Russell

“Get your head out of your ass and do the job the way we discussed. No asshole, do I sound like I give two shits about the morale of your crew? Who cares! We’ve got a deadline and we agreed to the term months ago. Like I give a shit! You get this shit done, on time or I will personally enforce the penalties stipulated in the contract.”

I slam the phone down and hiss a curse as I lean back in my chair and take deep breaths to calm the anger that’s been dogging me for days. My life isn’t going well, not well at all where before I thought it was the best time of my life.

I was on schedule with the million projects that Blay an Gray dumped in my lap, I was making headway with my family and my relationship with Ing was going strong and moving on the exact course I plotted out months ago.

I was happy. Thriving and in control of everything the way I like to be.

And now this. Everything’s come crashing down around me and just seems to be getting worse no matter what I do. It’s so fucking bad that I seem to be making things worse with every breath I take.

Not only am I looking at missing a deadline on a little development I put in play months ago, the apartment building we’d gutted and revamped looking months away from completion but I’ve hit a dead end on a deal that should have been in the bag last week.

Things just started unravelling after that. My mother called and made it clear that I’d be at a family event on Ingram’s birthday which made me break out in a cold sweat because I knew she’d pitch a fit and rightfully so.

That led to me doing something I never ever would have considered doing. I lied through my teeth and told her I had an emergency business deal that couldn’t be avoided and that I had to go out of town.

I even lied to my friends and business partners and invented a fictitious snag with one of the developments we were working on out of state with another company.

The truth is that I blew off Ingram’s birthday, a day that I know is important to her, something that she still has hang ups about and excused my behavior by getting her an insanely pricey diamond ring and telling myself that I was sparing her a tedious dinner with my family.

I ruined her birthday. Ruined the fragile trust I’d earned and in so doing broke the heart of a woman who is as soft inside as she is vengeful.

And trust me, she’s vengeful.

When I first saw her and knew that she’d be mine I pursued her with a relentlessness that could be recorded in the stalker’s hall of fame. I drove her crazy, wooed her and pestered her to within an inch of my life. I say that because my life was really at stake at one stage.

The woman has a temper that burns so hot the flame is blue. She’d explode and do stuff like throw sugar into my radiator. Sounds funny but the damn thing exploded while I was doing seventy miles on the freeway at eleven o clock at night.

She put slow punctures in all of my tyres and cackled when I had to replace my six grand rims. She broke into my apartment and loosened the bolts on my entertainment system and laughed her ass off when I had to replace my flat screen and stereo system, which by the way, fell on me when it finally crashed.

It only made me work harder because I knew that if she was putting that much energy into one upping me instead of screwing every hipster with tight jeans in the city, she was definitely into me.

And then I whammied her with the sex.

Which wasn’t easy because by the time she caved, I was rabid with the need to get to get my dick in her.

I persevered though and unleashed my full arsenal on her. I enthralled her with my touch. Used teasing strokes, words and her mind against her to get her so addicted to what only I could give her, that she could go off for me with nothing more than a look and the stroke of my tongue against her flesh.

I used her innate sensuality against here. Without guilt or care to the fact that if something did go wrong she’d go into a tail spin and be all that more vulnerable so I stood a chance of fixing things.

The problem here is that I never once considered how I’d feel if I saw her so beaten down and raw. Last night at supper I was beyond ashamed of myself.

I thought, confidently that I could go there and start my campaign to fix things, that I was relieved that I had this opportunity to exploit her weaknesses. I’m a calculating bastard like that.

What I didn’t expect is for her to be so…defeated.

The others cackled and laughed all night while she took strips out of me with that tongue of hers. And yeah, I guess if you’re on the outside looking in you’d have seen Ingram being her usual caustic self and chewing my ass for my obvious obsession.

But me, I know her better. She was raw and hurting and trying valiantly not to show it as she told me to do what comes natural and screw my mom. Her words were a lot more colourful than that but you get the idea.

She even left early, snarling at Lizzie that if she wanted to sit around sniffing dirty old lady junk she’d go hire a prostitute because at least their eyes aren’t cold and lifeless with lost souls.

Tink spewed milk all over Blay and the antics escalated from there, with Rox and Ty ribbing Ian about the white socks they bought him for his birthday-which he refuses to wear since Lizzie had a conniption.

Ingram left with a ‘You dress your husband like an anorexic gangster with hillbilly issues’ and stormed out to go ‘tear up a hipsters dick with my awesome girl lips’.

I got out of there not too long after and drove by her apartment building to check on her, already knowing she’d be in there and all alone.

Because that’s the way I played this. Like a bastard I knew that getting her hooked on me would put her in the head space to question herself every time she tries to go back to her old routine of one night stands and meaningless sex.

Christ. I deserve her hatred, but God help me, I can’t honestly do the right thing and give her up. I love her too much to even allow myself to think about not having her for my own.

“You okay man?”

I look up to see Ty amble in, his expression one of concern as he takes a seat and leans back with a sigh.

