Sex and the Billionaire Crime Boss - Season 2

Ch. 2: Heartbreak

My throat is dry. I lick my lips and then take a small sip of my sangria. I don't even taste it.

"Hypothetically," Max says, "if an employee were causing problems that interfered with the orderly conduct of our business, a convenient solution might be a drive into the everglades and a bullet in the back of their head."

"Oh, god." I can't believe he just said this, like we're just having a casual conversation. As if discussing something like this was completely ordinary.

"That is not the way I handle problems," Max says, in that same calm voice.

"No," I say, "your way is apparently to beat someone so badly that you put them in the hospital. I don't understand how you can do something like that."

He studies me. "Would you prefer that I sent Gabe - or someone else in the organization - to do it for me? It would be more palatable to you if I didn't get my own hands dirty?"

"No. It would be more palatable to me if you let the justice system take care of people like Suarez. He should be sitting in a cell right now. Instead, he's back at work with his arm in a sling, nursing his broken ribs."

"He's a first offender - officially," Max says. "Although God knows how many times he hurt Ashley in the past and she covered for him. How long do you think he would have spent in jail, particularly with your excellent legal skills working on his behalf? How long would it be before he raised his fists to Ashely again, or if she had the sense not to go back to him, another innocent woman?

"My way, he'll think long and hard before he abuses a woman again."

"You can't just mete out your own form of vigilante justice, Max."

"No?" he says. "I think you're wrong. What happened to Ramon sends a strong message to everyone in my organization that certain behavior will not be tolerated. And watching him limp around a loading dock for a few weeks struggling to do his job speaks a lot louder that rumors that the reason he suddenly disappeared is because his body was dumped in the everglades."

"Those aren't the only two options," I tell him.

"Right. I should let your legal system handle it. How's that been working out for the majority of domestic violence victims?"

I know the statistics. And it's not going to do any good to argue that the judicial system works in every case, or even most cases. It doesn't. Not when so many times the victims of domestic violence are caught in a cycle of dependency with the very people who abuse them.

"That's not the point," I tell Max.

"Isn't it?"

"You knew how I'd react to this, Max. That's why you lied to me."

He narrows his eyes, leans closer to me over the table. "I never lied to you, Hadley."

"Maybe not directly, but it amounts to the same thing. I asked you about the mugging. I was worried that someone was trying to get to you by beating up one of your employees. We had a conversation about this, and you specifically told me that Ramon getting mugged had nothing to do with the work he does for you as an employee."

Max takes a sip of his drink then sets the glass back down, his gaze never leaving mine.

"All of that was true," he says.

"You don't think that would have been a good time to tell me the truth about the so-called mugging?"

"Maybe we should start now with telling the whole truth about what happened to Ramon. Is that what you want, Hadley?"

He doesn't wait for me to answer.

"I'll tell you exactly how this played out, and then you make up your own mind if you want to be with a man like me."