Page 24 of Rent a Mob Boss

It starts faintly. Like a suggestion.

But then it gets stronger. Much stronger. So strong that the kitchen flickers, and the sunlight goes wrong, and Dorian lifts his face from where it rested against my neck and murmurs, “Something’s rotting.”

Slowly, I open my eyes.

To find Poptart’s face approximately three inches from mine.

His enormous brown eyes are locked on me with the unblinking stare of an animal who has absolutely no concept of personal space, and his breath—his breath—is a living thing, a creature in its own right. Hot and damp, and smelling like something crawled into a bag of grass clippings and died there.

What does a girl do at a time like this? When she’s woken from maybe the nicest dream she’s ever had to find an animal invading her personal space?

If you’re me, you scream.

Not a cute scream, either. It’s not the kind of scream that happens in movies where the girl gasps and puts her hand over her mouth. I’m talking about a full-bodied, top-of-my-lungs shriek of primal terror, because there is a horse in the bedroom, and I’m naked, and for approximately three seconds, I don’t remember where I am or why I’m here or how any of this happened in the first place.

Dorian comes up off the pillow like he’s been electrocuted. “What? What happened?” He’s reaching for the nightstand before his eyes are fully open, and I don’t have time to think about what he was reaching for because Poptart chooses this moment to exhale directly into my face, and I fully gag.

“There is a horse in your bed!”

“It’s not—” He blinks. Processes. He looks at me, looks at Poptart, then looks back at me.

Then his face changes. It goes from confused to alert to absolutely furious in about a second and a half. “Lillie!”

He’s out of bed before I can say anything else, yanking on a pair of shorts from the chair, and he moves toward the door with the energy of a man who is about to have a very serious conversation with a five-year-old. Then his bare foot comes down on something, and the sound it makes is…

Well. It’s wet. And squishy.

He stops. Looks down. Closes his eyes. I crane my neck, holding my breath—both out of necessity and out of nerves. Sure enough, he’s standing there with one foot planted in what is unmistakably a pile of horse manure on the hardwood floor of his bedroom.

I watch as he takes a single, controlled breath through his nose. Given the smell, it’s a bold choice. “Lillie,” he says again, quieter this time, which is somehow much scarier. He scrapes his foot on the edge of the bathroom doorframe—an image I will take to my grave—before disappearing into the hallway.

I’m sitting up in bed, clutching the sheet to my chest and staring at Poptart, who is looking deeply pleased with himself. Out of nowhere, Lillie appears in the doorway.

She’s in her pajamas. Her hair is wild. She wears the expression of a child who has done absolutely nothing wrong and can’t imagine why anyone would suggest otherwise. “Good morning,” she says sweetly.

“Good morning, sweetie. How did… how did Poptart get up here?”

“The elevator,” she says, as if this is the most obvious answer in the world. Like, of course you put a pony in the elevator that hardly ever gets used. That’s why the elevator hardly gets used—there was no pony in the house until now. “He wanted to come see me. He was lonely.”

“The pony told you he was lonely.”

“I could tell by his face.”

I look at Poptart’s face. It communicates nothing but vague interest in continuing to chew. I don’t have time to argue the point, because Lillie’s attention has shifted from the pony to me. I watch her little brain recalculate in real time. “Quinn?” Her head tilts. “Why are you in Daddy’s bed?”

Oh, no. I would much rather talk about the pony.

“I… we were… it was late, and⁠—”

“Did you have a sleepover?”

“Sort of. Sure. A sleepover.”

“Why don’t you have pajamas on?”

“I didn’t have any with me. I was wearing—it doesn’t matter what I was wearing.” I’m going to die in this bed. This is where it ends. Not in a car crash, not of old age. Right here, interrogated to death by a kindergartner while a miniature horse witnesses the entire tragedy. “Honey, can you go find Ms. Beaumont for me?”

But she’s already on the bed, bouncing hard enough that her locket bounces against her chest. Poptart startles sideways and knocks something off the nightstand. A glass shatters on the floor. Lillie barely notices. “Are you and Daddy boyfriend and girlfriend now? Is that why you had a sleepover? Can you have a sleepover every night? Can Poptart have sleepovers too?”