Page 7 of Rake

He laughs. “Callan is brilliant but in a very different way. No one can read people like you do. You figured out how to get that licensing guy what he wanted so we could get what we needed. Just do that again with the union chick.”

I could do that. The fact that she’d gone back to working with our staff, even after what had happened, gives me insight into her character. Brave, but foolish. Now I just need to find out what’s missing in her life.

“Well I guess I’ve got work to do, then. Thanks for the pep talk.”

“Always happy to help you destroy an innocent woman who’s trying to make the world a better place,” he says, waving as I head out.

Hilarious. Patrick loves having the last word.

I’ve got to figure out how to get started on my new plan. How the hell am I even going to connect with Sasha Saunders? It’s not like a union organizer and I run in the same circles. SWU’s local headquarters are near my apartment, but an ‘accidental’ run-in isn’t going to cut it.

She has to know someone in my family was behind her attack, and she’ll need a lot of convincing that I wasn’t involved.

I have to admire her bravery, even though she’s fighting a battle she’s not equipped to win.

Stakes are high here.

If I mess this up and the unionization happens, my father will be livid. If I mess this up and my father’s enemies find a way to unbury the connection between Sasha’s assault and my family, public opinion fallout could tank the casino. And I need the casino to be profitable just long enough to pay off the loans taken out against some key properties that Callan and I acquired from our father in a less-than-legal way.

He’d deeded some small buildings to us to hide assets, but Callan and I had submitted those along with forged deeds to the registry. Deeds for larger properties my father owned in Kendall Square, Cambridge, where the biotech boom means square footage is more profitable than in Manhattan. And in the Boston waterfront where condos are being built by the hundreds to house all the people flocking to the area to work those jobs.

We need more time to pay off the loans. And we need the casino to pay them. I have to make this work.

I pass several employees on my way to the parking garage. I respect the ones who give me a tight, curt smile more than the ones who hit me with effusive greetings.

The weak winter light barely penetrates through the gap between the floor I’ve parked on and the level above. The overhead lights won’t come on for hours. If I were anyone else, perhaps a smaller person or a woman, the shadowy corners of the garage would make me nervous.

For one terrible second I wonder how Sasha felt, tied up to that fence, fearful of what was going to happen next, but I can’t be distracted by that, not now.

And I start formulating a plan. I generally try to seek out a weakness and exploit it to get what I want. Unfortunately, Sasha’s weakness right now is probably her fear. That’s my opening: to be the antidote to her fear and make her see that I can keep her safe.

It’s messy, and I don’t love it. Yet if someone forcibly gets Sasha Saunders to my apartment, I’ll keep her there long enough to either seduce her or convince her to work with me.

P.J. Hennelly immediately comes to mind. He’s an absolute sociopath, and one of my father’s fixers. I wouldn’t use Hamish again—it seems a step too far to use the man who put her through such hell again—but he wouldn’t do this even if I asked him.

Hamish is an oddly ethical man.

It’s a weird thing to say about a man who takes out the enemies of the rich and powerful for a living, but each profession has its own code of conduct, I suppose, and Hamish follows it to the letter. Beating a woman half to death is one thing. Helping me trick her into thinking she and I are somehow on the same team is quite another.

So P.J. it is. He could get Sasha to my apartment easily, and make it seem like I had nothing to do with it.

If I had any bit of a soul left, it’d be fleeing my body now. Luckily for me, I’d learned long ago that souls are easier to sell than maintain.

I hope for her sake that Sasha can learn the same.

3

Sasha

God, it’s cold.

I hated the cold before I had broken bones, but now the ache in my healed tibia lets me know it’s going to snow. Overcast skies seem to close in as I stare out the window at the parking lot next to my office building. The asphalt is streaked with salt. Giant piles of snow shoved up by the plow are left to melt and refreeze into disgusting icebergs, blackened by the exhaust of the non-stop traffic.

Not exactly the New England winter wonderland they project in movies.

My shin is right, though, and small flakes start drifting down from the milky sky, floating aimlessly until they find something to stick to. They’ll coat the filthy icebergs with a pretty frosting, but it won’t last.

The bleakness of it makes it hard to believe spring will ever come.

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