The next day, I went back to Zelda. I brought her flowers and I made nice, watching with keen, shrewd eyes how she blushed at my attention and her lips pulled into a hesitant, but sweet smile. She tried again to tell me how I couldn’t be there, but she didn’t stop me when I brushed past her into the house. She didn’t stop me when I put the flowers in water and set them in the center of the kitchen counter. She didn’t stop me when I cupped her cheek with my hand, nor when I let that hand trail lower down over her jaw and neck and collarbone.

 

She didn’t stop me because I knew that whatever she said or thought, she still wanted me. And I would take full advantage of that fact.

 

“We shouldn’t be doing this, Nester,” she whispered to me, breathless as I trailed my hand down over her breast and lower along her ribs and stomach, finally stopping on her hips where her jeans hung low.

 

A spark of irritation swept through me. I tried to keep it back, but she must have seen it, because her expression crumpled slightly and she turned away.

 

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but I wasn’t even sure what exactly she was sorry for. Wanting to fuck me? Or actually fucking Santos?

 

Deciding to run with the irritation, that genuine feelings were more likely to sway her, I asked in a barely controlled voice, “What is it that you could see in a man like Santos?”

 

She hesitated, almost like she was racking her brain in search of an honest, but valid answer. Like maybe she didn’t know what she saw in him. It made me frown, because I could understand if she was in it for the money or if some lingering naïve part of her was convinced he truly was a good man. But this? If she didn’t know what it was she saw in him, then what the hell happened?

 

Shoving that question aside, I focused on my goal at hand. I needed dirt on Santos, and Zelda was my best shot at giving it.

 

And if I maybe got her riled up again, well, I could think of a few things we could do that would make us both pretty fucking happy.

 

Swallowing, Zelda finally said, “He’s a…difficult man, I know, but he’s done right by me and kept his word.” Her mouth snapped shut, like she had just told me too much, but I couldn’t figure out what was in her statement that would give me anything about Santos.

 

“Are you crazy?” I asked through gritted teeth, then shut my eyes and tried to slow my breathing. Getting angry with her wouldn’t help. Not in the slightest. When I opened them again, she wasn’t looking at me. “You said you didn’t want a criminal,” I reminded her gently, hoping to get her talking about what it was Santos did for a living—I knew, but maybe there was something I was missing.

 

She clenched her eyes shut at my words, looking guilty, maybe about what she’d said to me.

 

Good, I thought, feeling some smidgen of satisfaction at the idea that she was upset over how she had treated me. She deserved that much at the very least.

 

When she opened them again, she told me, “Santos isn’t a criminal.” She sounded only half convinced, but pressed on before I could call her on it. “He’s a businessman. And a philanthropist.”

 

I couldn’t help but snort at that. Philanthropist? Sure, and I played for the New York Yankees in my free time. “Right,” was all I said out loud in response.

 

Her cheeks reddened, and I saw her eyes flash. But the flash died quickly and her shoulders slumped as she sighed. Shaking her head, she said, “Really, he tries.” Now she didn’t even sound half convinced. “He invests in a lot of construction that would never get done without him. Buildings that are anything from low-income housing to daycare centers.” She hesitated, looking and sounding uncertain or even a little sick at her own words, like she’d just tasted something sour.

 

I sensed it more than anything else. There was something there, something that she didn’t agree with.

 

“No hospitals?” I joked.

 

She sent me a look, then said, “Not yet. That’s the new one, though, I think. It’s costing him a fortune, you know. And after the last collapse, well, you’d think he’d get out of the construction building.”

 

I froze, doing my best to hide my sudden interest in her words. My face remained blank—I hoped—but inside, my mind was buzzing with activity. First, there was no way that Santos was a philanthropist. If he was doing something charitable, then he was getting something back for it, too. But what? Like Zelda said, it was costing him a fortune to invest in these buildings. What was the return for him?

 

“Guess he’s not a very good businessman,” I told her instead of voicing my real thoughts. I couldn’t let her know what I was doing.

 

Zelda folded her arms across her chest, pushing her large tits together and making my mind wander to other things. After last night, I’d ached with need. I had gone home—which was still temporarily Jackson’s couch—and jerked myself off to the memory of how I’d fondled Zelda until she came. When my own release came, it was a relief, but it didn’t get rid of the need that had been in me for years now.