“Fine. Just having some shit with the foreman and union reps on the Baxter Lane building.” I say tiredly, scrubbing at my eyes thanks to a sleepless night spent trying to think my way through my problems.

“That guy Tanner?”

“The very one.” I snarl, the urge to go down there and beat that guy senseless a real prospect.

I need to hit something and that guy’s attitude is chapping my ass in a big way.

“Hmmm, I think Cam and Justin worked on one of his crews a while back before they came to us. I’ll see if they can talk to the guy or at least get him to set up a meeting to hammer things out.”

“Have I mentioned how much I love the fact that your entire family is involved in construction in one way or another?” I muse, laughing when he grins and looks at me with a smugness that is new, but looks good on the guy.

“What else is bugging you and no, don’t give me your usual stony glare of silence. I get that you’re the guy who is closed lipped about your private life and doesn’t talk about his feelings. Hell, with Blay and Gray being so emotive lately I kinda like that about you since I need a buddy who doesn’t need female products once a month. But I gotta be honest man, you look like shit and your temper is starting to make people skittish around here. Poor Doris looked ready to quit yesterday and that old broad hasn’t batted a lash once, not even when Mari came to the office.” Ty says, laughing but keeping those grey eyes trained on me.

“Ty-”

“It’s me or Rox since she noticed your shit last night and started clucking about it. We’re your family dude, we love you and we want you to be happy.”

I snort, knowing it’s true but also accepting that for those women, making me suffer as they put the screws to me is half the fun. I love them, I mean those people are certifiably insane on a good day. And I like it because it’s so alien to me after the way I grew up in a home with almost no emotion that I sorta bask in it.

But I’m not letting them toy with my situation, not for any reason even if I have to suffer their anger. Ingram would kill me if I so much as breathed a word about our problems-yeah, I snort here too because that’s the understatement of the millennium-and I’m just plain afraid of what Mari would do to me frankly.

“I’m good. Okay, okay don’t give me that look. Look, my parents are on my ass lately and without repeating the same old shit you already know about, I’m just sick and damned tired of them using my nanna against me. They’ve got some idea that if they push hard enough I’ll get back into the family fold and take over the business and they’re pushing the idea by threatening to use her health issues as a way to take her stock.”

The deal with nanna is simple. She’s my dad’s mom and one of the coolest old broads I know. She’s the only person in my family who actually shows emotion and has been my one and only love in life until Ingram.

She’s tough, canny and wields her power as matriarch of the family with an iron fist. Or she did until about a year ago when she took a fall and broke her hip.

She’s okay now, after a surgery that almost kicked her ass, but she’s old and alone since grandpa died and I think tired of dealing with the bullshit that comes along with my parents and siblings.

It was recommended that she move out of her sprawling mansion-her childhood home-and mom’s been salivating over the place ever since. Now nanna may be getting along in years and she may need some help in that old place, but she’s still spry enough that I get her anger over my father’s strongarm tactics.

I don’t know how he did it, quite frankly I wouldn’t put anything passed him but he’s convinced her doctors and a judge that nanna could be unable to make the right choices considering her life .

At this juncture he hasn’t made a move yet. Because he’s using the treat of taking nanna’s life away to manipulate me into doing what he wants.

I talked to Gray’s uncle the judge and he’s working on getting something done there but he needs time and as Ingram’s birthday has proven, I don’t have much of that commodity right now.

It’s simple, I buckle eventually or they make a move.

Now I have to consider nanna’s happiness along with my own before I can do anything and add to that the fact that I’ve fucked up my relationship with Ingram in the process and I’m perilously close to losing my shit.

“Christ I hate those people. I have since we were little and too dumb to do anything about it. But nanna? How can your father do this shit to his own mother man?” he snarls, making me bare my teeth in a grin.

“He’s an ass and always will be. I’d laugh at his attempts to get me back under his thumb but I looked over the stuff nanna’s lawyers sent me and it all appears legal and above board. So my choices right now are limited. I jump or he moves on his plans to take her stock and control of her assets.”

Over my dead Goddamn body will I ever let that happen. Not that I don’t have options. The lawyers are ready to petition for her to come live with me, but she’d still lose everything else thanks to some out-dated shit in grandpa’s will naming my father as her power of attorney.

“Shit. You can’t stall them?”

“I am. The only reason I’m not with them at the moment is the red tape that Gray’s uncle threw up in the courts. He pulled in a lot of favours to make sure I have the month to fix this. My father’s foaming at the mouth right now but there’s nothing he can do until a judge sits on this case.”

Ty whistles and I see him clench his fists.

“I’m sorry man. I wish I could help.”

“Yeah, me too since this shit has seriously messed with other parts of my life.” I grunt angrily. “I’m going to rip them apart if this isn’t resolved.”

“Duuude, I’ll call in Mari and Rox and share my popcorn if you really want to put on a show.” He offers, chuckling at my grin and shudder.

“I’ll take you up on that man. I will so take you up on that.”