wine and savoring the meal I was having with him in a restaurant where even the house salad was out of my price range.
He leaned forward, his gaze heavy on me. “This is why I want to pay you, Croy. Because if I’m paying you, and I know that you need the money to live, then trust is assumed, as you’ll be in my employ.”
“Of course.”
“I need my son steered in the right direction.”
“You want someone to spy on him.”
“No,” he assured me. “I need far more than a spy. I need him to see you and hear you and listen to you. I want someone to be his shadow, someone who will make sure that his choices are good ones, until he learns to make them himself.”
“You don’t want him to embarrass you.”
“I don’t want him to jeopardize my business interests.”
“Then why put him in charge to begin with?”
“Because he’s my son.”
“You don’t have other sons?”
“Daughters.”
I scoffed in disgust. Pinning his legacy on his male child? What kind of medieval thinking was that? “And you don’t want them in control of your business because, what, they might marry and give away everything you’ve worked for?”
He shook his head. “You misunderstand. Both of my daughters head their own divisions of my company. I just need Pearce to catch up.”
I cleared my throat because, okay, that was good. I liked it when I misjudged people and was then corrected. The surprise was novel. “You said you want him to make good choices. About what? Not business, because I’d have no access to that.”
“Personal choices,” he intoned, his voice dark and deep. The impression I was left with was that, thus far, Pearce’s decisions had been poor ones.
“He needs a babysitter.”
“He needs a guiding hand.”
Since it hadn’t taken more than twenty minutes to figure out that trading on my looks and my body was not something I would be able to do, his offer was the perfect compromise for me—I’d get paid for my time and not give up anything of myself in the process.
When my contract with the Claytons was fulfilled, Pearce now the respectable and responsible adult, I made my exodus from the Golden State and went to Chicago with the intention of becoming a policeman, to start a new life with my degree in criminal justice. I needed to find me, the man under the façade, to see if a childhood of privilege and three years of pretending to be someone I wasn’t could be sloughed off to reveal something, someone, real underneath.
The dream, however, was short-lived. I quit when the price became too great, when breaking the law under the auspices of ensuring that justice was served—something I tried to convince myself I was doing for the most ethical of reasons—meant losing my integrity and self-respect. That was a slippery slope to all-out corruption, and not one I was willing to travel.
Two weeks later, I was contemplating a move to yet another city when I got an email from Jared Colter. Torus Intercession needed people, reliable ones, people with my background and skills, and that was the start of my new life.
I became aware, slowly, that Brig Stanton was looking at me with quite a bit of uncertainty. I’d taken a trip down memory lane, without the benefit of an explanation. “Sorry,” I said quickly. “I think California is a way of life more than a state. I don’t have a West Coast sensibility. I’m far too rigid.”
“Is that right?”
I nodded, shrugging, trying to keep the tone of our conversation light. It was a lie, one I told often, along with more casual ones, like how old I was. They popped out, those untruths, and honestly, I wasn’t even sure why. I’d told Brann I was twenty-eight, and Nash that I was thirty, and Locryn that I was thirty-five. It was arbitrary and stupid, but when pressed for any kind of truth…I pivoted. Evasion was my go-to reaction to being pinned down for anything personal. Jared caught me often, and when he called me out, I would sit in front of him and try to come up with an answer he would accept, unsure what the best one would be. I never gave a spontaneous, straightforward response to anything.
“Croy?”
“I think,” I began, covering that my mind had been wandering again, trying to keep the conversation light, “Chicago’s a great place to grab a dog or a slice of deep dish, have a beer and just blend in.” The