 

I hadn’t wanted to simply jump into the bed with Zelda, knowing that she would immediately write that off as me being horny after so many years in prison—which wasn’t wrong, necessarily—and never let me back in, if only because she would have been still suspicious of my motives. By pushing her over the edge instead and letting my own needs go unsated, I gave her the impression that what I wanted was more.

 

I do want more, I thought as I eyed her voluptuous body. I just couldn’t let her know what that really was.

 

“What are you even doing, Nester?” Zelda asked finally when I’d stared at her too long, thinking of things that I shouldn’t have been thinking of.

 

I swallowed and thought fast. If Zelda realized I was leading her to water, pumping her for information about Santos rather than being here for the sake of affection and desire, I wouldn’t get much more. In fact, I’d probably get a slap in the face and a boot in my rear as I sailed out the door.

 

Taking a step closer, I decided to be bold. “I’m trying to figure out what happened. I’m trying to figure out how it is that I lost everything that mattered to me.” Everything I loved, I thought, but couldn’t quite say the words. I’d told Zelda I loved her a thousand times before, but I couldn’t say it now, again, after all these years and the worst betrayal I could have imagined.

 

Part of that was because I didn’t want to give her the satisfaction.

 

Part of that was because I couldn’t afford to reopen that bleeding, heartsick wound.

 

Zelda clenched her eyes shut tightly, looking as though she were on the very verge of tears. But she sucked in a harsh, dragging breath and shook her head. “It’s complicated, Nester. You must know that.”

 

Anger bubbled inside of me. Complicated? What was complicated? She left me for Santos, my greatest rival, and did it under the pretense of not wanting to date a criminal.

 

If that wasn’t ironic, I didn’t know what was.

 

Forcibly, I shoved down that anger. I couldn’t afford to lose what little ground I’d gained. There was still so much more information to get and Zelda was the best place to make a play for it. Still, it was difficult to focus on the betrayal, but not how it hurt.

 

Stepping closer again until we were nearly chest to chest, her shirt just barely grazing mine, I looked down into her big, doe eyes. They were filled with something that might have been regret, might have been desire, and might have been something else entirely, but I didn’t care to decipher it.

 

I had a damn job to do now.

 

My hand reached out for her, caressing the soft skin of her cheek delicately, gently. Her eyelids fluttered, her lashes long and thick like her hair. Her lips parted and she let out a tiny sigh, like she’d been waiting for me to do that.

 

“There’s still something here, isn’t there?” I asked her, keeping my voice quiet, because I was afraid that if I put any sort of power into the words I’d lose myself to grief and anger. I didn’t want to be honest with myself, but being this near to Zelda tore me up a little bit inside. I’d dreamed about this moment in jail, how I’d come back to her home and throw open the door. How I’d make her see reason—or passion, at least—and I’d win her back, even though her words had stung me worse than anything else ever had in my life. What I did after was whatever, but getting her back had been some sort of lingering idea in my head, even if the rest of me was sold on revenge.

 

Zelda pulled her lower lip between her teeth, worrying it until it looked red and swollen. Kissable. Delicious. A little breathless, she told me in a soft voice, “It doesn’t matter if there is, Nester. You can’t be here.”

 

My body tensed at the rejection, but I reminded myself that it didn’t matter. I wasn’t here to actually get her back; I was here to use her. In whatever ways I thought necessary or useful. Forcing myself to relax, I let my hand slip down from her cheek to her neck and around to the back. I massaged it a little, then used it as leverage to jerk her forward. Only moderately surprised, she collided with me, her hands going out automatically to support her. They landed on my chest as her breasts crashed into me.

 

Instantly I was hard. I wanted to take her here in the kitchen, right now, but I did my best to focus.

 

“How can it not matter?” I ground out, my other hand finding the small of her back and going lower still so that I could get a handful of her perky, full ass.

 

She let out a tiny moan when I gave her a squeeze; I knew I was winning.

 

Her hands fisted into my shirt, torn between shoving me away from her and pulling me closer. I could see it in the way her lips were parted and feel it in the flushed heat of her skin that she wanted me, wanted to kiss me and do other, dirtier things with me.

 

I leaned forward until my mouth was a hairsbreadth away from hers. “If you really don’t want me here, if you don’t want me, then tell me to go right here and now,” I told her in a deep, gruff voice that was full of the desire that ached beneath my belt. “I’ll do it. I’ll leave you here heaving and breathless. But if you want me…” I let my voice trail off.

