Page 40 of Fuckboy Psychos (Scarlett Force 1)
Even that small bit of information has her honey-brown eyes glimmering.
“Do you mind if I record this?” she asks, pulling her phone from her pocket. I stare down at it and then lift my eyes to her face.
“Yes,” I say, and she nods, tapping her thumb against the screen. I reach out with my hand and grab her wrist. Our eyes meet. “Yes, I mind. Do not record me or put me on the record for anything. I’ll tell everyone you paid me money to lie.”
“But I—” she starts, and I cut her off.
“But you did. You paid me money to lie. You don’t want people to know about that, do you?”
Emma jerks her hand back from me, her lips turned down in a sharp frown.
“Since you’re here, and you did pay me, I’ll tell you this: Tommy Tits and Megan Face don’t own that property. They rent it. Their landlord doesn’t live here; he’s from Sacramento, California, so he doesn’t give two shits what happens here so long as he makes money.” I pause to lick my lips, considering my next words carefully. If Emma Jean is looking into this Archer Realty thing, good for her. I mean, I worry about her safety, but she seems scrappy enough. Anyway, whatever information I can feasibly give her, I will. Just … nothing that could ever come back on me or my family. “The offers we’ve been getting from Archer Realty are lowball bullshit. If we sold to them, we’d be in huge trouble. Rents have almost doubled in the last two years around here. We wouldn’t have anywhere to go.”
I release her wrist and take a step back, a clear dismissal.
“Would you be able to tell me the names of any of the employees who stopped by here?” she asks, but I’m already shaking my head. This conversation, as far as I’m concerned, is over.
“You should probably leave,” I tell her, glancing over and finding a white Prius waiting on the curb. Ah. I should’ve figured. Nobody in Prescott drives a Prius. “I’ll wait for you to get in your car before I head inside. Also, next time, if you want to ask a Prescott resident something, come up to the door and knock loudly and firmly. People in this neighborhood are jumpy. I wouldn’t want anything to happen to you.”
I hold my hand out in the direction of her car.
Emma looks at me for a moment before nodding slightly and then heading down the steep incline to her car. She looks back once before climbing in and then hurries back over to me.
“Can I give you my number, just in case you think of anything else?” she asks, but I already know the answer to that question. I’m not about to get involved with a reporter—nice as she may seem—that’s digging into corporate conspiracies. That’s a great way to end up six feet under real fast.
“No.” Just that. I turn and head for the front door without looking back.
I truly hope Emma Jean’s project fails—for her sake.
Whatever Archer Realty Investments is up to, it’s probably big news.
It’s also not my problem.
Not yet, anyway.
Scarlett
Widow keeps his distance from me for the next few days. He parks directly in front of or behind my car, but not in my spot. To be fair, I’ve been having Basti and Nisha grab it for me since they’re always early and I’m very often late.
I pause on the sidewalk when I see him sitting on the hood of his car, strumming his guitar. I feel like I recognize the song, but not quite, like he’s modified whatever tune it is. He lifts gold eyes up to stare at me.
“Are we going to pretend that you didn’t jerk off in front of me?” I ask, cocking my head to the side and knowing that it’s probably a mistake to bait him like this. His eyes harden, but he maintains that gripping glare of his as I smile. “Or that you left me a present on my steering wheel. Let’s neither of us act ignorant and stupid about what that sticky substance really was.”
Widow rests his guitar in his lap, his muscles tensed and poised, like he’s about to strike.
“Look at yourself,” he says, his voice this terrible monotone that belies a calmness without revealing the true anger underneath. “You’re fuckable. I don’t have to lie about that. It doesn’t mean that I like you. Don’t make such a stupid mistake.”
He adjusts the guitar again, strumming his fingers across the strings as I hold a strong debate with my inner self. Keep taunting the asshole or walk away. It should always be the latter, shouldn’t it? But I feel threatened in my own territory, and I don’t like that.
I don’t like how quietly dismissive Widow is while hiding clear sexual deviance underneath. He looks like someone who wants to be snapped, who wants to be broken out of their shell.
