Rae

"Rough night?" Leander asks.

I can hear the amusement in his voice, and I'm not in the mood. I shove him as far as I can away from me and cross my arms in front of my chest. Of course, he only laughs. I'd like to see him shoot a person and then go to bed right after and expect to sleep well.

"Got rid of that bastard, so I call that a win," I scoff.

"Lincoln wanted me to inform you that the money is in the dump account and that the body is just dust on the wind now," he says, taking his spot next to me again.

"Good," I quietly reply.

When the elevator opens, I'm the first off, and Leander quickly catches up as two muscular men dressed in head-to-toe black join us in the front and in the back. An additional person appears on either side of us. No further words are exchanged as we walk through the lobby of the building and out the front doors to the SUV that waits for me. Two men are standing outside, and the one to my right opens the door for me while the one to my left helps me inside. I move to my usual position on the back bench and sink back against the leather seat. Leander climbs in after me and sits across from me. When the door closes, he knocks on the bulletproof glass three time,s and the SUV pulls out into traffic. Our usual routine. It never deviates.

"How was your date with Melissa?" I ask, rifling through my bag for my phone.

He scoffs, but I detect a chuckle. I teased him a lot about Melissa, but I did it in good fun. He deserves to be happy away from me. I can't provide him with the happiness that I know we both crave. We have been flirting forever because that's all we can ever do, but I've always had this huge crush on him growing up. It was like a dream come true getting to work with him, but I quickly realized that that was all we could ever do, work together. We can't be together. The Murphy-Spencer relationship dictated that. Although being the first woman to rule the syndicate meant I could change the rules...

But I hadn't yet and probably never would. It doesn't matter if I had a thing for Leander or not or if he had a thing for me or not. Nothing could ever happen.

"It was fine," he replies. 

I roll my eyes at his response. It's a horrible response and not the one I'm clearly looking for. "What did you do?"

"She wanted Chinese, and I grabbed some on my way out yesterday, and we ate that and watched a movie," he answers. 

"Sounds boring," I remark, pulling my phone from my bag. I want boring, though, so I guess I had no room to judge him.

He chuckles. "It was not boring. It was nice."

"Feeling normal for once?" I ask, lowering my sunglasses enough to look at him.

He presses his lips together in a tight line, but doesn't respond. I push my glasses back up on my nose. "Did you fuck her last night?" I ask so nonchalantly, crossing one leg over the other. 

"Rae Spencer," he sighs. "You don't just ask someone that question."

I shrug. "Why not? You get to know when I fuck a guy. Why can't I get to know when you fuck a woman?"

He opens and closes his mouth several times but ultimately sighs and leans back in his seat. "I'm not answering that question."

"So you didn't fuck her. Got it," I reply

"Rae," he sighs, heavier this time. "Stop it."

"I fucked up a guy last night. Does that count?" I ask, removing my sunglasses to look at him. "It's not the fucking I wanted to do, but I guess it still counts," I muse, putting my sunglasses back on.

"Can you not be so damn blunt for once?" he asks.

"Absolutely not, Leander," I reply, taking my sunglasses off again. "It's in my nature and you know it. Besides, you'd rather I get straight to the point than dance around something. You said so yourself when I came home a few years back with a bloody cloth wrapped around my left arm, a broken nose, and bruising because some jackass tried to overtake me and shanked me. As I recall, it was your fault that night that I didn't have security or an SUV because you were mad at me for pulling a prank on you for April Fools' Day."

"You rigged maple syrup to fall on me and then feathers to accompany the syrup," he replies, but he couldn't fight the chuckle. It's easy to laugh at it now because it was funny. Hell, I even chuckled a little at the memory, but the chuckling quickly faded when I continued with my thoughts.

"But that led me to get mugged later on because you're furious with me for doing that. And no matter how many times I called or texted, it all fell on deaf ears and I walked in and suddenly it wasn't funny anymore," I add, frowning. "So no, absolutely not, Leander. I will never not be blunt. I think you would prefer that over my silence any day of the week because if I'm silent—"

"I'd better run the other way," he quickly interrupts.

"Exactly," I agree, slipping my sunglasses back on my face. "Glad we could agree on that."

I go back to my phone, scrolling through the emails from the day for the rest of the journey. Upon arriving, I slip it back in my purse and move for the door. And as much as I can, I make sure he gets a good look at my ass as I step out because why the hell not? Nothing would ever come from it, and I feel like being ornery. 

"Miss Howard," sighs the breathless Palmer Lucas as she runs down the stairs from the building.

I adjust my bag over my shoulder and catch up with her so she doesn't have so far to go, because contrary to belief, I actually like my assistant. "What's up?" I ask, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. We walk back up the stairs together, but something is clearly off.

She takes in several struggling deep breaths before pulling up my schedule for the day. She scrolls through a few things until a name came up that gave me a sickly feeling in the pit of my stomach, the one, the only, the OG most annoying Murphy on the face of the earth. I immediately stop and turn to face Leander. "You've got some balls not telling me about the meeting with your dumbass father," I say, ripping my sunglasses from my face.

Immediate confusion washes over his face. "What?" he asks, pulling his phone from his pocket. He gets a daily schedule of my day after Palmer compiles it. Not sure how this slipped his mind.

"I'm not meeting with him. You are," I decide as I turn back around and head up the stairs again.

"He probably just wants to talk about last night," comes his answer.

I shoot around again. "That's none of his damn business. In fact, on second thought, I'll meet with him and remind him with my outdoor voice why he has no right to butt into the fucking affairs of what we do the fuck around here."

"Poppy," he sighs. I appreciate him using my government name. Well, technically, Rae is my government name, but I like to keep the affairs of Rae and Poppy separate and Poppy allows me to try to be normal even if it's just for a few hours a day. 

"No, I'm fucking sick of him, Leander," I say, stomping up the stairs now. "And I'm going to let him know that."