The Promise

Chapter Twenty-Two Awesome

The next morning, sacrificing greatly for all the unknown people out there who might possibly get messed up by my company putting out a bad drug, I left Benny Bianchi in my bed and went to the office early.

I wasn’t the first one in.

Travis Berger was in.

So was Randy Bierman.

I hit my office, started my day, and every time I saw movement outside my window, I looked to see who it was.

So I saw it when Heath walked in about twenty minutes after I did.

I also saw it when Sandy walked in only two minutes after Heath did.

Heath was not stupid, and yet, he still was.

I gave them time to settle, Tandy coming in while I did this, but she was not first on my list that morning.

Heath was.

“Hey, honey,” I greeted Tandy, leaving my office and making a beeline to Heath’s.

“Mornin’, Frankie,” Tandy replied.

I threw a smile at her over my shoulder and didn’t miss a step.

“Hey there, Frankie,” Sandy said when I got close.

“Hi, Sandy.” I smiled at her but, again, didn’t miss a step and went right to his office. I saw Sandy open her mouth to say something, but by that time, I had a hand lifted and was knocking on the jamb of Heath’s door.

When he looked up, I asked, “Got a minute?”

Heath looked to me, out the window to Sandy, then back to me before answering, “Sure.”

I walked in, closed the door behind me, and moved directly to the chairs opposite his desk. I sat in one, then asked the more truthful question.

“You got more than a minute?”

He looked to the closed door before he studied me and asked back, “Is everything okay?”

I gave him more truth. “Not even close.”

He studied me more intently. “What’s not okay?”

“No way to put this out there and do it delicately,” I started. “So I’ll just put it out there. I know you and Sandy have something going on outside this office. I know it because neither of you are very good at hiding it. I also know it because a PI is watching you and he knows it.”

Heath’s face had grown pale as I talked. He’d also leaned forward before I was done.

Watching him react, it hadn’t escaped my attention that he was very good-looking. Sandy brown hair. Nice blue eyes. Trim and fit. Not exactly tall, but he wasn’t short either. He was just too lean and too classically good-looking for my taste. I liked them darker. Rougher. Bigger. The kind of man you looked at and knew he’d order a beer but hoped he wouldn’t mind drinking Champagne with you during happy occasions.

Heath probably drank martinis.

Nothing wrong with that, but I liked it that Benny ordered beer.

“I got nowhere to go with that lead in,” Heath replied, “except to ask what the fuck you want.”

I blinked.

Then I told him, “I don’t want anything except for you to go to Lloyd, share that you and Sandy are in a relationship, thus cutting off at the knees whoever hired this PI to get the dirty on you.”

“It wasn’t you?” he asked.

“Why would I do that?” I asked back.

“Why would anyone do that?”

Was he serious?

“Uh…Heath, maybe you need to look around and start paying attention,” I suggested.

“What?”

God, he was serious.

I leaned toward him. “I have no idea who hired him. I just know the PI was hired and what he found. That is, I don’t know who hired him yet. But Randy is riding your ass just as he’s riding mine, so I have my suspicions.”

“Yeah, because he’s a dick. Riding my ass at work because he’s a dick and gets off on swinging it around is one thing. Hiring a PI because I’m banging my secretary is insane.”

I had hoped he wasn’t just banging his assistant.

Obviously, he was.

“I’m not going to Lloyd and telling him I’m nailing Sandy,” he continued.

“Your call, but if you don’t, whoever’s behind this will, and he probably won’t go to Lloyd. He’ll go to Berger.”

“Whoever’s behind this…right,” he said snidely. “You want me to go to Lloyd and get my ass fired, so when Bierman takes Lloyd down, even though you got two less years than me in your chair, it’ll be you with a direct shot to Lloyd’s seat.”

I was seeing Heath was a dick too, he was just better at hiding it.

This wasn’t surprising, he was a salesman. Not nice to say about one of my people, but they were my people so I could say it.

He kept going.

