Chapter 58
Torq entered his office the next morning aware he was more than a little bit grumpy. His chair groaned with the weight of his body as he flung himself into it and rested his head on his desk. He was exhausted.
Not only did Alcee hold true to her refusal to have sex with him, but she’d fallen asleep while he’d I been reading to her. Then he’d gotten so caught up in the damn book, he’d stayed awake reading it until the end. To add insult to injury, right as he was about to fall asleep, somewhere near four in the morning, with a stiff cock from the sexy shit the cowboy did to his woman while his own woman snored loudly beside him. Antero came barreling into the room.
It seemed the reason Avalanche went to bed like a good puppy and didn’t cry on her first night in a new home was because Antero, the minute Torg’s back was turned, took her from her crate, and put her in his bed. However, she wasn’t sure how to get off the bed, though admittedly Torq was not sure she’d tried, and she’d pissed a giant puddle into the boy’s bed. Antero woke up in a bed full of dog piss, soaked in it himself and completely freaked out.
When he’d come screaming into the room, Torq panicked shooting out of the bed and reaching for his gun, ready to kill whatever intruder was in their home. He found himself face to face with a terrified boy, a shaking dog who clearly knew she’d done wrong and a mess which needed cleaning.
What did his beautiful fiancée do? Laughed. She laughed long and hard before rolling over and telling him since he wanted the dog so badly, it was his mess to clean and then she went back to sleep. She didn’t even help him get Antero cleaned up. What she did allow however was once Antero was cleaned up for the boy to come sleep with them in their bed,
By the time he’d stripped the bed, taken the dog out to do her business because she’d started to pace circles in the room, realized the mattress on The bed was unsalvageable and finally gotten back into his bed, it was to find Antero sleeping sideways
The boy was the size of a pre–teen, Torg was certain of it, and he was laying sideways, spread eagled as if expecting to be searched by the cops, and snoring as loudly as his mother did. Then when he finally got the boy repositioned, he spent the last ninety minutes when he could potentially be sleeping, dodging kicks to the balls from the active boy and trying to bune out the crying of the puppy in the crate in the other
room
The puppy was now under Genevra’s desk rating pieces of Geneva’s breakfast sandwich and he was ready to map until noon. Except he scheduled so many meetings today sleep wasn’t an option and his mood was officially piss poor.
“Hey boss.” Kylen came into the room and then froze, “what the fuck happened to you and why is there a dog under Geneva’s desk?”
“I bought Antero a dog last night. It pissed in his bed.”
*The
dog pissed in his bed?”
“The dog pissed in Antero’s bed. It means Antero slept with us.”
“Oh shit” Kylen covered his mouth as if trying g not to laugh.
“No. The shit she reserved for her crate which we are trying to train her in, and she managed to get it all over herself because she shit in there and then lay in it. I took her out. She did her business. She came in and while I tried to ignore the whining, shit all through it. Of all the fucking ways to start my day, spraying out a dog crate and throwing out shitty dog bedding was not on the list. I need to order a new mattress for Antero and a new dog bed too.”
“Antero likes the dog?”
“Didn’t want to go to school today because he was sure the dog was going to be lonely. I made the mistake of saying it was going to sit with me in my office which set him off. He cried the entire ride to school and when I dropped him off it was a huge meltdown because it wasn’t fair the dog got to stay with me, but he couldn’t.”
“Alcee calm him down?”
“Nope. She insisted on taking a separate car. Since I didn’t ask her before bringing a dog home, one the size of a small pony as she describes, she doesn’t need to help.”
Kylen this time couldn’t contain his laugh as it bubbled up inside him. “No way. You didn’t ask?”
“Nope. In my infinite wisdom I assumed like an idiot everyone loves dogs.”
“She doesn’t like dogs?”
“I think it’s trauma based. Turns out her father killed her dog when she was a kid because she didn’t walk it when she was supposed to.”
idn’t walk in
Kylen froze and then grimaced, “I swear to fuck every time I learn something knew about Edgardo Mariani, I want to shoot him another time.”
“Ditto.” He stretched his arms over his head and yawned. “What did you find out last night?”
“Well, you were right. He wasn’t out of here two minutes, and he was making plans to connect with your father. He wants to find a way to mithrow you as the Don of the Lozano family and put Corrado in.”
“I’m not surprised. Did Corrado bite?”
“He agreed to a meeting. Your father is going to fly into New York later this week.”
“What’s Mercurio saying?”
“Nothing. He’s weirdly radio silent. No communication. No texting, emails, or phone calls.”
“Do you think his father silenced him?”
“I think if Mariani didn’t think twice about throwing his daughter into a cell, he’s not going to hesitate to throw his son in after his son disrespected him in front of you yesterday.”
“Fuck.”
How the hell was he going to tell Alcee her father might have punished her brother for what Torg caused the day before?
Chapter Comments
Michele Clemente
ph, ishe tired? in his ideal world, who should have been the one to handle the puppy, the child, and the bed? No sympathy from me
Auna
Umm, 1 thought I liked the main characters (with some exceptions) but who the hell confines their dog in a crate for hours and Hours every day?! That’s just unnecessary cruelty
