He could do that.
He didn’t need to know until it was time to know he had help.
Chapter Fifteen
An Eye
Nick
10:12 – Tuesday Morning, Two Weeks Later
“Nick, that Ralphie guy is on the phone again.”
Nick looked from his desk to Bernadette, his assistant who was hanging from both hands on the doorjamb, her torso swinging inside his office while her lower body remained out of it.
He gave her the same answer he gave her the last three times over the last week and a half that this Ralphie guy had called.
“I’m hopin’ I’m makin’ this clearer than the last three times I said it, Bernie. That bein’ I do not want to take a sales call from an art gallery, any art gallery or any sales call.”
“I told you,” she stated irritably. “He’s not sellin’ you something. He says someone bought something for you and he needs to make an appointment with you to install it.”
“Bullshit, Bernie, it’s a gimmick to get me on the phone.”
“I thought that but the reason he keeps calling back after I tell him we’re not interested and we don’t want to be on their call list is that he insists someone bought some painting for you.”
Nick looked back to his desk, ordering, “Find out who supposedly bought me some fuckin’ art so I can call them and tell them I don’t need any fuckin’ art.”
“Righty ho, jefe,” Bernadette replied.
Jefe.
Jesus.
She called her husband Dante that too.
Why he hired a smartass assistant, he had no idea. She’d even been smartass during the interview.
Perhaps it wasn’t karma kicking him in the ass for being a twat while he was growing up and staying that way well into his twenties.
Maybe he got off on the pain.
He put Bernadette out of his head and was about to make a call when she showed at his door again ten minutes later.
“Goin’ out to get coffee, want one?” she asked.
“Got a meet with Hawk in half an hour, I’ll be gone before you get back, so no,” he answered.
“Feel like springin’ for coffee for me and all the boys?” she pushed. “It’ll be a write off. Not to mention team building.”
He sighed and did what he did a lot with Bernadette because apparently he did get off on the pain.
“Hit petty cash.”
“Gotcha,” she muttered, grinning and swinging back out only to twirl around in the hall and catch his gaze again. “Oh, yeah, and that Ralphie guy said the painting is from some woman named Olivia Shade.”
Nick went still.
Bernie kept talking.