Page 54 of Bound By Them
I don’t like being here, but we have to talk. Because something’s off. Danica thinks our family would have her sixteen-year-old cousin followed? No fucking way. First off, there’s no reason for it. Second, if we’re going to follow someone to freak them out, it would be an active member of the Aseyev family. Someone operating on their behalf. Patrick would’ve been a good mark. Or one of the lesser guys.
Which brings me to the question—would the Aseyevs follow Cece? No. Cece Morraine is beautiful, yeah, but she knows fuck-all about the business. My father would never trust her with information because, well, he doesn’t trust mistresses. Or women in general.
Perhaps they’d follow her to intimidate us, but neither family has needed to intimidate the other. We know where the lines and boundaries are. We’ve never needed to cross them, or enforce them. If we want to fuck with each other, we go after the business operations, not the families.
Yet we have two women from two different families being followed.
I don’t think either one of our families is responsible for it. Something else is going on here.
Eyebrows puts down his phone and twirls his finger in the air. “Sorry, buddy. Turn around. Mr. Aseyev isn’t available.”
I speak past Troy. “We really need to speak with him. Please.”
“Phone him, then. But I can tell you he won’t pick up.”
Danica
I promised Isabelle I’d set her up with a fancy new tax program, and now that tax season is over, I have to make good on my promise. It takes me a couple hours past closing, so it’s dark when I lock up.
I go out the back door, where the alarm keypad is located. A quick punch of the code, and I’m out of here, ready to go home and take off my bra, put on some sweatpants, and cuddle with Cackle.
The side door to Isabelle’s Creamery faces an older building undergoing extensive renovations. Two months ago, this was a point of pride, because my granddad’s construction company is the one behind the project.
Now, I know more about “Ash Building Company.” And I don’t like it one fucking bit.
My tattoo was a mistake, banging Edmund and Troy was a mistake. Getting mad at Leah was a mistake. There’ve been way too many mistakes.
Loose plastic sheeting whips in the wind, making an eerie flapping sound. The upper windows of the building are open, newly-framed and awaiting glass. In the darkness, they look like empty eye sockets.
I shiver. I just need to get to my car, and get home.
As I round the corner of the ice cream shop, I see three guys leaving the construction site. I frown. They aren’t wearing hardhats, they don’t seem to be workers. All the other workers left at five.
The guys part ways, two going across the street to a bar, and the other hopping onto a motorcycle and zooming away.
Curious, I cross the street and step into the bar.
It’s a total dive. Smoking isn’t allowed in public spaces, but the place reeks of stale cigarette smoke. When I lift my feet from the floor, there’s a tacky, sticky feeling of resistance.
Low lights illuminate a dingy bartop and the grizzled bartender standing behind it. The two guys from the construction site plunk down on seats at the bar, so I find a table off to the side. Nobody seems to notice or care that I’m not ordering a drink.
A middle-aged guy shuffles toward me and starts off with a grin, but I give him a quick head-shake and he shuffles off again. If only it were always so easy to deter would-be suitors.
I want to know who those guys are, and what they were doing at Granddad’s site. Are they Laytons? Were they messing with things? If so, Granddad needs to know, so nobody gets hurt.
I pull out my phone and pretend to text on it. Instead, I’m watching the bar.
The guy on the left has a blond buzz-cut and tattoos all over his neck. I bet he has a full shirt of tats. Most are faded, like they were done twenty, thirty years ago. When he lifts a hand to take a sip of beer, a beam of light hits him perfectly to illuminate more tattoos on his arm. The biggest one is a grotesque, winged snake, framed by a bunch of other monstrous images—four-legged guns with teeth, ropes dripping with blood, a lion ripping a woman in half.
Wow, hold me back. I’m so turned on right now.
His friend is just as unappealing, with more disturbing tattoos. His are especially misogynistic, mostly featuring women screaming, running, and being torn apart by beasts. He, too, has a winged snake prominently displayed all the way down his forearm. The tail ends in a clever little twirl on the back of his hand.
I take a photo. I don’t know who these guys are, but every one of my senses is saying they’re bad news.
Unfortunately, my phone’s shutter clicks loudly.
The bartender’s head whips toward me and he frowns. “You takin’ pictures?”