“Ambitious. Driven. A slave driver to your reps so they’ll bust their asses to make you look good while you hang with your boyfriend in Chicago.” When I just stared at him, stupefied, and remembering how much I hated office politics, he said, “Yeah. Trey told me about it while asking me if I could swing a transfer for him into my territory.”

Trey was my rep in Chicago, and I wasn’t surprised about that because I already knew Trey was a dick. What I hoped was that he was only spreading that bullshit to Heath and not further.

Unfortunately, Heath wasn’t done.

“You probably don’t have a private dick, just makin’ your play to get me to swing my ass out there. Well, fuck that, Frankie. I’ll call your bluff.”

“I am not aiming at Lloyd’s seat, Heath. I like Lloyd,” I informed him.

“I do too. That doesn’t mean I don’t want his salary and his title.”

Yep. Total dick.

I ignored that and continued, “Furthermore, you tell him, that doesn’t mean he’ll fire you.”

He leaned further across his desk to me, the look in his eyes ugly, the twist of his mouth nasty. “Maybe not, but he could tell me to end it and I like getting head from Sandy. She’s a fucking virtuoso at head.”

Way too much information.

I tried not to curl my lip while suggesting, “Uh…can we get back to the matter at hand?”

“That being some unknown entity has hired a PI. Seriously? Are you for real with this crap?”

Okay then. I did my best. He wanted to be a shark, when the bigger fish gobbled him whole, that was his call.

“Then don’t tell Lloyd,” I said. “But watch your back and brace, Heath.”

“I don’t go to him, you won’t?” he bit out.

“Of course not,” I returned sharply.

“Berger?”

“Your business isn’t mine. I know it sounds weird because it is weird, but I’m only making it mine because I’m trying to do you a favor.”

His eyes narrowed. “How do you even know this shit? Sandy and I have been cool.”

Okay, maybe he wasn’t that smart.

“I can’t say since I don’t know yet who hired the PI, just what he got,” I told him, deciding not to tell him that he and Sandy have not been cool.

“You can’t say, and you know it, but you aren’t behind it?” he asked acidly, not to mention dubiously.

“If I was behind it, wouldn’t I ask for something or threaten something rather than just giving you a heads up?”

“I don’t know. I’ve never had someone do something as totally jacked as hiring a PI to follow me, so how would I know what they’d do?”

I leaned forward and said softly, “Clue in, Heath. Now. Seriously. Clue in. And if you don’t care about Sandy, I hope you care enough to know she’s sticking her nose into something that’s happening around you that’s obviously escaping your attention. At best, it could get her fired. At worst, no joke, it might get her dead.”

His brows shot up and he clipped, “What?”

Definitely not as smart as I thought.

I didn’t reiterate.

I told him, “I’ve got someone on this, and when I know the name of the PI and who hired him, I’ll tell you.” I thought about Sal, who was on that and who loved me, and shared, “Odds are, I’ll know soon. You want, you can wait that time before whoever’s behind this hits Berger with it or hits you with it to get you to do what he wants you to do. Or you can man up and sort your shit. And, just sayin’, bangin’ your assistant…” I shook my head and finished, “Love is never wrong. If it’s not that, and it’s in the workplace where she might not know that it isn’t about that, it is.”

“Don’t need you lecturing me on ethics, Frankie, or making bizarre threats to my secretary.”

I wanted to shake some sense into him, but obviously I couldn’t.

“You’ll see I’m doin’ you a solid, Heath. If that isn’t right now, I’m okay with that. I’ll accept your gratitude later.”

“You’ve lost your mind,” he muttered, staring at me just as the door to his office opened.

I turned, expecting to find Sandy there.

My skin started crawling when I saw Randy Bierman there.

“Francesca, I need Heath,” he stated, his meaning clear: no matter what we were talking about, I needed to get the fuck out and now.

I looked to Heath, gave him big eyes, got up, and moved out of his office.

As I passed Tandy on the way to my own office, I said, “Give it five minutes and come in. We’ll go down to the coffee cart to get a latte.”

Her eyes were on me. They moved to Heath’s office, came back to me, and she nodded.

