Page 11 of The Ice Queen in the Corner Office

“Lee, get the stuff out of the trunk,” Bert said. “I’ll get on the roof.”

When we left an hour later the guy’s house was so covered in toilet paper, he wouldn’t be able to see out the windows when he woke up in the morning. We’d also broken into his car, soaked his floor mats in sour milk, hidden shrimp in every nook and cranny, and set a glitter bomb in his air vents. Lee put a nice layer of dog crap all over his door step and…Well, I don’t know what else the guys did, but I’m sure they did more than I saw or had planned. They were pretty damn pissed and creatively inclined.

“One of us should stay here to get a picture of that fucker’s face when he sees the disaster that is his perfect house,” Fin said.

“I left a camera in the tree,” I said. “I’ll send you pictures.”

“You think this is enough?” Bert asked. “The asshole will just pay someone to clean all this shit up.”

“I have some ideas,” I said. “Corporate stuff.”

“Oh, yeah?” Fin said. “You going to get him blackballed or some shit?”

“I don’t have that kind of power.” I wasn’t sure I could do anything else to the guy. He worked for his family’s company, a banking business that had no connection to my world. “More like I could make sure we don’t bank with his family’s bank and suggest to everyone else not to use his bank.”

Bert snorted. “Man, I thought you were some big-shot corporate dude. That’s all you can do?”

“Short of confronting the guy,” I said, “that’s all I can do. I doubt anything I do will make much difference. The guy’s not going to stop being a raging asshole just because I make his life more difficult. But I’m not interested in jail time or his daddy coming after me.”

“Right,” Bert said, scorn in his tone. “Wouldn’t want to risk your millions just to teach the douche bag a lesson.”

And there it was, the snark and the guilt. “It’s not about money. It’s about the people my company employs and the resorts I don’t want smeared with drama and bad publicity.”

“Bad publicity,” Fin said. “That why you stopped hanging out with us? Stopped visiting the old neighborhood?”

I still visited. I stopped in to see my dad and my sister every weekend.

I had just stopped hanging out with my old crowd. We’d all changed, and I got tired of the guys shitting on me for doing something more with my life, for being successful. They weren’t bad guys, they weren’t even bad friends, we were just in different places in our lives.

“I stopped visiting the old neighborhood,” I said. “Because you guys are assholes and you cock blocked me every time I got close to bringing a girl home.”

“You’re an uptown man, now, asshole,” Bert said. “You need to leave our girls the fuck alone.” Thankfully, his tone was light. We rode back to my place laughing and joking like old times.

I missed that, missed having friends who knew me so well I didn’t have to explain anything, didn’t have to pretend. Still, they didn’t ask me to hang with them over the weekend, and I didn’t invite them inside.

“Hey, Fin,” Lee said. “I’m gonna walk Alex to his door. Give me a minute.”

I knew it was serious when Fin didn’t bitch about having to wait and Bert didn’t crack a joke about me going corporate and needing a bodyguard to walk me to my building.

Just inside the main doors, he stuck his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels. “It’s about Rick, man. He’s been running around with Hunter’s crew.”

My heart sank.

Rick was my older brother and he’d always struggled. He’d barely missed jail time on more than one occasion and only came around to see me when he needed something, mainly money. To my knowledge, everything he’d been doing was legit. Hunter was not legit. Not by several miles. “Are you sure?”

Lee met my gaze and I saw the concern in his eyes. “I’m sure. I don’t know what his rank is or what he’s doing for them, but I know he’s with them.”

“He bringing that nonsense around Dad or Leah?”

He shook his head. “Your dad is still pissed at him about getting Willow fired from her job over at Shelly’s. He doesn’t want Rick anywhere near the house.”

My sister had finally gotten a decent job, cutting hair at the local salon after going to cosmetology school on her own dime, and my idiot brother had charmed his way into her boss’s panties. When Rick had dropped Willow’s boss, she’d taken it out on Willow.

It had taken my sister two months to find another job and she had to take two buses to get to it.

I hated that my sister and my dad lived like that, but they’d take nothing from me.

Rick had no problem taking from me, even promised the money would get to my sister. It never had.

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