Chase

I hate it when Bro’s right. But she’s so fucking right my nuts hurt. And not just because a glitter bomb exploded all over them when I sat down this morning.

She’ll pay for that. She’ll pay dearly for that. I don’t even care if she didn’t do it, she’ll pay.

I’m picturing her spread out naked on the counter of the snack bar, in a fantasy that involves her tits again, and I realize I’m so totally fucked I can’t see my way to getting unfucked.

I need to get my dick back in my pants and start using my head again, because I have housecleaning to do.

Mavis, the executive administrative assistant, is easily bought with a contraband chocolate chip cookie from Starbucks and a bullshit story about my sister getting fired from a job after filing a sexual harassment claim.

The only thing not true is the part about me having a sister. She was actually a girl I dated about eight years ago.

I might hate Bro like New Yorkers hate the Red Sox, and I might hate myself for wanting to fuck her brains out again—and again, and possibly again and again—but I won’t tolerate the way my executive board was ready to fire her for what she drove me to in the elevator last night.

Takes two to have sex. Letting the woman take the fall isn’t how I do business. Plus, my mother would be horrified.

Over everything.

Thank god she’s halfway around the world.

By four, I have a stack of paperwork outlining at least a dozen cases of harassment or inappropriate relationships that have been swept under the rug with severance packages. I want to hit something.

Instead, I take a break to get out of the building and cool off, and something else hits me.

Namely, a fist. Right to my left cheek.

The ham-boned sucker punch isn’t the first one I’ve gotten from this guy, who used to be like a brother to me, but the last time he hit me was a decade ago. Since then, he’s been drafted by the NHL and beefed up even more than the stocky bull he used to be. In a battle of wits, he probably couldn’t spell his name, but I like my skull in one piece, so I do the most manly thing I can. I lift a hand to order back the security guards flocking out of the building to defend my honor. “I got this, boys.”

“Mr. Jett—”

“Back up or you’re all fired.”

They all stop. Nice to know where their loyalty lies. I think.

“Feel better?” I ask Ares.

“No way, motherfucker.”

The term he’s really looking for is sister fucker, but there’s no sense in waving red panties in front of the bull. Dude takes his name seriously, and his twin brother isn’t any better. Worse, actually, because he got the brains on top of the stature.

Later I’ll contemplate the amazing feat that was Ares using a four-syllable word, but for now, I’m going to try not to get hit again.

“Sir, we’re going to have to ask you to leave,” the biggest of the Crunchy security dudes says. He has to crane his neck to make eye contact with the beast.

“Or I can crush you like a bug.” Ares pushes a fist into his other palm and glowers. If he’d been born anywhere but Minnesota, he probably would’ve been a pro wrestler. In Minnesota, it’s hockey first, nice second.

Since Ares can’t count to two, all I get from him is the hockey glare.

I flip a look at the guard to my right. “Go tell Ambrosia Berger she has a visitor.”

Suddenly my feet are dangling off the ground. “You don’t say her name,” Ares snarls. His breath smells like Cheetos and stale coffee, and his nose has more personality than it did last time. I added one of those lumps, but I knew him better then.

I’d also had an overwhelming and uncontrollable case of rage fueling my fists that day.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m pissed about the shit I need to clean up at Crunchy. I’m also pissed that I let Bro drive me to fucking her in the elevator. But getting off last night seems to have put me in a mellow place.

Especially since I’ve come to my senses and realized there’s no fucking way Ambrosia Berger would’ve let me stick my dick in her if she wasn’t already on birth control.

She’d probably claim she was on STD-preventatives too, because she can’t resist getting any random dig in, but I’m not planning on giving her the satisfaction of letting her throw that one in my face.

“How about putting me down?” I say to Ares. “Your sister can take care of herself. She glitter-bombed my office, and god only knows what she buried in my desk drawers to make that stench.”

Ares loosens his grip, and my feet slip closer to the ground. “She got you with that sparkle shit?”

Aw, he said a two-syllable word. His mother will be proud. “All over my ass.”

“Got my whole team too. In March.”

He drops me. I land on my feet and take a subtle but healthy step out of arm’s reach. “Heard you made the play-offs.” I would’ve cheered against him and the Blackhawks, but they were battling his twin, Zeus, and the Predators, so it was pointless. I watched baseball spring training instead. “Nice.”

“Sir?” The guard is back, and he looks like he’s just swallowed a live frog. “Ms. Berger has, erm, declined to see her visitor. And you may consider updating the employee guidelines on profanity.”

I can’t exactly threaten to move her whole department into the elevator of shame with her brother standing here, frothing at the mouth. I like breathing. I’d like to continue breathing for the next sixty or seventy years. I box, I run, and I can bench my own weight, but Ares can bench an entire city block.

This calls for a far more subtle attack.

One that no one can fault me for, but that Bro will hate just as much as she probably hates working for me.

Psychological warfare is the shit.

“Too bad.” I shrug. “I thought she’d enjoy having dinner at Selma’s with her brother. On me.”

“They eat raw shit there?” Ares asks.

“If you want.”

“Like my steak raw,” he grunts.

Not surprised. Medium-rare has too many syllables. And well-done sounds more British than ape.

I hate that I miss this dumbass, but I do. Zeus was the brains, Ares was the muscle. I was the spice.

My phone dings. It’s a photo text of Bro’s middle finger.

“Look at that,” I say. “Your sister’s decided to join you. I’ll get a car brought around.” I slap him on the back—not expecting that, is he?—and retreat before he can process what’s going on. I glance at the frog-eating guard. “Might want to put stronger steel on the lower windows,” I murmur.

Or I might want to sell this godforsaken grocery store.

But Bro would like that too much.

And I’m not getting out of organics. This isn’t business.

It’s personal.