Page 107 of Silent Heart

The flick of his brow told exactly what he thought of us coming to his high class place of employment. It didn’t matter if we weren’t the typical clientele, we were here and I could buy this place outright without liquidating any assets.

“So your family’s…business.” Harley stressed the word, which made the corners of my lips twitch upward. “They must have business rivals, right?”

Straight to the heavy punches. “Right.”

Harley gave me a dry look. “I thought you said you were going totalk.”

“I am,” I insisted. “But I was answering your question. What would you like to know about our rivals?”

Her shoulders lifted in a delicate shrug. “Cami Joe is allowed to attend college. Vivian invited us shopping, so she’s not confined to the…mansion?”

I nodded. “Our family estate, yes.”

“Gosh, it’s so hard speaking in code,” Harley laughed nervously, picking up her glass of red and taking a long sip.

“While we have a security detail, we keep a low profile, flying under the radar. We’re not the biggest business in the city, so we don’t have many targets on our backs,” I explained, regretting having this conversation in a somewhat public area.

Harley went completely still. “But you do have some.”

Shit.I had to be honest with her. Lay it all out there and hope she’d take me anyhow. “We do. There’s a group of…businessmen who’ve appeared in the last year. They are like roaches, the more we take out the more keep coming. But we’re not the only business they seem interested in infesting.”

Gaze focused on me, Harley fidgeted with her silverware. I saw the moment she declined to pursue that thread of conversation. “So what does your job entail?” she diverted.

The waiter appeared with a basket of bread and flavored butters. “May I suggest an appetizer for this evening, sir?”

“We’ll have the truffle fries,” Harley instructed, pointing at the menu lying beside her plate.

“Very good, ma’am. Our special this evening—”

“He’ll have the ribeye, medium, with a caprese salad to start. I’ll have the halibut, with the burrata salad. The sides that come with are fine, no substitutions.” Harley handed the menu back.

“May I suggest a wine with the fish, ma’am?” The waiter’s voice was strained as he made an attempt to recover from her abrupt speech.

“Nope, we’re good, thanks. Please don’t interrupt us other than to bring the food. We’ll summon you if something is wrong.” Harley took another sip of her wine.

“For being in the service industry, you cut him down a notch,” I mused, leaning forward.

Harley waved her hand. “He’s been whispering back there with his colleagues. He thinks he’s better than us. And while I can’t stand condescending pricks, I didn’t think that being on this side of the table would mean I had to deal with them. Guess I was wrong.”

I flicked a glance back over my shoulder and saw the waiter dramatically conversing with the bartender. “Want me to cut out his tongue for being so rude?”

“Wait, what?” Harley hissed, also leaning forward so that when I turned back to her, our faces were mere inches apart. I couldn’t resist dropping a lingering look to her lips.

“I don’t mind. My shirt’s black, so it would hide the blood.”

“You can’t go around carving out tongues of people who insult me,” Harley gasped, speaking in an undertone. But she paused, lifting a finger, as the gears turned in her mind. “You’ve cut out tongues before. That isn’t a joke.”

“Oh, I never joke about tongue cuttings,” I drawled. “This is who I am.”

Please don’t run from me.

Blowing out a long breath, Harley leaned back in her chair, fingers tapping gently against her wine glass. “Brutal, but not a mean bone in your body. Violent, but as calm as the mountain in the storm. Fierce, with a heavy dash of loyalty and protection.”

I waited, not daring to breathe. My penchant for violence no doubt scared her. “If this is going to work, I need you to know who and what I am, Harley.”

She nodded once, long and slow. “I want this to work.”

Those words sent my heart leaping. “You can leave at any time. I won’t coerce or threaten you to stay.”

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