 

I didn’t close the distance between our mouths, though it would have been easy. Instead, I waited, so close to her lips that I could feel the searing heat of her skin.

 

Her eyes fluttered, and for a moment I thought she was going to do it. I thought she was going to tell me to go, to get the hell out of here and never come back, and I wondered what I would do then, but then her eyes closed the rest of the way and her hands released my shirt. They moved upwards, tangled into my hair and then she smashed out faces together. Her lips sealed themselves against mine viciously, desperately.

 

She didn’t complain when I grabbed a fistful of her hair and tugged on it harshly. Nor did she mind when I squeezed her ass, jerking it into me until our crotches ground against one another. And she didn’t protest when my tongue glided along her full lips, niggling at them to part. In fact, she acquiesced. Her lips opened and I deepened the kiss, exploring her warm mouth. She moaned into me, her body trembling beneath my touch and I knew I had her.

 

Maybe she had me a little bit, too.

 

I lost myself in that kiss. Her nails raked along my scalp and her hips moved against me all of their own. She rubbed herself along my length, dry humping me until I was groaning into her mouth and my hand was sliding into the waistband of her jeans and panties to grip her bare ass beneath.

 

Her flesh was warm and soft, her ass firm, but pliant as I massaged it in my large hand. My cock ached until I felt close to bursting with need for her body, and it tortured me to think that maybe I shouldn’t give in to that.

 

I was confident that she would let me. I’d slide her jeans off and maybe just tear off her panties. She liked stuff like that, just like she enjoyed it when I held her hands over her head firmly so that she couldn’t get away from me.

 

“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked me, her voice breathless and laced with pure, unadulterated lust.

 

I had grabbed her wrists and pinned them above her head. We were in her bedroom, her roommates gone for the evening, and somehow I’d gotten her to the bed. It had started with some tickling and when she was laughing so hard that there were tears in her eyes, I’d taken my shot. A quick shove of her shoulders had sent her spiraling back onto her bed, her legs falling apart of their own accord, her hair spilling across the bed, her huge tits bouncing from the impact.

 

She laughed at me a little then, but it was nervous and a little uncertain. She told me I was being silly, but I could tell there was no conviction in her voice. I crawled on top of her then and before she thought to protest, I had her wrists. Leaning over her, my legs on either side of her hips, my cock harder than I thought it had ever been before, I knew I had to have her.

 

All of her.

 

There must have been something in my eyes, a look of need so deep and dark that it was flashing like danger, because she caught her breath. “Nester?” she whispered as her tits heaved, barely contained by the flimsy summer dress she’d decided to wear.

 

I didn’t answer her. Instead, I deliberately raked my eyes across her body—those full, perky tits; that tiny waist; those flared hips perfect for gripping tightly in the act—making her flush crimson.

 

“Please, Nester,” she begged me, though I couldn’t tell if it was a plea to let her up or a plea to keep doing whatever I was doing.

 

I hoped for the latter, and when I pulled both of her wrists together so that I could hold them with only one hand, I drifted the free one lower to test if my hopes were right.

 

My hand trailed down her bare arm, her skin silky and soft, flushing as I went. Her breathing became shallow and stuttering as I reached her collarbone, my fingertips caressing that, too. I found the center of her body and slipped my hand down that line. It went between her breasts, which were smooshed together by her bra so that I had to drag my hand through them, effectively pressing against both of them.

 

She let out a little moan that almost sounded like my name.

 

“You know what I want, right?” I asked her in a voice that was like gravel crunching.

 

Her eyelashes fluttered across her cheeks which were now burning, because, yes, she knew exactly what I wanted. She bit her lower lip, my hand still buried between her tits. “I…” But she couldn’t get anything else out. Instead, I watched as her mouth struggled to form words, her lips forming little o’s that made me want to bury my aching hard-on in her mouth just as much as between her legs.

 

“Good,” I told her, though she hadn’t answered me. But the fast beating of her heart and the deep, burning flush of her skin told me that she wanted me, too.

 

I let my hand wander lower than her tits, catching the neckline of her dress and tugging it with me. It gave a little, letting me see the outline of her bra—a flimsy thing that was too small for her ample breasts, leaving the edges of her nipples peeking out—but that was it. I encountered the resistance of fabric and kept going anyway.

 

I heard it tear. If she minded, she didn’t say anything. In fact, I heard her breath catch in her throat, and when I tore the dress the rest of the way, the straps coming apart until I had the neckline around her tiny waist, she let out a moan.