I walked into my office, checked my cell on my desk to see if I had any missed calls, and when I saw I didn’t, I faked working for five minutes until Tandy came to my door and asked somewhat loudly, “Hey, wanna hit the coffee cart?”

I grinned at her, grabbed my wallet out of my purse, and got out of my chair. I rifled through my inbox and grabbed a random file, hoping I looked like I wasn’t grabbing a random file.

I looked to Tandy. “Get your notebook and your phone, would you?”

Her head gave a slight jerk before she went to her desk and did as I requested.

We were standing alone in the elevator bay when she asked through the side of her mouth, “What was that with Heath?”

“Don’t worry about Heath, honey. We’ll talk in the lobby.”

She looked fully at me, but she was still whispering when she asked, “Am I in trouble?”

This clearly stated she’d done something to be in trouble for, and since her work was stellar, I knew why she was worried about being in trouble.

“We’ll talk in the lobby,” I repeated, but I did it gently, hoping to assuage her fears.

We got to the lobby and got our lattes. When we were sitting in a comfortable waiting section that was far from the cart and not close to the reception desk, I knew I hadn’t assuaged her fears because, by the time we sat down, she looked about ready to cry.

Shit.

“Tandy, do you know Peter Furlock?” I asked.

That got me pale face number two of the morning and her voice was a squeak when she answered. “Yes.” She leaned toward me and rushed on, “But, Frankie—”

I cut her off. “Is he checking to see if the Tenrix documents Bierman gave Lloyd were amended?”

“He already knows that,” she whispered, looking terrified. “He found the backup files and downloaded them before Mr. Bierman got someone to get to them and replace them with the tampered files.”

Oh man. They were a lot further than I would have imagined.

Which must be why Peter Furlock had been targeted.

“You got his number?” I asked, and she nodded. “Call him, right now. Make sure he’s at his desk.”

Her eyes got huge and she asked back, “Why?”

“Just do it, honey.”

She set her latte aside, gave her attention to her phone, and put it to her ear. I sipped my latte, leafed through the file on my knee I didn’t see, and listened to her connect with Furlock, as well as give a lame excuse why she was calling, totally no good at cloak and dagger.

I looked back to her when she disconnected and told me. “He’s there.”

I nodded. “So the files on the server that people can see are the tampered ones?”

It was her turn to nod.

“And the other ones have disappeared, outside what Furlock has.”

“Yes, Frankie.”

“Did you take this to Lloyd?”

“Not yet,” she said. “We wanna make sure all our ducks are in a row.”

All their ducks.

Shit.

“What ducks?” I pressed.

She drew in breath, grabbed her latte, and took a sip, trying to look cool and casual doing it—and failing—then she looked back to me.

“Okay, Frankie, there’s a lot,” she said quietly.

“Tenrix is dangerous,” I stated, also quietly.

She nodded again. “In five percent of test subjects who were on the product for more than three years, serious and irreparable heart conditions formed that could be traced directly back to taking Tenrix.”

Shit, shit, shit.

“How did this get by everybody?” I asked.

“Because Bierman is just the henchman. The mastermind is Barrow.”

I sucked in breath.

Clancy Barrow. CEO of Wyler Pharmaceuticals.

The top of the food chain. The number one shark.

Shit!

I leaned toward Tandy and hissed, “How do you know?”

“Okay, Frankie, okay…” she semi-chanted, then leaned toward me. “My big sis, she went to school with this girl—totally cool—her name is Roxie.”

“Babe, point,” I warned.

“I’m gettin’ to it,” she squeaked. “Roxie moved to Denver a while back. She met this guy, married him. He’s a cop.”

“Okay,” I prompted when she stopped talking.

“But his brother owns this big investigations firm.”

And there it was.

She kept going.

“And we did trials for Tenrix at a research facility in a hospital in Denver.”

“So you called her, she engaged the brother-in-law, and what happened?”

