt the same. If he didn't, it was really going to suck.