Sex and the Billionaire Crime Boss - Season 2

Ch. 2: Heartbreak

I feel all the air whoosh out of my lungs.

Max must think I look shaky, because he stalks over to me, takes my arm, and leads me to the small dinette table by the window, pulls out a chair and pushes me into the seat. The bottle of whiskey and the single empty glass are sitting on the table.

He gestures toward the bottle and I shake my head no. "Wine?" he asks, and I nod.

He looks in the fridge, pulls out a bottle of sangria I opened a few nights ago, and pours me a glass. He sits down across from me, and I finally find my voice.

"So you're telling me that you - you personally - did that to Ramon?" I look down at his hands on the table. The hands that can both gentle and demanding, hands that know exactly the touch to wring every ounce of pleasure from my body.

Are those same hands really capable of the kind of violence I saw evidence of in my office today? I suddenly think about all those articles I found on Google with speculation about business deals Max's companies were involved in, where people opposing him either disappeared or suddenly went silent. I passed those off before as exaggerated rumors, but now I can't help wondering what lines Max might actually cross if someone got in his way.

Is Ramon Suarez just the tip of the iceberg?

"This was none of your business, Hadley," Max says.

"I disagree." Knowing what the man I'm in love with is capable of is definitely my business. But I don't say that. Instead I point out that Ramon Suarez is my client.

"Yes," Max says, "he's your client. And all you had to do was follow my instructions and negotiate the plea deal."

"That's not how this works. It doesn't matter who is paying the bill. The defendant is my client and I have to do what is in his best interest."

He pours himself another two fingers of whiskey and leans back in his chair.

"Has Ramon expressed any dissatisfaction to you with the way his case has been handled?"

"Would you expect him too?" I remember the look of fear that came into Ramon's eyes when I suggested I might have a talk with his employer about better security to protect other employees from being mugged when they left work. His plea that I not mention anything to Mr. Bennett.

"I would expect," Max says, "that he would be grateful."

"Grateful? You expect that he's grateful that his face has been pummeled, his arm broken in several places, and his ribs cracked?"

Max gives me a level gaze while his fingers toy with the rim of the glass of whiskey.

"He's not dead."

I feel the blood drain out of my face at his implication.

"Have you killed people, then?" I ask him, my voice barely a whisper.

He just looks at me for a few moments. "Not in situations like this," he finally says.

"But . . . in other situations?" My heart is beating faster. It didn't seem real before, Max being part of a family-run criminal enterprise. Max sitting at the head of it since his father went to prison.

Even in Las Vegas, the dealings with Gino and Joey D were so businesslike, so civilized. A group of well-dressed men sitting around a table in the penthouse of a luxury hotel. A polished veneer, covering the violence I should have realized lay just beneath the surface.

At the moment all of it seems very real.

"My father," he finally says, "handled problem employees a little differently."