Love Beyond Words (City Lights, #1)(62)

From inside: “What?”

Jesse opened the door. “David Thompson’s here to see you.”

Cliff glanced up from the pile of papers on his cluttered, detritus-strewn desk, his expression sharp. “The f*ck, Jesse? You bring him in here?”

“He said he needed to talk.”

Cliff swore again and tilted back in his chair, making it creak under his girth. He looked David over with ugly blue eyes—pig’s eyes, folded in flesh—and laced meaty fingers behind his head of straw-colored blond hair.

He straightened to his full height and said, “It’s over, Cliff. No more.”

Cliff raised his bushy blond eyebrows. “Is that so?” He nodded at Jesse. “Shut the door. And stay.”

Jesse obeyed.

“What’s got your panties in a twist now, Dave?”

“Ju—Rafael Mendón is going to go public. You can’t blackmail him anymore. It’s over,” he repeated, hoping the simple voicing of those words would make them true.

“Is that a fact?”

“You can’t blackmail someone for a secret they’re no longer keeping…”

“That is true.” Cliff held out his hands. “I guess that means I’m now blackmailing you.”

“What?” David screeched. “What…what do you mean?”

“You said it yourself. You can’t blackmail a person for a secret they’re not keeping. I couldn’t give two shits what the writer does. So he blows his cover?” Cliff shrugged. “Big deal. But it’s you who has the secret now, Dave. You’ve been stealing from Mendón for almost a year. Two hundred grand. That’s a big, expensive secret, Dave, and if you want to make sure Mendón doesn’t find out about it, you’ll keep making your deposits here. To me.”

David swallowed hard. “No. I won’t do it. I can’t.”

Cliff settled back into his chair. “Oh, I think you can find a way.” He nodded at Jesse, indicating that this meeting was over.

“I’ll go to the cops. I will, Cliff, I swear it.”

He expected threats or refusals. He didn’t expect laughter. Cliff leaned back farther in his chair until he was in danger of falling out of it. Tears of mirth streamed from the corners of his eyes to become lost in flabby folds of his cheeks.

“Aww,” he huffed, “isn’t that adorable? Is that just f*cking precious?”

David’s cheeks burned. “You think I’m bluffing? Watch me, Cliff. This ends now.”

He turned and opened the door. It jerked to a stop and slammed shut again—Jesse’s hand splayed flat on the door, his arm barred David’s way.

“Jesse—”

With speed that belied his huge size, Cliff was out of his chair and slamming David against the wall, one meaty hand wrapped around his neck.

“You don’t talk to Jesse, you talk to me.”

Pain radiated up David’s skull and he gasped frantically for breath, clawing at the hands that held him.

“You think I’m stupid? You must think I’m stupid to barge in here like this and make demands you have no business making.”

His hand abruptly withdrew. David slid to the ground, gasping. Cliff leaned against the front of his desk, looming over him.

“I’m going to clarify a few things for you, Dave, so that you’ll know better next time you to try to f*ck with me.” He counted off on his fat fingers. “First of all, you’re not going to the police. Not now. Not ever. You’d be incriminating yourself as an accessory and you’ll go to jail. That’s a fact. Secondly, you’re not going to go to the police because if any one of us—Jesse, Garrett or myself—get nabbed, your writer friend dies. You get me? You think I don’t have other guys? Guys who, with a word from me, wouldn’t put a bullet through his eye? It’d be pretty easy to do, once he reveals himself and all. Real easy.”

David shook his head, whimpering. “No, no, no.”

“Yes, yes, yes.” Cliff chuckled. “If I get pinched, Mendón is dead. Are you picking up what I’m putting down, Dave?”

David nodded miserably.

“And thirdly, because you come in here, causing all this trouble…next month I want thirty thousand dollars.”

“Cliff…I can’t! It’s too much…And you don’t understand,” David cried. “He’s selling the stock. He won’t get the checks and then I can’t—”

“Again, not my problem. I don’t care what you do or what it takes, but I want my thirty thousand dollars on the first of every month your boyfriend’s going to wind up with a hole in his head, you read? Now, get out.”

#

Jesse watched David shuffle out of the office like a sick old man. After he was gone, Cliff’s fierce expression and clenched fists relaxed. He chuckled and resumed his seat behind his desk.

Jesse shuffled his feet. “You haven’t told anyone else about our deal, have you?”

“Of course not,” Cliff sniffed. He knocked a cigarette out of battered pack on his desk and lit it. “Dave doesn’t need to know that. But how else am I going to keep him in line?” He snorted a laugh. “Right now, I got him thinking we’re the f*cking mob.”