Page 27 of Dark Promises

“You mean, you will—”

“If I don’t owe it all to you...” He looked at me, “If you can give me a soft loan to tide me over, then I’ll be okay, and you don’t have to see me if you don’t want to.” He knew I didn’t get out much, since I had to spend my nights working in my club, and he was all the family I had left. “I would like to take my boyfriend out to dinner.”Is that all? Money for dinner. I think I could manage to lend him something.However, I had to prepare for more things like presents, and if he liked the guy too much it would be something expensive, and I shuddered to think what it might be.

“What are you planning on doing with your half of the money from that sale?”

“I plan on opening a club myself. If you can make a living at selling liquor, I can too, and I’d add a restaurant. I forgot about the bondage club because that’s not his scene.”

The famous last words of a man who had opened several businesses and crashed and burned. The restaurant business was one of the hardest to make profitable. Maybe he hadn’t read a paper or picked up a book lately.

“You know if you fail, there won’t be any more money, and I know your track record, and you won’t get anything from me. I’m going to spend my money looking for Cole and Sam. I know now I have to do this myself, because I can’t depend on anyone.”

“I’m your brother. You can depend on me.”

I’d heard that a thousand times from Sidney, and he kept coming back for more loans when his real-estate business took a turn for the worse. I was just trying to stay afloat and keep my people employed, while he had his hand out looking for money to keep him afloat. I figured out how to do that, and now my bar was in the black, and I was bringing in more than I thought was possible.

The only thing that’s suffering now is my love life and having a satisfying orgasm,I thought, thinking about what to do next.

“I’m going to bed. It was an exhausting night,” Sidney casually threw that out, and sauntered away with me behind him. He’d better be glad he was my brother, because I would have tossed him out on his ass if he wasn’t. He’d had me up all night, and now he was deserting me.

On my way to question Sidney further, the buzzer rang, and I answered it. “Someone dropped off a puppy and said it was for you,” the doorman explained. My heart soared until I realized that Sam wasn’t a puppy. I waited until I heard the elevator and then the doorbell. At first I didn’t want to answer the door. I didn’t want to look out the peephole. I’d never been a dog lover, but Sam wasn’t like he was now. He changed when Cole left him and didn’t return to us.

Now I was wondering how Sam was doing. Did someone take him and give him a good home. All the things I never cared about before, but in the time Cole was gone good or bad, Sam was there, and I thought because we’d lost the most important person in our lives, we bonded in a weird sort of way.

I sucked up my breath and opened the door. It wasn’t Sam and my heart dropped. “He’s not my dog.” I attempted to close the door.

The doorman persisted. “Someone dropped him off, Mr. Daniel, and said he was a present for you. I hadn’t arrived and the night doorman told me to deliver him to you, and he had to leave for his vacation. This precious puppy was in this and had all the things a puppy would need for now. He said the puppy had been trained and slept through the night.”

Why me?I wondered. I had to work nights and I had no one to care for him, because Sam ran away everyone who needed a job. And then I thought about taking advantage of the fact that Sidney would be with me for a while until he sold those properties. He was perfect. He needed money and I need someone to take care of the sleeping puppy. The doorman handed him over to me, and he slept as I laid him in Sam’s bed. Sam never used it anyway.

I placed him in another room, the one Sam would never sleep in, and I left and knocked on Sidney’s door.

“Sidney. I have a proposal you might like.” He opened the door with a smile. I was sure he wouldn’t be smiling later.

Chapter 17

Cole

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