“What happened was, the guy he put on it found out two, Frankie”—she leaned deeper toward me—“two nurses on that trial got in bad car crashes. Bad. One lost her legs. One, such severe head trauma, she can’t work anymore.”

“Whistle-blowers,” I whispered.

Tandy nodded. “We think so. We also know the turnover in nurses during that trial was severe. Nearly all of them went in and out the door. The investigator tracked some of those nurses down and they would not talk. Not at all. The investigator suspected this was because of fear, but maybe payoffs. And Bierman may make some dough, but we figure he doesn’t have the resources for that kind of operation.” She paused before she finished, “But Barrow does.”

I figured they figured right.

“They find evidence of the payoffs?” I asked.

Tandy shook her head. “We only could pool so much money together to pay the investigator guys, so no. We couldn’t ask them to dig deeper. They’re really cool guys and they offered to keep going, get us on a payment schedule. But we really couldn’t do that.”

Fuck.

“But Peter found something,” she stated, and I again focused on her.

“What?”

“He’s really clever with computer stuff. He did some of his voodoo and found out Dr. Gartner was getting payoffs. He’d put it in an account under his stepmother’s name. His dad’s dead so that’s probably why the cops didn’t catch it. I don’t know how he managed that, but he never touched it and neither did she. And we all figure—because, apparently, he was a super guy—Gartner was playing the game, pretending he was taking payoffs, but amassing his own evidence to take to Berger or the board or whoever could do something to stop Tenrix getting out. They found out and he got killed.”

I’d totally forgotten about it until that moment, but it was then I remembered the tense phone call I partially overheard Bierman having. It was before Gartner died. But it could have been anyone in this drama he was threatening.

“Miranda and Peter are working that,” Tandy informed me, and I focused back on her.

“Working what?”

“She’s in production now and Dr. Gartner’s computer, files, and assistant are in production. They’re looking to see if he left anything behind or if they cleaned up after him. ”

Jeez, they totally had it going on. The Miranda move was a ploy to get her into production.

I was impressed.

But I still didn’t get it.

I looked away from her and asked, mostly to myself, “Why would Barrow be behind this?”

“Because we need a winner,” Tandy answered.

I looked back at Tandy. “What?”

“They headhunted you, the best of the best to jumpstart our sales program which, the numbers were okay, but it wasn’t buying anyone yachts. Before you, they headhunted Heath. He was a big hotshot rep from another company. We’ve had two big products that have had competing products launched in the last five years that have cut into our profit margins. And we had one major earner that went generic and now is sold over-the-counter. It’s not like the company is dying, but they need a winner and none of the other products are even close to launch. Tenrix is supposed to be that winner. Most of the data is awesome. The problem is, in those few cases, it’s devastating and, if not caught, could be lethal.”

She and her crew had done their homework.

“Tandy,” I started gently, “with all that, can you please tell me why you didn’t give this to Lloyd or Berger?”

Her shoulders straightened, and when she spoke, her voice was stronger. “Because I need this job, Frankie. I have a roommate. We live in a nice place, but only because we go in on it together. Without her, it’d be tough to find somewhere to rent that’s that nice, safe, and in a good part of town. I want to be able to afford to keep my part of that place and it isn’t like people headhunt for assistants. I don’t have the reserves to make it if I get fired. I need to work. And with things this big, you never know who’s in on it. So, if we don’t have everything we have to have to prove what we know is true, if they fire us, we have nothing to give to the newspapers to expose them.”

She and her crew hadn’t just done their homework, they’d thought it all through.

But my mind was whirling with what to do next.

Then I hit on it.

“I need the name and phone number of the investigator in Denver. I also need Peter to make copies of absolutely everything he has. Call him and tell him to do that, then I’ll go down to IT on my way back from the gym at lunch to get it myself. You make the rounds and be cool about it, telling everyone to stand down for now. I’ll let you know what we’re doing next.”

Her expression went suspicious as she said, “No offense, Frankie, but we’ve been at this a lot longer than you and you’re kind of management. So I know you’re cool, but with this kind of stuff, I have to know you’re cool. I don’t think it’s a good idea to hand everything over to you.”

