Page 34 of Grift

Patrick

Danny Moriarty leans back in his chair, red hair flopping down over his eyes. There’s nothing inconspicuous about this guy, but he’s the best PI in Boston. The best one not in my father’s pocket, anyways.

Our appointment starts minutes after Jessica left.

It takes every ounce of determination I have to focus on his face, and not the memory of her tight little ass, her flashing eyes, and the way she’d fucking moaned when I touched her. Never in a million years would I have thought to do that with her.

But when she’d said the thing about control, I’d understood instantly – or thought I did.

She fucking moaned when I spanked her. Christ.

I’d expected her to tell me to stop. But she hadn’t. In fact, she begged me to keep going.

My cock is still hard at the memory.

“Look, Patrick,” he says, his Boston accent thick. “I went through everything. Every clipping, every private report, and talked to anyone I can get my hands on. Everything I could find suggests your wife was a good girl.”

A good girl. She’s a fucking angel, too good for the likes of me, not that I’d say that to this guy.

“Her professors still remember her, because she’s a big fucking deal in her field. And it’s because of her work, not her father. At least not entirely her father,” he continues. “Not only was she not out whoring around…”

He doesn’t get to finish that statement. I’m on my feet, rage coursing cold through my veins. My hands are around his throat before I can think straight. Hands that had been touching Jessica just a few minutes before.

“You don’t talk about my wife like that, Moriarty,” I growl.

His hands fly up in a defensive stance, and the color drains from his face.

“Boss, easy.”

Shit.

I loosen my hands from his shirt collar and ease away from him.

“It’s been a hell of a couple of weeks,” I say, by way of apology.

He nods, but leans back a little further in his chair, pushing to get away from me. Probably not the worst call he can make, all things considered.

"That’s what I'm trying to say. Everybody loves Jessica. The only reputation that she had was for studying hard and being brilliant. There's something else going on here, something more. If I had to guess this was a setup," says Danny.

A wave of relief and anger washes over me. I suspected as much but getting the independent confirmation helps.

Jessica doesn't deserve this. She doesn't deserve any of this, from having her dreams destroyed to ending up tangled up with a man like me.

I don't know exactly what I'm going to do about it, but I'm going to act. The first step was getting the copies away from my father and getting more background information. Now I need to track down where they came from. What might have happened that led to their creation in the first place.

"Thanks Danny," I say rising to my feet. "What are the chances you can keep trying to run this down?"

He agrees to keep working on the case and leaves. I look at the clock. It's late and I need to go deal with my wife. Address what happened today and figure out what it is that we do from here.

It’s a short drive back to the penthouse that takes close to an hour because of the time of day. Boston's bumper-to-bumper traffic, with the angry honking and the aggressive drivers is doing nothing to push my mood on edge. Pulling my Range Rover into my parking spot, I take a few minutes to calm down.

When I enter the apartment, Jessica is sitting at the kitchen table working intently on her laptop.

She looks up, eyes wide. Whatever she is doing, she’s completely immersed and being pulled out of that concentration to find me staring at her definitely isn’t what she expects.

"We need to talk."

She speaks at nearly the same time. "Patrick, there's something I need to say."

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