Page 18 of Rent an Enforcer

She laughs gently. “Thank you?”

“I mean—sorry, that came out wrong,” I babble. “I don’t know what I expected. Something more dramatic? Maybe someone smoking a cigar? There are no cigars at this table. I’m pleasantly surprised by the lack of cigars.”

Tristan’s hand finds my knee under the table. I’m not sure whether it’s affection or a warning. It could be both.

“No cigars,” Dorian confirms. “Quinn made me quit.”

Quinn rolls her eyes. “Don’t listen to him. I don’t think he’s ever smoked a cigar in his life.”

“And she would never try to make me quit anything. Would you?” he asks her, joking gently. Definitely not what I would’ve expected from the head of a crime family. I can almost ignore the dark-clad men sitting by the front door like they’re guarding the place. They probably are.

“If it meant keeping you around longer for the sake of your daughter? I might think about it,” she tells him with a grin. I like her. I might even like him. This is not a crime lord and his long-suffering spouse. This is a man who loves his wife and his little girl. Crime just happens to be part of it.

The waiter arrives to place water glasses in front of us, along with what looks like a sippy cup of chocolate milk for Lillie. That’s when I notice something critical. No straws.

I look at Tristan. “Did you...?”

It’s Dorian who answers without looking up from his menu. “Tristan mentioned you would prefer we leave out the straws tonight.”

That’s it. Like it’s that simple. Like he called ahead to a restaurant and had every straw removed from the premises, and it’s the most unremarkable thing in the world. Like this is just what happens when you have the kind of power that makes waiters nervous and gets entire restaurants rearranged with a phone call.

“I’m starting to understand the appeal of organized crime,” I murmur to Tristan. When his hand squeezes my knee, it’s definitely a warning this time. I don’t care. I’ve never walked into a restaurant and not had to worry about straws before. It’s like someone cleared the minefield before I got here.

Dinner is good. Really good. The kind of pasta that makes you want to close your eyes and make a sound that’s not appropriate in public and definitely not in front of a child. The conversation is easy in a way I wasn’t expecting. Quinn seems legitimately interested in my painting. Dorian listens more than he talks, but when he does talk, it’s precise and deliberate. I respect that. I talk too much and waste words constantly, so people who use them carefully fascinate me.

Lillie, meanwhile, has decided I’m worth paying attention to. She shows me what appears to be either a horse or a very confident dog. She then leans across the table and asks with the casualness of someone asking for directions to the nearest gas station, “Do you want to meet my horse?”

“You have a horse?”

“His name is Poptart.”

I look at Quinn, who nods. Dorian is wearing something close to a smile.

“One question,” I reply, lowering my voice. “Does Poptart bite?”

She screws her little face up like she’s thinking it over, trying to remember. “I don’t think so. Just food and stuff.”

“Then I would love to meet him.” She beams like I’ve given her the correct answer, while all I can do is wonder if she means it, because I’ve never met a horse in person, but something tells me I’d be nervous about it.

Eventually, dinner winds down the way dinners do when you’re having a good time. Quinn and I exchange numbers. Lillie demands a solemn promise that I will visit Poptart this week. Dorian shakes my hand again when we leave and tells me, “It was a pleasure, Stella,” and somehow, he makes me believe he might actually mean it, which feels like a significant achievement given that the man apparently runs a criminal empire.

I’m in the middle of thanking him for the meal when my phone buzzes in my purse. I pull it out to find a weather alert. Wind advisory: gusts up to 18 mph expected in your area beginning at 9:00 p.m.

My stomach drops. It’s almost 8:30. Thirty minutes.

“I have to go,” I announce in a tight voice. “I need to get home. The wind is picking up… I need to go.” I can feel it already. The tightness in my chest. The cold creeping into my fingers. I have thirty minutes before the world gets loud and pushy, and my apartment is miles away from here. What if it starts early? What if the app is wrong? What if⁠—

“My place is closer,” Tristan tells me. He’s calm and even. Basically, the opposite of me. “Ten minutes from here.”

I look up at him, trying to piece together a simple statement when my mind is beginning to fracture. “Your place?”

“It’s on Dorian’s property. Sturdy walls. No amount of wind could knock them down.” He says it like it’s the most important selling point. Honestly, for me, it kind of is right now. “You’ll be inside before nine.”

My hands are already starting to shake, but he’s here. His place is ten minutes away. Ten minutes I can do. “Okay,” I agree. “Let’s go.”

I notice as he leads me to the SUV that he didn’t bother telling me it’s just wind. He asks no questions that might waste time. He only opens the car door, waits for me to get in, and closes it behind me before getting behind the wheel.

I wouldn’t believe it if I wasn’t going through it. Somehow, miraculously, he made the noise in my head go quiet again.