Page 51 of Hitch
“I don’t care if she ends up at the bottom of the delta.”
“You want to prove that?”
“You’ll end up there before she does.”
At that, Todd finally shoves his styrofoam box to the side of the computer. He stands up, leveling with me.
“You say this is about respecting you and what’s yours. But ‘yours,’ Duane?” Todd asks, and the weight of my own words blazes through me. “Yours?You want to claim a stripper? A sex worker?”
“You got something against sex workers?” I growl, moving the subject off of me and back onto him. “They’re your club’s bread and butter, you ungrateful bastard.”
Todd tilts his head, studying me a bit harder, like he can see something I don’t. Irritation swells inside of me.
“She really has fucked with your head, hasn’t she?” he asks.
I bare my teeth. “The hell are you talking about?”
“You were supposed to be meeting with the Sed today, weren’t you?”
My mind jumps back to earlier that afternoon, canceling my meeting with Sed. I was supposed to kill him out in the fields, but I rescheduled just so that I could come here and see her.
“You dropped everything to save your girl when you and I both know that Reggie can take care of herself. Her ex coming here doesn’t mean shit.”
My jaw ticks as I glare at Todd, scrutinizing every detail of his face, but he’s right. I’m supposed to be protecting my business—theonlything that matters—and yet I’m here, arguing about a woman with my business partner, because I’ve got an itch to make sure everyone, even Todd, respects my woman.
My woman.
There it is again.
Fuck.
“Business comes first,” Todd says. He walks around the DJ booth, meeting me around the side. “You can’t think of her as yours.” He puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’ve got to think of the bigger picture.”
Pressure builds under my skin where his fingers are, and I consider shoving him into the wall just like I did to Reggie’s sugar daddy. But I don’t. Todd, as much as I hate it, is speaking the truth. I moved to California to prove that I could make more money on my own than my father did. That his legacy, his name, didn’t mean shit. That I could do better.
It’s not enough to kill my father. I’ve got to prove that I can be greater than he ever was. And if I think straight for a couple of seconds, I know Reggie’s getting in my way. She’s wormed her way into my head like a goddamn disease.
“So I’m going to ask you again,” Todd says. “Do you have feelings for her?”
I think about Reggie. How I walked her out to her car. How I watched her for months. How she told me she would kill me, and how she may even be blackmailing me. How I admire her for all of that. I even want to see how far she’ll take it, if she’ll fuck me over like she’s threatening to do. If she’ll go as far as to turn me in to the cops.
If I’ll let her.
In the end, I know what it is. It’s respect. I respect Reggie far too much. Respect her more than I respect my own livelihood.
And that’s the problem.
“I don’t,” I lie.
“Good,” Todd says. “Thenfocus.I’ll work on selling. Braden will work on the product. And you?Youmake sure that our loose ends are cleared up, all right?”
I nod, though in my mind, something isn’t settling right with me. Todd is acting like he’s running the entire business, when he’s not the owner of the operation.I am.Hell, Braden doesn’t even own shit.
It’smyfucking business.
“Handle your shit this time,” I say. “Don’t hire any more fucking rats.”
Todd snickers. “You owe me for the wall.”
