“Todd, you know you were wrong to hit him in the head.
Now be a man and take your punishment,” Paddy said.
“But, Dad …”
Paddy hung up. There was another knock on the door.
He checked, and again no one was there, so he opened the
door. The woman who’d been following him walked into his room.
“What the hell are you doing here?” Paddy asked.
She lifted up the side of her t-shirt.
“I think he broke some ribs.”
“Who?”
She looked at the ceiling and gave him a disappointed look.
“Miles Shaw.”
“You need to leave … now,” Paddy said.
“Uh-uh,” she said as she began to undo her jeans. “I’m not leaving here until you fuck me.”
He held his hand out and shook it back and forth.
“No.”
His phone rang again as she pulled her jeans off and ran past him to the bathroom.
“Fuck me,” Paddy said as he went to answer the phone.
“Hello.”
“Your little play-acting didn’t work,” Miles said.
“We need to talk.”
“I’ll text you the place. Be there in thirty minutes,” Miles said as he hung up.
Paddy went to the bathroom and found the woman handcuffed to a safety bar for unsteady people to get in and out of the tub.
“What the fuck are you playing at?” Paddy asked.
“I don’t have any money. Fuck me as payment for paying back Miles.”
“Where’s the key?”
“You mean this key?” she asked as she showed it to him.
She tossed it into the toilet and flushed it. Paddy looked at her for a moment and then turned around and began to walk out of the bathroom.
“You leave, and I’ll scream.”
Paddy didn’t slow down, and she began to scream. He found the TV remote, turned it on, and set the sound as
high as it would go. He then walked out of the hotel room.
◊◊◊
It was an open-air bar just down the street from the Bali Garden. Since it was mid-afternoon, they pretty much had the place to themselves. He spotted Miles sitting alone in a back booth. He had three goons sitting at tables not far from where he was. When Paddy walked up, one of the muscle patted him down.
“He’s clean, Boss.”
Paddy sat down across from Miles.
“You know who I am, and you know what I do. The amount of trouble I can cause is not worth preventing the two kids from meeting and working out their issues,” Paddy said.
“I can’t imagine you stopping me from doing whatever I want to.”
“You accept the offer, and I go away. You don’t …” Paddy tilted his head and left it to Miles to imagine what that would mean.
Paddy reached across the table, grabbed the back of Miles’ head, and slammed it into the tabletop. The muscle jumped up, but Miles put his hand up to stop them as he grabbed some napkins to stop his nosebleed.
“Good on yah, mate. I’ll give you one. But if you …”
Paddy slammed his head into the table again. This time, it looked like Miles had lost one of his front teeth. Paddy looked at the three guys and judged they were recent hires because they didn’t move.
“Either do something or get the fuck out. Just know that if you make a move, I won’t be gentle like I’ve been with your boss,” Paddy warned.
The three men slowly backed away and quickly left through the front door.
“It’s hard to get good help,” Miles said.
Paddy got his phone out and took a picture of Miles’s fucked-up face.
“What was that for?” Miles asked.
“The woman you hired to follow me wanted to hire me to get some payback for what you did to her.”
Miles chuckled.
“She doesn’t have any money.”
“She was going to pay it in pussy. I left her handcuffed in my bathroom. I didn’t know how this would go, so I didn’t want to collect if we ended up just talking. But if I did the job …” Paddy said and shrugged.
“Fuck me dead. Bloody oath, I would just get rid of her and her drama.”
“Now, about the kids,” Paddy said.
“I’m out, but you should be careful of Tom. He has a soft spot for his brother and will react badly if you lay a finger on Oliver.”
“If Oliver handles his business, there will be no problems. If he doesn’t, I’ve been told to break his arm,”
Paddy said.
“Nothing more?” Miles asked.
“Nothing more.”
“Could I maybe pay you not to do it?”
Paddy shook his head.
“I’m a professional. If I take on a job, I give my word. As you know, in my business, if you start breaking your word, you get dead.”
“I understand. I’ll have a word with the boys, and they’ll be on their best behavior. If they get out of line, do what you have to. But if it goes too far …”
“I’m a professional.”
Once the agreement was made, Paddy left to deal with the situation in his hotel room.
◊◊◊
Paddy woke up the following morning feeling relaxed.
