“ATF!” I hear Paul claim from behind me. “ATF!”

  “I didn’t even know about it until Earnest texted me to come to the basement… armed.”

  “So no one’s making any drugs here?” Ryker’s pillow aims for my head, but I duck quickly enough and counter with a hit to his pecks.

  “Depends on how you define drugs. Vodka, gin, nothing above 42 ABV, I believe. Paul was a distiller for almost 50 years, so he knows what he’s doing.”

  My pillow hits Ryker square in the chest and makes him cough from all the dust coming out. I use the moment to land two more hits that make him stumble backwards. His legs catch on the edge of the couch and cause him to fall over right onto it. Without hesitation, I jump on top of him and raise my pillow for the final blow.

  Predictably, Ryker has already deployed his best defense tactic. The back of his hand wipes over his face, revealing his immaculate smile.

  Not this time.

  I clutch the edge of my pillow, flex my muscles for the final blow and⁠—

  “You know I love you too, right?”

  For a moment, I stare at the tiny particles around us. A single beam of light shines down from the tiny window in the wall, illuminating Ryker’s face on one side only.

  I do know that. I have been feeling it for a while now.

  “I’m sorry I thought you were a weird stalking kidnapper. It’s just that… It’s…”

  “You were expecting me to use you for a story, for your connections, like your ex?”

  Ryker nods and lets his hands glide over my thighs and onto my back, carefully pulling me closer. “Can you forgive me?”

  “Depends,” I say, let the pillow drop behind me, and place my hands on his chest as my face hovers over his. “Are you going to kick my friends…” I look over to where I expect the O-Team to be but only see an empty basement.

  “They left when we started fighting,” Ryker explains, gently grabs my chin and pulls it towards himself. “Or making up. But no, of course not. I won’t kick them out. I wasn’t going to do that either way. You know, I had that meeting with Dicky set up almost two weeks ago when you found out about the eviction of all the residents. I was going to buy the building in case my lawyers couldn’t figure out a solution. So I’m thinking, as their new slumlord, your friends probably deserve a rent decrease. How does free sound? For all the trouble they had to go through.”

  “Like kidnapping you?”

  Ryker smiles. “Only fair, isn’t it? Now stop talking about the geriatric gangsters and fucking kiss me already.”

  When our lips finally meet, it’s like all my worry, all my anxiety is blown away once again. I want to stay mad at him at least a little longer, but I don’t think I have it in me.

  The heavy hand in my neck makes me feel secure, protected, and the hips that grind against mine cause me to get wet in an instant. Or maybe that’s the water I sprayed onto his crotch earlier, it’s hard to tell.

  Ryker struggles to kick the pillow-weapon that’s wedged between his thighs off. So I grab it, hit him square in the face, and throw it away.

  “Sorry, had to make sure you can’t claim you didn’t lose this fight either.”

  My Ryker smiles and relaxes underneath me. “If this is what losing to you is like, then I’ll be the happiest loser there ever was.”

  It takes us no time at all to get undressed. The making up part, however, takes a while. We make up on the sofa, we make up on the floor in front of it, we even make up against a barrel filled with illegal contraband.

  35

  RYKER

  Our plan of confronting Barb the next day is foiled by our urge to fornicate instead. After we reconcile in the basement of Haven, we spend the next couple of days in my bed, only taking breaks to eat takeout, shower, and sleep every once in a while.

  The fact that I wish I could continue doing this instead of taking care of work probably says something about my suitability of being the boss of a big conglomerate.

  After soaking up each other’s company, I finally ask Barbara to come to my house. It’s not about blindsiding her as much as it is about preventing a scandal at the office. Despite what she has done with that blog, her work has always been excellent, which just makes this whole thing even harder to comprehend. She has been a confidante and my closest employee for years now.

  Barbara doesn’t even knock when she enters my house. Instead, she dives right in. “We have a million things to catch up on,” she rambles and slaps a big folder against my chest. “We’ve really been falling behind with you being absent from the office. Bruce is holding down the fort, but the board is not amused to say the least. And, also, you bought a giant building complex in the city? What are you planning with tha—” Barbara stops when she sees Sienna sitting at the dining table. “Ohh, Sienna, you’re here. That’s⁠—”

  “Barbara, please take a seat,” I say and pull out a chair for her to sit.