I got that.

I also had to get past it.

“All right, honey, take a deep breath and keep your cool when I tell you something that’s gonna blow your mind, freak you out, and put the fear of God in you.”

Her eyes widened, but I went on.

“The reason I’m sticking my nose in is because someone close to me is keeping Peter Furlock safe. And that’s because he’s had a hit put out on him. Now, I’m taking this over because I have the resources to do it, I have more weight in this company than any of you, and because I want you, Sandy, Miranda, Kathleen, Peter, and whoever else to stay alive.”

“Oh my God, that’s why you wanted me to call him,” she breathed.

“That’s why,” I confirmed.

“Should I tell him?” she asked.

“If you want, I will. But I think he should know. He has someone shadowing him to protect him, but it doesn’t hurt to stay vigilant.”

“I should tell him,” she whispered. “He knows me.”

I nodded. “I understand that,” I assured her, then I leaned toward her. “But please warn him that he does not go off the beaten path. We can’t let the people who are doing this know how on to them you are or what the people who are working with me are doing.”

She looked so freaked, I wanted to reach out and grab her hand, but I didn’t want anyone to see me doing it.

So I didn’t and just kept talking.

“Now, you gotta trust me. This is huge and what you’ve been doing is making someone antsy. Let’s get this product safely off our catalog and do it without any more good, brave people getting harmed. Okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered.

“You need a minute to get yourself together?” I asked, and she nodded. “Take it, then, babe. But do it scribbling on your notepad, right?”

“Right, notepad, good idea. Just a normal meeting with new scenery between Frankie and Tandy,” she said in a near chant.

I smiled at her. “Just that, honey.”

She nodded again, snatched up her notepad, and started scribbling.

I took a sip of my latte and decided on what was next.

Benny first, obviously.

Then Sal.

I looked to Tandy, who was rabidly scribbling like I was a taskmaster about to pull out my whip.

“Babe,” I called, and she looked to me.

I made my voice low when I spoke again, and even if my words were clear, my tone made them clearer.

“You did good. You did right. You took initiative, even when I told you to back down. You were brave. And you’re gonna save a lot of people a lot of heartache. Literally. I admire you, Tandy.” Her lip started trembling so I finished gently, “Just a normal meeting, honey.”

She forced a weak smile and replied, “Just another meeting, Frankie.”

I grinned at her and took another sip of my latte.

***

That evening at 5:05, I sauntered to my car just like any other day I’d saunter to my car, except way earlier.

This was because Benny was at my place and I wanted to be with Benny.

This was also because I wanted to get the fuck out of there.

The last was partly because I’d picked up all the evidence Tandy’s crew had amassed from a visibly terrified Peter Furlock. Although not nice to say, he was a man who was squat, dumpy, had thinning light brown hair, and wore thick glasses either due to weak eyes or squinting at a computer screen or a TV while playing a game all the time.

Even so, he was also building up to being a hero because he was smart and brave and doing the right thing, all this I told him in order to get him to calm down, stick with the program, and assure him my “people” had his back.

When he went back to wherever IT people holed up, he looked less terrified but still jittery.

The stuff he gave me was in my computer bag.

So I also wanted to get out of there because the place was giving me the heebie-jeebies. It felt like the walls had eyes and it didn’t help that Heath disappeared at lunch and didn’t come back.

This sent Sandy into a tailspin for reasons that were probably not good. She was visibly nervous. She dropped several things, including a full mug of coffee. She avoided Tandy (and, thus, me) like the plague. And twice, I saw her rushing to the bathroom.

She maybe didn’t feel well.

But she probably went in there to freak out and/or burst into tears.

Something was up with that and it was either what I’d said to Heath or what Bierman had said.

I’d called Benny with the news, giving him the detail on Nightingale Investigations, the firm Tandy’s sister’s friend from Brownsburg (of all freaking places) had connections with. Ben told me he’d relay everything to Sal so I didn’t have to.

