His anxieties temporarily relieved, Ryder headed back into the office, shutting and locking the door behind him so that nobody could interrupt his time with Adriana. “Sorry for that,” Ryder said, referring both to his brother’s actions as well as the late start to the morning’s work. “Sometimes you just have to take care of business.”
“I can understand that,” Adriana said with a smile. She looked less nervous now, although Ryder thought he could detect a note of curiosity within her eyes, like she wanted to know how the conversation with Giovanni went. But Ryder wasn’t going to say anything. He had to observe the rules he’d set the night before. Any talk about the playroom stayed in the playroom, and everything else had to be professional.
“Right.” Ryder stepped around to stand directly in front of Adriana’s desk, keeping his arms crossed just to resist the urge to lean over her as she studied various piles of papers. “Tell me, where should we start today?” Ryder tried to keep his breathing steady, even though his organs were humming inside with anticipation. Adriana might not have been aware of it, but this was the first test. Was she going to mention the playroom or the contract, or their new “relationship?” Or was she going to remember the terms that she’d agreed to? Was she going to prove herself?
Adriana stared up at him silently for a moment, something unspoken stewing behind her eyes, before she finally cleared her throat and pushed one pile of papers forward for Ryder to look at. “I figured we’d begin with some of the C-block stuff,” she said, shuffling in her seat to pull herself as close to her desk as possible. “Pull up a chair; we’ll be here for a while.”
Ryder fought the urge to grin. She’d passed the first hurdle, and in the process, she proved that she remembered what he’d said before. Here in the office, she was the boss, not him. “What’s the C-block?” he asked.
Adriana paused, her pen frozen in midair while she gaped at Ryder wordlessly for a long moment. “You’re joking,” she said in a soft voice a moment later.
“Uh, no, really don’t know what you’re talking about,” Ryder said, feeling himself blush a little under his collar in embarrassment about his own ignorance.
Adriana sighed and nodded. “Right. Okay, that’s no problem. I got this.” She pointed across the room at the nearest chair, snapping her fingers once to get Ryder’s full attention. “Get the chair. I mean it. You’re going to need it. We’re really going to be in here for a while. As in, we’re going to order lunch and stay all day, so buckle up, pal.”
Ryder couldn’t suppress the smile that popped up effortlessly on his face as a result of Adriana’s commands. It sounded so natural, so unforced, hearing her boss him around. She really was a Dominant in the office. If anything, she should have been the one in control, making the decisions, while Ryder poured the coffee and kept the records in order. But of course, his pride, not to mention his family’s expectations, got in the way of that. He had to be in control, even if in reality he only felt powerful in the bedroom.
He did as Adriana instructed, bringing a chair up to the other side of the desk so that he was sitting across from her. “All right, what’s C-block?”
Adriana reached across the desk for her bottle of water, taking a short sip before clearing her throat again and answering him. “Cocaine. Or more specifically, the path the cocaine travels up from Mexico to here.”
Ryder flinched a little, even though he shouldn’t have. He knew his father was involved in drug trafficking and dealing to users in Jersey and the city. He shouldn’t have been surprised, but it was like he was hit in the face with a brick. This was real. The responsibility, the power, the duty, the danger… all of it was hanging over his head. He swallowed to clear his throat before forcing a smile at Adriana, nodding at her to continue speaking.
“So, we’ve been running the C-block the same way for the past six months, using this MC from New Mexico to get the goods into the country. The only problem is… they met up personally with your father before making the deal. They don’t know you, and that might be an issue.”
“What do you mean?” Ryder asked.
“Well, it’s not like it’s a huge deal or anything,” Adriana began, “but they’ll want to speak with you. Face-to-face. They’ve got a lot on the line here—bringing the drugs and the money back and forth across the border. If anything goes down, they’re the ones holding the bag, so they like to be sure that they’re in business with somebody they can trust. I can arrange the meeting for a week or so after the funeral if you’d like some time to prepare.”
“Jesus,” Ryder said under his breath, the word slipping out of him like air. What the hell had he gotten himself into? Or more accurately, what had his father forced him into? His heart stuttered in his chest like an exhausted runner slowly stumbling to a stop. He refused to admit it to himself, but honestly, he felt terrified, completely overwhelmed by the volume and intensity of the work that was stretched out before him on Adriana’s desk.
“Hey,” Adriana said, reaching her hand forward across the desk. For a moment, Ryder was worried that she was going to touch him, to try to calm him down physically with actual affection, but she held herself back, balling her hand into a fist instead. “I know you can do this. You just got to invest the time into it, and it’ll come together. I’ll pull you through. I promise.”
Ryder huffed out a laugh and shook his head. “You can’t promise that I won’t totally fail at this. That’s kind of my burden to bear.”
Adriana shrugged, clearly unbothered by his counterargument. “We’ll see about that. But anyway, I’ll make a note about the meeting with the C-block people. Let’s see, what next, what next…” She looked down at the stack of papers, flipping through them for a minute before she landed on the one she wanted. “Here. The Cannavale case. We’re watching it as it moves through the pretrial process.”
“What is this, exactly?” Ryder asked, accepting a stack of legal paperwork into his hands.
“One of our enforcers. Last year he got pinned by a couple of cops right after making a hit, so he’s basically toast. Your dad and I picked out the best defense attorney we could find that was both willing to take the case and also unattached to the organization in any way in case the prosecutor gets suspicious.”