Once he showed his tail the picture of Miles’s face, she’d calmed down. Paddy hadn’t planned on taking her up on her offer, but she was persistent, and he understood paying one’s debts.
She was still asleep, so he called room service, ordered breakfast for both of them, and then got into the shower. As he lathered up, he had to chuckle. He had no fucking idea what her name was.
◊◊◊
Greg met Cassidy downstairs for breakfast and saw she had a big smile on her face.
“Why are you so happy?”
“Pam finally dumped the loser she was dating and got back on the horse in a big way. She spent the night with your brother and Crystal. My innocent roommate isn’t as innocent as she lets on.”
“Please. She and Tracy have talked about luring him to their beds on more than one occasion,” Greg said.
Greg had become a regular at their apartment, enough so that they all talked in front of him. He would just roll his eyes whenever they got too risqué.
Then Cassidy’s hand went to her mouth in shock as she read something on her phone.
“What is it?” Greg asked.
“Your brother’s a slut.”
Greg couldn’t help but chuckle.
“What did he do now?”
“He gave Chloe a ride home and stopped in.”
“He hooked up with Alex’s girlfriend?” Greg asked, shocked.
“No, her roommate, Yong. I thought they’d stopped seeing each other last spring.”
“Hang on. Who’s Yong?”
“Last spring, David had the hots for this Goth barista named Kat. Every time David took her out, she would get falling-down drunk, and he would have to take her home.
Her roommate was Yong. I guess when Kat passed out, sparks flew, and Yong and David got busy. It turned out that Kat wasn’t as passed out as they thought, and she caught them,” Cassidy shared.
“Classic. That sounds like something David would have happen to him.”
“I guess there was still something there because Chloe said they locked eyes on each other and ended up in Yong’s room, bumping uglies,” Cassidy said with a scowl.
“When are you going to get your head out of your ass and make your move?” Greg asked.
The look he got back was enough to remember that a one-armed Cassidy could still kick his ass. Greg took a big bite of French toast and dropped the subject.
◊◊◊
Greg noted that Cassidy was wearing makeup for their meeting with Oliver. Paddy drove them to a pool hall with a private back room for VIP games. They found Oliver and Tom playing eight ball.
When Tom saw Paddy, he walked around the table and gripped the pool cue in his hand to use it as a weapon.
“This is for what you did to my uncle!”
Paddy reached out, snatched the pool cue out of Tom’s hand, and cracked him in the forehead, causing the young man to stagger back. Tom grasped the pool table to stay on his feet. Paddy grabbed his arm, stuffed it into one of the pool table pockets, and wrenched his arm to the side. There was an audible crack as Tom’s arm broke.
Then Paddy turned on Oliver.
“Get to apologizing.”
“I’m sorry,” Oliver said to Paddy.
“Not him, dummy. Me,” Cassidy said. “And you better mean it.”
Oliver glanced at his brother, then Paddy, and then focused on Cassidy.
“That night was the best and worst of my life. You probably have no idea how much I like you. No one has ever come close to making me want to become a one-woman man. At the end of the evening, all I was thinking about was that I would finally get to spend time with you alone. I just knew it was going to be a magical night.
“That’s why I told you I was okay to drive. I’ve driven in worse shape, but I should have stopped and thought for a moment. You are too precious to me to have been risked like that. And when that truck appeared, my instinct was to swerve left. I panicked and forgot that you drive on the right in the States,” Oliver said.
Then he went to his knees in front of her. Greg saw him tear up.
“After the crash, there was all that blood, and I could see the bone poking out of your arm. I was sure I’d killed you, and all for what? Getting to your place ten minutes sooner?
I felt horrible,” Oliver said.
“Why did you run?” Cassidy asked.
“I called my brother. He’d done something similar and told me that the police would soon figure out what happened, and if I were drunk and you died …” Oliver trailed off.
“So, you were a coward and ran,” Cassidy said. “You took everything from me. Everything. I had to drop out of school, I might never be able to row again, and my ultimate dream of becoming a Marine is over. I’ve spent every day since the accident in pain. And you ran. You only thought of yourself.”
Oliver looked up at her and nodded.
“I’ve heard enough. Take your brother to the emergency room, and then lose my number. I don’t ever want to see
you again,” Cassidy said.
“Are we done?” Paddy asked.
“Greg, pay the man and let’s get to the airport,” Cassidy said.
◊◊◊