 

Satisfied with the ruined dress, I left the neckline there and traveled over the top of the dress to get lower. I had to scoot myself down a little so that I could get to the hem of her dress, but when I found it, I allowed my hand to dip beneath it to find the creamy skin of her legs. My hand traveled up, squeezing at her thighs. She gasped as I moved my hand between her legs higher and higher.

 

Finally, I found her soaked panties. She gasped and begged as I rubbed against them. “Guess you want the same thing,” I told her in a voice laced with barely restrained desire. I needed to take her now.

 

“I…oh, god, Nester, I…” But she couldn’t finish her sentence, couldn’t find her words.

 

I didn’t care. The dampness of her panties told me that she wanted me and that she was ready for me, so when I grabbed the waistband of them and jerked, I knew she wouldn’t care about the tearing sound they made.

 

She moaned as I pulled the tatters of her panties away from her body, tossing them off to the side somewhere.

 

Not waiting, I slid my fingers along her moist lips. I parted them and wasted no time in plunging a thick finger inside of her.

 

She screamed. Not a little whimper, not a small moan, but a full scream that was some garbled version of my name.

 

Her body swallowed my finger to the knuckle and I was coated with slickness. That was all the invitation I needed, so I withdrew my finger—she begged me to come back—and undid my jeans. I got them down low enough to let my cock spring free, so hard that it was pulsing. I settled it between her, rubbed it along her wet lips and split them with the head of my dick.

 

Her breathing was ragged by the time my head was poised at the entrance of her womanhood.

 

“I don’t think I have the control to be gentle,” I ground out, worrying for a split second that maybe my engorged member would be a little too much for her.

 

In response, she lifted her hips slightly, pushing the tip of me ever so slightly into her entrance. That was all I could handle, and with a groan of pleasure, I thrust. I buried my entire length inside of her, and I might have felt guilty for being so forceful, so impatient, if she hadn’t cried out my name and told me how much she loved it.

 

“Oh, god, you’re so deep!”

 

I almost lost myself inside her right then and there, but held out because I wanted more. I wanted to pump into her and make those fucking perfect tits bounce. I wanted to hear her scream my name a thousand more times.

 

With my free hand I pulled down the cups of her bra so that her breasts were free, the nipples hard, and then I began to move. I pounded into her desperately, making her cry out and beg and whimper.

 

“Oh, Nester!”

 

Zelda gasped, reminding me where we were and who we were and how she was not my girl anymore. The memory of our time together was like a brick falling into my gut and I knew I couldn’t be inside her just then.

 

I still wanted her too much. I still cared for her too much.

 

Breaking away from her, both of us heaving, her big doe eyes looking up at me, I said the only thing that would save us, “Does Santos kiss like that?”

 

Zelda pulled back and slapped me firmly across the face. “Get out,” she told me, her body trembling with the passion we’d just shared—I wondered if she had remembered the same moment I had.

 

I didn’t argue with her. I didn’t protest. I just turned and left without another word, my own heart pounding a mile a minute.

 

***

 

Three hours later found me in the office of public records. I was pouring over building prints and land purchases, business deals, the whole shebang. At the same time, I was using my phone to research information about building collapses that were recent.

 

It took me a long time before I made the connection, but once I did, I started getting suspicious.

 

I’d found an article online which detailed the recent collapse of a charity hall designed and constructed by Vanguard Construction Industries, Inc.—VCI for short. The building had been up only a few months when the collapse happened during the middle of the work day where several offices full of staff and volunteers had been holed up in offices. Dozens of people had been injured and there were a total of sixteen deaths as a result. VCI had been cleared of all wrongdoing, the papers stating that it had been an “unstable and impossible to detect foundation flaw” that had been the leading cause for the building failure. No personal lawsuits had gone to court, though I noticed that there had been at least three filed.

 

Maybe it wouldn’t have meant anything to me—buildings collapsed all the time and VCI could have been just another company who screwed up or who didn’t—except that I also had the records on business deals within VCI. It was mostly negotiations on winning the contract to build the charity house, but it also had something very interesting on it—a signature at the bottom, the only place it appeared in the entire sixty-five-page report.

 

Santos DeArma.