This was not because he didn’t want me to talk with Sal. It was because he didn’t want to chance me being overheard by anyone.

Since all the evidence was on three thumb drives, no paper, I was going to hand them over to someone Sal was sending to keep them safe.

That was my plan for the night.

I was also going to cuddle with my man, play with my puppy, look forward to the time when that was my life but in Chicago, and try to forget about all this crap.

Until tomorrow.

I was at my car when my phone in my purse binged with a text. I got in the car, settled, dug out my phone, and looked at the display.

When I saw what was on it, I forced myself to act normally, seeing as they had cameras in the parking garage. And when the text faded to a dark screen, I went to my texts to read it again.

McCaffrey’s. Now. Come by yourself.

It was from Heath.

One thing I knew, I was going to McCaffrey’s.

The other thing I knew, I was not going alone.

I put my Bluetooth in, made the call, and pulled out of my spot as it rang.

“You headed home?” was Benny’s greeting.

“No, I’m meeting you at a place called McCaffrey’s where I’m giving a command performance for Heath, my colleague who disappeared at lunch after a first-thing-in-the-morning meeting with me followed immediately by one with Bierman.”

“Fuck,” he muttered. “Where is it?”

I gave him directions and he sounded like he was walking when he said, “Got it. Be there in a few. But do not go in without me. Do not even park in the parking lot without me. I had shit to do with Sal’s boys today, so one of them took your ass on the way to work and was gonna trail you home. He can clock out when I get there, but you’re not goin’ in without someone at your back. Take a drive. Circle it. I’ll text you when I’m there.”

Seemed Ben was good at cloak-and-dagger shit.

I found that interesting.

And hot.

“Right, capo.”

“Whatever,” he said with a smile in his voice, then, “Later.”

He disconnected and I did as told, though it wasn’t for a few since Brownsburg was half an hour drive on a good day from McCaffrey’s and it was rush hour. Since 86th Street and its environs, where McCaffrey’s was located, was crazy busy, I also did it wanting to murder somebody. And I did it until my phone binged and I saw the text that said Ben was there.

That’s when I went to McCaffrey’s, which was a pub restaurant off 86th where a lot of folks from Wyler went after work for a couple of drinks and a plate of appetizers. I’d been there twice, always with folks from Wyler.

I parked, and when I got out, Benny was at my door.

“Got the shit on you, babe?” he asked and there it was again. He was good at this cloak-and-dagger shit. I’d left it in my computer bag on my passenger seat. It probably wasn’t such a hot idea to leave evidence of all that Tandy’s crew had been doing in a decades-old Z outside a pub frequented by Wyler staff.

“Right,” I muttered, leaned into my car, nabbed my bag, pulled it out, and when I did, Benny took it.

I locked up. He grabbed my hand and led me into the bar.

We found Heath away from the having-a-few-and-attempting-to-hook-up crowd around the bar. Side booth, out of the way.

Obviously, he didn’t want to have a beer (or in his case, by the cocktail glass in front of him, I was again guessing a martini) and share about our day among the heaving throng.

I led Benny to Heath, and when we got to his booth, Ben guided me in first.

We barely stopped sliding our asses in when Heath asked, “Who’s this fucking guy?”

“My boyfriend,” I answered.

He leveled his eyes on me. “I thought I told you to come alone.”

“She’s not alone. Get over it or not. Call it now. We leavin’ or we stayin’?” Ben declared, and Heath glared at him.

Then he shrugged. “What the fuck, doesn’t matter. It’s gonna be all over the Internet soon anyway so everyone can see it,” he muttered bizarrely, then turned, picked something up out of the seat beside him, and tossed it across the table our way.

It was a manila envelope.

“What’s this?” I asked, reaching for it.

“Proof Randy Bierman is a total dick,” Heath answered.

“Need more to go on there, man,” Benny said.

Heath looked at me but jerked his head toward Benny. “Again, why is this guy here?”

“He’s Italian. He’s protective. He tends not to like me having a drink on command alone with guys who don’t like me much, so he’s here. Like he said, get over it,” I replied, having grabbed the envelope during that exchange. I flipped open the flap and started to pull out what was inside.