Fucking Christ, Ryder thought as he flipped through some of the paperwork. It wasn’t like he was at all surprised by the evidence of violence in his father’s organization, but the old man had really shared every last detail with his assistant. There was no way that Adriana could be fired now. She knew too much. She could go to the feds at any moment and spill enough information to land them all in jail. If she ever tried to quit, I’d have to kill her, Ryder realized with a sobering dose of reality that made him feel like all of his bones had gone icy cold.
Ryder cleared his throat and adjusted his position in the seat, attempting to gather himself again so that she wouldn’t guess what he was thinking. He didn’t want her to be scared of him. But she should be scared of me, Ryder thought sadly as he watched Adriana flip through another thick stack of papers. She should be very, very scared.
“Anyway,” Adriana said, tearing Ryder back away from his ever-darkening thoughts, “Cannavale’s trial should be next month, if all goes as planned. We’re hoping the defense attorney will negotiate a plea deal, and as long as we keep his family fed and protected, he won’t roll over on us. But it’s a concern, anyway, that he might spill some details we’d rather keep quiet if he doesn’t get a good deal in the court.”
We. Ryder couldn’t help but notice that she used that word, over and over again, as if she was a member of the Rainieri family herself. But she wasn’t, not really. She might not have been “innocent” exactly, but she wasn’t mired in the muck of the mob the way Giovanni and Mama Rainieri were. She could easily walk away from all of this, become an FBI informant, and fuck all of them over. And if Ryder kept her around just because he wanted to fuck her, it’d be his fault.
“You okay?” Adriana asked, looking across at him with an expression of concern on her face. “You seem a little out of it.”
Ryder shook his head and forced a tight smile to reassure her. “No, no, I’m fine. Just a little shaken-up still, you know? From my dad dying so suddenly.”
Adriana looked uncomfortable all of a sudden, biting down on her bottom lip as she nodded slowly. “Yeah. It was a shock. I’m really sorry.”
“Don’t be,” Ryder said on reflex, the words leaving his mouth before his brain had an opportunity to catch up with them. “I just mean that you were closer to him than I was. Really, I should be giving condolences to you, not the other way around.”
Adriana didn’t answer him for a long moment, staring at him with something heavy hiding behind her eyes, something that Ryder couldn’t read at all. He felt the urge to squirm around in his seat, feeling his skin burn under her piercing gaze, but he held back. He still didn’t want her to know the extent of the effect she had on him.
Finally, Adriana dropped her gaze, nodding slowly and forcing an inauthentic smile on her face. “Shall we continue?” she asked, gesturing to the still-massive arrangement of files on the desk between them.
Ryder nodded and spent the next six or so hours as committed as possible to absorbing details from his father’s business. It all became a big blur at times, keeping the various names of different drug or gun contacts straight, but he was a little hesitant to take notes on the lesson. She could take the notes as evidence, Ryder thought, a slow chill climbing up his spine. She could be gathering as much information as possible to put us all away, for revenge. She could destroy us all if she wanted to.
He now realized he was terrified of her, or at least, of the awful potential she had to hurt his family. But… there was something enticing about that, too. Watching her sift through the papers, a few strands of hair coming loose from her tight ponytail, he remembered that soon he would get to pin her down, spank her, make her come apart underneath him. She had the potential to destroy him, and yet in the bedroom, he’d be in control. It almost made him lose his breath, just thinking about that.
“What are you doing tonight?” Ryder asked as soon as Adriana began to organize the papers back together to file them away in their appropriate locations. “I was thinking we could have another business dinner, you know, to keep this conversation going.” He hoped she would catch his drift and realize that he was talking about the playroom, but he didn’t want to specify what he meant in the office. The two worlds had to be separate, or they would both dissolve.
Adriana seemed to consider his proposition for a moment. Ryder noticed that her cheeks had gone slightly pink, almost as if she was blushing bashfully, just from thinking about what they were going to do together in the playroom. Ryder balled his hands into fists under the desk, just to give himself a little edge of pain to balance the rush of power he felt as a result of having a physical effect on her.
“Um, well, I have to go home and check on my dad. He hasn’t been feeling very well lately, and I worry about him,” she explained.
“And after?” Ryder asked, probably a little too quickly. He didn’t want to seem overeager, but fuck it.
“After that, I could stop by your penthouse if you want to discuss things in greater depth,” she said slowly, keeping her eyes glued to the desk rather than looking at him.
“Good,” Ryder said, smiling broadly and getting up from his seat. He walked around the desk to face her, his fingers itching to reach out and touch her. God, it was overwhelming, teasing himself this way, holding himself back. He couldn’t wait till he could grab her and fuck the shit out of her.
Adriana smiled a little shyly and looked up at him through her thick eyelashes, clasping her hands together tightly. “I’ll see you later tonight, then?”
“Count on it,” Ryder said as he exited the office, preparing to rush home to get everything ready for her arrival.
Sooner or later, Adriana would have to be dealt with, in one way or another. That much was just becoming clearer and clearer. Either she stays with us for life, or… her life has to become a lot shorter, Ryder said to himself, feeling a little cold and numb inside as the reality of the situation became clear to him.
But at least for now, he could enjoy his time with her in the playroom. He was going to take her apart piece by piece by piece and see what she was really made of.