  She complies reluctantly, her eyes bouncing from Sienna to me and back.

  “We know what you did, Barbara.” I come right out and say it. “How could you? I mean… you.”

  “It’s not what it looks like.” Barbara quickly claims and pinches the bridge of her nose. “It’s… I… I just wanted to protect you.”

  “That’s a really fucked up way of protecting me,” I let out and just now notice how much her betrayal actually bothers me. How it has been bothering me. Sienna’s company made me forget about it for a couple of days, but I did get deceived by one of the people closest to me. Again. “How fucking long have we known each other? I trusted you. I…”

  “Ryker,” Sienna interrupts me. “Let her explain.”

  I grumble and lean back in my seat.

  “Mr. Grayson… Ryker, all I ever did was to protect you,” Barbara begins to explain. “I know this looks bad, but the blog isn’t mine. I just figured out who was behind it. I noticed that after you fired Ms. Fate, the articles took a bit of a turn. They were always odd, but they turned more hostile afterwards. I wasn’t entirely sure at first, but I confronted her and she admitted it. Apparently, she was a big fan. Obviously not in the healthiest of ways. She wasn’t much of a fan after you fired her, though.”

  “She did steal $10.000.”

  “Yeah, so did I.”

  “You did what?” I shout more than anything.

  Barbara sighs deeply and rubs her face with both hands. “When I found out it was her writing those articles, I tried to talk her into giving up the blog, but she wasn’t very perceptive to the idea. So I tried threatening her to hand it over, which resulted in that one article about your secretary, me, mistreating your employees. And then, well, I had to try a different approach. Turns out, she was very perceptive to the idea of $25.000. I tried low-balling, but she wouldn’t accept anything less. So, I took the $15.000 that I had in savings and stole $10.000 from the company.”

  “For fuck’s sake. You shouldn’t have done that! You should have just come to me.”

  “And get you involved in potentially illegal activities and even more scandals?” Barbara asks without much emotion in her voice.

  “Fuck,” I say and get up. “How the fuck⁠—”

  “That’s kind of amazing,” Sienna butts in while nodding approvingly.

  “No, it’s not. It’s reckless and stupid and your money. I could have dealt with it.”

  “Well,” Barb continues and wipes a tear from her cheek, “the bribe worked, and she handed the site over to me, which is when I may actually have fucked up.”

  “There’s more?” I ask, so ready to put all of this behind me.

  “I figured if the posts stopped altogether that would have been suspicious as well and,” Barb shifts uncomfortably in her chair, “with all the recent developments, I was afraid your head might not be where it should have been.” She looks over at Sienna and then back to me.

  All I can muster now is a low grumble as anger builds up inside me even more than before.

  “I am really sorry. I didn’t mean to harm either of you. I just thought it would be best if you guys broke up. I am sorry, Sienna. It’s not about you. It’s just that we need Mr. Grayson at his best to run the company. We can’t have him distracted the way he’s been ever since he met you. And we definitely can’t have him as sad as the last time someone broke his heart.”

  Sienna nods, thinks about it for a moment and then says, ‘No offense taken’ like she is perfectly fine with all of this.

  “Really?” I ask. “You are not mad?”

  “About what?” Sienna asks. “About Barb caring enough about you to spend all her savings to stop the rumors? About her willingness to break the law to help you and your company? About her worrying about you getting your heart broken? From where I’m standing, it looks like she had the best of intentions. She was trying to protect you. Now, maybe her way of going about it wasn’t ideal, but… I am probably in no position to judge. It’s not like I never made similar mistakes.” She gets up and crosses the room. “All we can do is apologize, hope for forgiveness, and do better the next time.” She extends her hand towards Barbara, who seems to be as surprised as I am.

