“She really did try.”
“Try? To talk your ear straight off?”
“Maybe she’d be better in a different role. She’s definitely keen though.”
“Hm. Yeah. Maybe back office would be better for her. How was everyone else there, tonight?”
“Everyone else?” I ask.
“Yeah. You deal with anyone but Heidi?”
“Oh.” I bite my lip.
He jerks his chin up. “What? I need to know something?”
“Guy is a little, um… inappropriate. Not, like, call the cops inappropriate, but, um… I don’t want to get him in trouble or anything, but-”
Killian throws his head back and laughs. “I know. Thanks for tellin’ me, baby. He’s harmless.” He laughs to himself some more, like he finds it hilarious.
16
Killian
The rest of the ride home is silent, but I can almost hear Violet’s wheels turning.
Two things about her struck me in the right way tonight.
One, the way she treated my staff. Never have I had a girl on a date and had her treat my staff so kindly, going as far as to attempt to tip one of them herself. Women on dates with me haven’t put their hands in their pocket since… maybe since I was about sixteen. Even then, I was chivalrous with them. Holding doors, paying for things. But an attempt at doing something for themselves or me would not have gone unnoticed.
Of course this wasn’t a date I’d had with Violet, but despite that, it still speaks volumes about her personality.
The gambling thing, too. She’s careful and that’s smart. She doesn’t like to take uncalculated risks and she tries to calculate risk, even if something seems like it’s for free.
It’s not that everyone who gambles is careless, it’s just that her reaction to it all shows me more about who she is. Her reactions to me, too.
She’s unsure about me. She’s assessing things. Holding back her questions and studying me and my environment, the people I’m associated with. This is smart.
It’s also baffling – how Raymond Iadanza talked her into a relationship, I have no idea. She’s not a fucking airhead. Her spending three years with him makes me wanna think she’s a loser but I’m already sure she’s not. I just can’t figure it all out. Though, I intend to.
Was he that good of an actor? How did he sweet talk her that well? Is she just one of those people who believes in the good more than she listens to her own instincts? Did she not see any warning signs?
And the report and recording I got from Wes today, too - Violet didn’t seem cool with gossiping about me with those girls. I listened to the recording and she said very little and when it veered into dangerous territory, she made her exit. Not only that, but she also didn’t reveal anything about me, and didn’t push for more information either.
It was interesting listening to Deb talk about fucking things up with Dario. If I wasn’t absolutely sure he was done with her, I would let him know that maybe she was ripe for a second chance.
I know better. I also know through the grapevine from my brother who works for the Ferrano family doing security that Dare is moving on and he’s happy. I’m not about to fuck that up by dragging old Deb memories up for him. She put him through some real bullshit.
I’ve known my whole life I wouldn’t settle for a bullshit relationship. I watched my ma get kicked around and watched her go back to the same set of boots time and again. Sometimes a different set of boots but with the same results. She repeatedly got kicked. She’d send the good guys packing and always went back to her type. A boozing, loud, blue-collar type who treated her kids as if they were invisible and treated her like a discount whore.
Me and my brother suffered for it. A fucking lot.
Mostly me, at least physically. I shielded Will as best as I could and wound up the parental figure in his life even before she was killed. I was barely seventeen and – in my eyes old enough to look after us when she had her head caved in by a pair of steel-toed boots.
I didn’t let my kid brother see her on the floor in the puddle of her own blood and gray matter. Though that image won’t ever leave my own wretched brain.
I took care of us, immediately moved us outta that building, outta those four dingy walls and ramped up my efforts to be successful. I had help, too, didn’t have to do it all alone since Dario’s father fixed it so no one breathed down my or my brother’s neck about foster care or any of that shit. I was perfectly capable of looking after us. And I did.
My brother is working for that family to save up so he can go back to school, living in the little house I bought when I turned twenty-one and insisting on paying rent. He won’t let me pay for it - insists he’s paying his own way, just like I did. He makes me proud.