 

I looked farther into VCI and found that he appeared on several other documents in a very small capacity—but he was there. Satisfied that Santos was definitely involved with the company, I dug a little deeper on the internet. I found that VCI had been named Cornerstone Construction, Co. just two years ago, and a year and a half before that it had been Graystone Construction and Design, Co. The name changes corresponded with a series of “accidents” just before and while the company, under any of the names, hadn’t been found liable for any of the accidents, there was no denying there was a pattern.

 

Looks like Santos’s cutting corners, I thought to myself.

 

Of course, there was no evidence of that. If there had been, Santos would have been nailed to the wall—or at least, his company would have—long ago.

 

It looked to be a dead end, until I found a list of names. There were only three of them, but they were the ones who had filed the claims against VCI during the latest collapse. Two were by family members of the victims who had died in the collapse and the third one had actually been in the building.

 

I looked around to see what their claims were and to see how they were resolved, but couldn’t seem to find anything on it.

 

All I could find were their names.

 

***

 

I tracked down the first two names on my list, which happened to be the people who were family members of the victims. The first was a young woman with three kids. She explained to me that her husband had been a good man, but he’d left behind a family that didn’t know how to support itself without him. The entire time she looked uncomfortable speaking to me and when I asked what her lawsuit had been about, she explained that it was all a misunderstanding.

 

Then she shoved the door in my face.

 

The second name belonged to an elderly couple, clearly long since retired, who had lost a vivacious, colorful daughter in the accident. They spoke highly of her, but admitted she was a free spirit and sometimes didn’t think things through. They said she likely died because she tried to go back and help others.

 

I didn’t tell them how skeptical I was of this and instead asked them about the lawsuit. They shared a look between the two of them and politely informed me that it was getting late. I tried one more time to ask them about the lawsuit, but they said that they felt it was unfair to hold the company responsible for their daughter’s heroic nature.

 

I was ushered out after only a few more minutes of civil, but unwelcoming conversation. By the time I went to the third name on the list, I expected to encounter the same thing as the other two.

 

Angela Davenport met me at the door and invited me in. She was in a wheelchair.

 

“I know you’ve probably already talked to everyone and then some, but can I ask you about the accident?” I tried, knowing full well that it was already a waste of my time.

 

Angela blinked at me, surprised. She was a pretty thing, younger than I had anticipated. Her eyes were coal black, matching her hair, and her skin was a soft brown color that almost glowed. “You mean the building collapse?” she clarified.

 

I nodded.

 

“Oh, sure, that thing. I can’t believe people are still even talking about it.” She laughed, but it sounded just a little forced.

 

“Was that…how it happened?” I gestured to the wheelchair.

 

She was silent for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders lightly. “Yeah. It was…pretty terrible. I was in there for hours and hours before they found me. Thought I was going to die down there.”

 

“I noticed you filed a lawsuit against the company, Vanguard Construction Industries?” I prompted, hoping against hope that she wouldn’t immediately clam up like the others have.

 

She hesitated, studying me a moment, before shrugging her shoulders again. “Yeah, I did.” She paused for a second as though thinking something through, then gave me a dazzling smile. “It was really stupid of me. I was just looking for someone to blame.”

 

I narrowed my eyes at her, but tried again. “Why would you say that? Don’t you think it could have been the company’s fault?”

 

She waved me off with a delicate hand. “No. I mean, yeah, that stuff happens, but only with the bad companies, you know?”

 

I stared at her uncertainly for a moment. Bad companies? “What do you mean by that?”

 

“Well, if they were really a bad company, would they have paid all my medical bills? Would they have helped me get on disability? No way! They would have left me to the wolves and made me pay all the court costs for some stupid lawsuit that I wouldn’t have even won in the first place. Dropping it after all of that was the least I could do.”

 

We talked a little bit more after that, then I thanked her and left. I didn’t need to hear any more, really. It was pretty obvious to me that Angela Davenport was a goodhearted woman who had been through something terrible and just wanted to move on with her life. Maybe some part of her knew that things weren’t quite on the up and up with VCI, maybe she didn’t. Either way, she was willing to leave the whole mess behind her in order to move on with her life.

 

Which I couldn’t blame her for.

 

That being said, I was willing to bet that the reason VCI was so damn nice to her was that they realized she had a strong case against them. Or at the very least, she had the power to mess them up in the court of public opinion.

 

I wanted to tell her that she’d been had, but in the end I didn’t see the point. Angela Davenport had probably ended up with the best possible outcome for her, and I wasn’t about to drag her into court just to screw Santos DeArma.

 

After all, I was pretty sure I could find other ways of doing that.