  Barbara gets up as well and embraces Sienna in her arms, before turning to me with tears running down her face. “I truly am sorry. None of this was what I wanted to happen.” She grabs her bag, rummages through it, then hands me an envelope. “Which is why I hereby tender my resignation and will accept any punishment and legal repercussions you deem fit.”

  I look at her stand before me, crumble the envelop in my hand, and think about what to do. I am still pissed because I know I could have solved all of this without anyone getting hurt, but I do understand why she did what she did.

  “Very well,” I say eventually and crumble the envelope some more. “Your punishment will be to continue to work for Grayson Holdings. And you will accept a check for $15.000 without complaints.”

  Barbara’s eyes shoot up at mine. Her crying turns into bawling. Tears roll down her cheeks as she throws her arms around me.

  We hug for a long moment.

  “Just never lie to me again, alright?” I say, patting her back. “And don’t try to protect me. You suck at it. You don’t know what you were putting in danger. I’m a much better person with this one around,” I nod towards Sienna, “so I intend to keep it like this.”

  My girlfriend laughs out loud once and then stares off into the distance.

  My eyes zero in on the scheming woman with the adorable button nose. “What’s going on?” I ask carefully when Barb and I stop hugging.

  “Nothing, Officer,” she replies.

  “Hm, contemplating murder, are we?” At least that’s what it looks like.

  “Only a little.”

  “That might be a little too much murder,” Barb adds quietly.

  “Just a teensy tiny amount of murder.”

  I nod, still waiting for what’s about to happen. “Well, alright then. Carry on.”

  “Thank you, Sergeant Handsome.”

  “Did I just get promoted?”

  “Not sure,” Sienna answers as she storms out of the room. “I have no idea how police ranks work.”

  Then Barb and I are left alone for a minute before Sienna returns with her phone in her hand. Only it isn’t really her phone, it’s the one I gave her, or rather she stole from me when we first met.

  “Like Barb, I might need to rethink some of my methods and approaches, but today is not that day.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Revenge, obviously,” she says and turns to Barb. “Do you know Ms. Fate’s address? Because I was thinking we should send her a giant bouquet of flowers and an invitation to a blind date with a very eligible billionaire. I happen to know one who was searching for an equally ‘eligible broad’ just the other day.” She looks back at me.

  “Dicky Dome…”

  “If those two don’t deserve each other, then I don’t know who does. It’ll be like the couple at Hangry’s but dialed up to 100.”

  I nod and can’t help but be a little in awe of her.

  Next, Barb looks up Celia’s contact info, I search for Richard’s, and one phone call to Dreams on Demand later the two are set up for a romantic getaway that includes a terribly burned dinner, a waiter with a spitting problem, and a plastic engagement ring in an over-salted desert.

  “Right,” Sienna confirms, “the waiter should have combat experience. Just to make sure he can protect himself. Yes. Okay. Thank you.”

  “Wow,” Barb lets out when Sienna hangs up the phone. “I wouldn’t wanna be the one to get on your bad side,” she jokes with a smile. “Seems dangerous.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I confirm.

  36

  EPILOGUE

  SIENNA

  Istill don’t believe in heaven or hell, but I do believe in love.

  I am not a crazy person… at least I don’t think I am. It’s just that sometimes, despite all odds, despite all the terrible things that happen in this cruel world of ours, you meet someone who makes you question everything you thought to be true.

  They are the plot twist you didn’t see coming, the unexpected punchline in some kind of cosmic joke, the thing you didn’t know you needed until you couldn’t do without it anymore.

  Of course, none of this is to say that I don’t still like my vengeful streak. I do. And, luckily, I found someone who does as well.

  “So, you both quit your jobs to start your own…” Olivia looks at me with questioning eyes.

  “We’ve been over this. Keep up. It’s an NGO focused on harnessing the skills of seniors and partnering them with the energy of the younger generation to collaboratively develop practical projects that benefit both groups at a local level.”

  “You know damn well that isn’t the part I was talking about.”

  “Aaand we also use it as a front to run secret missions that… serve the needs of the people.”

  Olivia nods. “Yes, that’s the part I am not quite clear on.”

