Ms. CEO's Baby Daddy Is the Merchant of Death novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Not for Me

"Inside your party," Abe said, "in a white jacket."

He crouched in front of the man on the kitchen floor.

"How many white jackets will there be?"

"Thirty. Forty. Catering." The man smiled. "Good luck."

Abe stood up and looked at me.

"I picked the store," I said. "And he let me. I thought I'd won that."

"He likes rooms full of people," Abe said. "People are cover."

Two of his men came in from the dock and took the man away between them.

At midnight the kid sent a text from the man's phone to Russell's number.

"He moved it to a new phone yesterday," the kid said. "Doesn't matter. I'm still in."

"Done."

Russell's answer came back in nine seconds.

"Both?"

"Both," the kid typed.

Nothing else came.

On Friday afternoon, Cruger Arms put out a statement.

I watched it on my laptop at the kitchen table, with Abe beside me.

Finn was under the table, building a garage for his trucks out of cereal boxes.

The board had voted that morning.

Abram Cruger was presumed dead.

Russell Mallory would serve as chief executive.

There was a photo of Russell outside the tower on Wacker with his head bowed.

Abe read it twice.

"I've been dead four months," he said. "It's different when they vote."

At five, my phone rang.

It was Russell.

I put it on speaker and set it on the table between us.

"Yvette." His voice was hoarse, the way a man's is after crying. "Have you heard from Abe?"

"No."

"He was meant to come up to the lake on Wednesday. He never came. His phone goes nowhere."

I looked at Abe.

He was looking at the phone.

"He left," I said. "Like the last time."

There was a pause.

"I'm so sorry, sweetheart," Russell said, very gently. "I should have warned you what he's like."

"Tomorrow at seven," I said.

"Tomorrow at seven. I'll take care of everything."

I hung up.

Abe got up and went out the back door and stood in the dark yard for a long time.

Under the table, Finn said, "Technically, a garage needs a door."

I gave him the lid of a shoebox.

Hank and his wife came at eight to sleep in my spare room.

Hank brought a pie and his shotgun case and parked himself on my couch with a crime show.

"Go on," he said, when Abe came in from the yard. "Take her out of here. I've got the boss."

"Take me where?"

"Wherever people go the night before they do something stupid."

Abe drove me to the flagship.

The store was closed, with only the night lights on.

Tomorrow it would be a party.

Tonight it was three dark floors of sofas and lamps and a long staircase.

Abe walked the whole ground floor once, slowly, and I followed him.

He stopped at the foot of the stairs.

"This is where you'll stand," he said. "Your back to the wall, the stairs on your left."

He pointed at the catering doors.

"Every white jacket comes through there. Put two of mine by them, as busboys."

He pointed at a balcony on the second floor.

"Nobody goes up there. Rope it off. A man with a tray up there has your whole head."

He said it.

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