I shoved it back in and I didn’t even get a full look.

This was because what I saw was Heath sitting in a nice armchair, fully clothed, head thrown back, and Sandy was between his legs doing something that could not be mistaken, completely naked.

I barely got the photo shoved back in before Benny ripped the envelope out of my hand and sent it sailing back to Heath.

“You wanna explain why you’re givin’ my woman shit like that to look at?” he demanded to know, his voice not smooth, not easy, but rumbling and irate.

Obviously, he got a look too.

“Thought she should know she’s right,” Heath answered like it was all the same to him. I looked at his martini glass, which was drained, and wondered how many he’d had.

When he spoke again, I looked back to him.

“Bierman. Like you guessed. Told me to tell Sandy to keep her shit together or her consequence would be everyone across the globe knowing she has a birthmark on her ass. Also told me to end it with her. And last, he told me if my resignation wasn’t on Lloyd’s desk by Monday, that picture”—he jerked his head to the envelope—“was going to be all over the Internet.”

I did not get this.

So I asked, “Why does he want you to resign?”

“Because he’s a dick,” Heath answered.

The way he opened our discussion came back to me.

“Are you resigning?”

“Fuck no,” he clipped, and I blinked.

He was swinging Sandy out there.

What a jerk!

“You’re gonna put your woman out there?” Benny stated my thoughts, but he did it incredulously, like that idea was so foreign to him he couldn’t process it, and I remembered (not that I’d ever forget) how much I love Benny Bianchi.

Benny Bianchi had a lot of my love, but he would earn more in the coming exchange.

“I’m not lettin’ some twat strong-arm me into quitting my fucking job,” Heath declared. “And she’s not my woman.”

“Your dick been in her mouth more than once?” Benny asked.

“Not that it’s your business, but yeah,” Heath bit out.

“Then she’s your woman,” Ben decreed.

I grinned and leaned into him, wrapping my hands around his bicep and murmuring, “You’re so awesome.”

He tipped his head to look down at me. “Babe, you wanna focus?”

I kept grinning and murmuring when I said, “Right,” let him go, and looked back to Heath.

Heath was staring at us, and when he got both our attention, he announced, “I think I’m gonna throw up.”

“I failed to introduce you two,” I said, ignoring his remark. “Heath, this is my boyfriend, Benny Bianchi—master pizza maker, super protective Italian hot guy, and man who knows how to treat a woman.” I looked up to Ben. “Ben, Heath—a man who gives all us salespeople a bad name.”

“Jesus, I didn’t ask you here to give me shit,” Heath said.

“You didn’t ask me here at all,” I pointed out as Benny asked over me, “Why did you ask her here?”

Another shrug. “Colleagues and shit. She tried to do me a solid, I threw it in her face. She should know,” Heath told him.

“The guy tell you he’d give you the photos if you resign?” Benny kept at him.

“No. He said I wouldn’t see them on the Internet if I resigned.”

“He keeps it and knows you’ll fold, he pulls it out anytime he needs somethin’ from you,” Benny guessed.

“If I did something as weak as resign, I wouldn’t be around for him to blackmail me,” Heath returned.

“You’d probably go to another pharma and then who knows what he would expect from you,” Benny wisely pointed out.

“Then it’s good I’m gonna call his bluff,” Heath fired back.

“Resign,” Ben replied firmly, and Heath’s eyes narrowed.

“Dude, I do not know you. I didn’t ask you here. I do not want you here. And I sure as fuck am not gonna take career advice from you.”

It was then Benny lost patience and pinned Heath with his eyes.

“Right now, two Chicago wise guys are workin’ over the PI who took that picture. They’ll have all he has on you probably within half an hour so he won’t have it to hold over you. And word on this guy is, he’s a big fan of piggybacking his clients’ blackmail attempts. The next couple of days, the rest will be collected. You resign. Shit goes down. Things are explained, including why you resigned. A week, two, you’ll have your job back.”