  “I am not sure what’s so hard to understand,” I say, and shrug my shoulders. “We deal in justice and revenge. Revenge and justice. It was Ryker’s idea. He was looking for something to do that he doesn’t hate, where he can be useful, and I needed something to channel my righteousness in a more productive way, according to him, that is. So that’s what we do.” I shrug again. “You know how they say revenge is a dish best served cold? Well, what they don’t tell you is how much work goes into preparing a cold cuisine. There are so many things you need to consider. For example, three years ago, a senator voted to allow for a fracking site to be installed right next to a big school. Now they don’t have clean water on tap anymore. You know how much work it is to rig a Senator’s water supply to only dispense mud?”

  “Haven’t you guys only been up and running a couple of weeks?”

  “We hit the ground running… or in this case, digging. We got lots of ideas.”

  “Next we’re going to shut down an illegal alpaca farm. The owner is not going to see the cage coming that we’re going to put him in,” Robyn says while opening the door and interrupting our conversation.

  “Robyn! Did you bug my office again? I told you to stop doing that.”

  “Relax! I didn’t. I stole Guy’s hearing aid.” She brushes her hair over one ear, revealing the small device. “It’s amazing what these things can do nowadays. Anyway, you two can’t stay. I got a date coming over. Don’t want him to think I’m not the boss around here, so scram.”

  Olivia laughs and gets out of the chair she is sitting in. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll be out of your hair in no time.”

  “I appreciate that.” Robyn pushes the door open all the way and impatiently waits for us to leave.

  “Am I being thrown out of my own office?” I ask as Olivia grabs my arm and pulls me up.

  “You work too much anyway.” She carefully shoves me out the door. “Let’s go enjoy happy hour down at the docks while our men are out doing whatever it is our men do.”

  Robyn is about to chime in on the topic, but before she can, I drape her scarf over her mouth and shake my head. “I’d prefer not to imagine whatever picture you are about to conjure up.”

  “Very well,” she mumbles under the fabric and waits for the elevator door to close. “Have a good evening at the docks.”

  We pass Paul down at reception who bids us good night, and then we head straight for a cab that takes us to our favorite bar, where we order a round of beers and plenty of fried food.

  “So how is Ryker doing with the change so far?” Olivia eventually brings the conversation back around.

  “Good!” I say. “He seems much lighter with all the responsibilities lifted. I mean he still has responsibilities running our NGO, and he does still worry about Bruce, but that’s to be expected, I suppose.”

  “Did Roman accept the job?”

  “No, Roman declined. Said running conglomerates is for schmucks. Bruce and Barb are in charge of things. They are working on turning the whole thing into worker-run businesses, which seems to be going great.”

  “And how about your new offices?”

  “They’re good. Right where we need them to be. I mean, it’s a little weird to get out of bed in the morning, go up two floors and start working, but not in a bad way. Plus, guess who gets laid on their lunch break all the time?”

  “Is it Robyn?” Olivia asks and neither of us can hold back the laughter.

  She might be right about that. Half the time, I don’t have a clue where Robyn is or what she is actually doing.

  It takes another three glasses of wine, two guys hitting on us, and a shot of something called Kiss and Tellquila before our men finally join us. All four of us have a nice night out and time to catch up.

  It’s already somewhat late when the cab drops Ryker and myself off at Haven. When we enter the lobby, even Paul is nowhere to be seen, so we take the elevator up to my floor. I fumble through my pockets in search of my keys.

  “Looking for these?” Ryker says and dangles them before my eyes.

  “Oh, thanks, babe.” I grab the keys and (on the third try) slide them into the lock. “Wait, when did you steal those?” I ask as the door swings open. I step in, and if I had anything in my hands, I’d probably drop it. “What the fuck?” is the first thing that escapes my lips as I stare into an empty apartment. “Did I get robbed?” I rush inside and check every corner. “Someone robbed me! Am I not too poor to get robbed? Oh, no! They took all my grandma’s belongings.” I turn to check the nook where my bed used to be. “Man, they even took my Gordon Ramsey! Babe, we have to call—” I swivel around and discover Ryker down on one knee. “What the fuck?” I repeat.