Heath’s head twitched when Ben started talking, and he was staring with his mouth open when Benny quit.

He pulled himself together to whisper, “Fuck me, you’re in the mob?”

“Not me, not even close. But Frankie has connections, so heads up on that, I wouldn’t fuck her over,” Ben told him.

Heath’s eyes near on bugged out of his head and I had to swallow a giggle. Since it was such a big giggle, it wasn’t easy, and I almost choked on it.

But Ben wasn’t done.

“She’s got your back, and by that, I’m thinkin’ she more has the woman you won’t claim as yours back, but you get to enjoy that protection. Just resign. It’ll all be good.”

“How can I be assured of that?” Heath pressed.

“You can’t,” Ben returned. “You just gotta trust that not everyone in this world is an asshole out for themselves like you are.”

I couldn’t stop that giggle and Heath turned his scowl at me.

I waved a hand, forced myself to sober, and said, “Sorry, sorry. Inappropriate.”

“You gonna fuck me?” he asked.

“What I’m gonna do is make sure Sandy doesn’t get fucked, which means I have to do the same for you. So, no. I’m not gonna fuck you,” I told him.

Heath’s eyes narrowed. “You know why Bierman wants me out?”

“You aren’t gonna know that,” Ben took back the conversation, though I didn’t know, neither did Benny. But obviously Ben had made the decision that we weren’t sharing the rest with a jerk like Heath.

Heath looked to him. “Why not?”

“Your protection,” Benny said.

“That’s jacked,” Heath bit out. “It’s my ass on the line.”

It was then I knew Ben was done.

I knew this when he stated, “Okay, I’m hungry. I don’t wanna be here with you. I wanna be home with my woman and my dog, so this is the gig. It’s lost on you but bigger shit is at play here and whatever your part in it is small. So we don’t have time to jack around with you. You either trust Frankie or you don’t. But I’ll tell you something, you go in the office Monday morning without your resignation typed out in order to take the back of the woman who’s warmin’ your bed, you are not a man. You’re a dick, a weasel, and a douche. That play you make is gonna be on you. And it might not fuck with your head but I cannot imagine how it wouldn’t that the woman you toss right in front of the bus is gonna pay for your ambition and probably have men say shit and even do shit to her that she won’t deserve. It could even put her in jeopardy because they saw that out there.”

He tilted his head to the envelope on the table and kept talking.

“But I’ll know, and Frankie will know, and your woman will know, and she’ll live the rest of her life wishin’ she not only never went down on you but never saw your face. You’re willin’ to do that to her, you can live with that, right. But you can, you’re one serious dick, a huge-ass weasel, and a total fuckin’ douche.”

Ben said his piece and we were gone. He pulled me right out of the booth, the bar, and took me straight to my car.

He backed me into it and ordered, “You lead home. I’ll follow.”

“That was awesome,” I replied.

His lips quirked, but he said, “I’m not out of your rearview.”

“And you’re awesome,” I kept at it.

That got me a grin, but he asked, “Frankie, you hear me?”

“How hungry are you?” I asked back.

“I worked out after lunch so that’s long gone.”

This surprised me.

“Where did you work out?”

“Is this information you need before you drive home?”

“No, except for the fact that if you’re really truly hungry, that’ll be a bummer, because if you weren’t, I was so going down on you the minute we got home.”

“I could wait to eat.”

I smiled up at him and did it for a long time.

“But not for three hours while you stand there bein’ a goof because I’m awesome,” he finished.

“I love you, Benny Bianchi,” I blurted.

“Fuck,” he muttered, then bent his head, laid a hot, heavy, wet, long one on me that ended with my arms around his shoulders, one hand in his fabulous hair, and one of his hands on my ass before he lifted his head, pulled out of my arms, turned me, smacked my ass, and said, “Get home.”

He took a step back and stared pointedly at my door.

I took a deep breath to calm my heart and settle my system before I dug out my key, unlocked my door, and headed home to give my man a blowjob.

And, after that, feed him.