“You’re just changing the subject. I asked you if you were distracting yourself with those women. I want to know if my new roommate truly is an irredeemable monster or flawed like the rest of us.”

“One, I wouldn’t be a monster for wanting to fuck two hot women, I would be human. A man, and a greedy one at that. Two, as a matter of fact, yes, I did need a distraction. That day was a shitty one. My brother was being a real dickhead, and I was pissed. I felt… out of sorts. So I had some drinks at the bar before going up to a suite I didn’t want to be staying in, to meet a woman I didn’t want to be staying with, no offense. If it’s any consolation, they came to me. And three, stop trying to make me a better person in your head. Enjoy me the way I am, then leave me the way I am.”

“You have a brother?”

“That’s what you pulled from all that.” I laugh, then finish my glass and pour myself another two fingers, topping Winter’s off as well. “Yes. Hayden. I’m not his favorite person. Admittedly, he’s not mine.”

“So you two aren’t close?”

“We’re close because we have to be. He’s a junior partner for Fox and Latham, soon to be senior partner, and current dipshit. He’s always hated me for becoming next in line at the firm, but I earned it. I was eating, sleeping, and breathing my work while he was balls deep in every high society pussy he could pull away from bottle service. Not to mention, he didn’t want the responsibility. I work day and night with very little room for a personal life.”

I sigh, running my hands through my hair. “Moving back here has stirred up some old shit between us. Shit that angers me more than I know how to handle. Truth, our rivalry was part of the reason I moved to the New York branch to begin with. That, and my father only trusted me to clear the rubble of what a former senior partner did with it.”

He embezzled over $100,000, bought trips to the British Virgin Islands, and massages with happy endings with his company card, to be specific.

Winter opens her mouth to ask another question, I’m sure, but my good ole friend Fat Billie appears tableside with a shit-eating grin, a brown paper bag, and a case of the hiccups. Another man wearing a food smeared apron unloads chili-cheese fries and fried pickles onto our table, clanking the plates into each of our glasses while doing it.

“Would you like that other thing with your food, Alex?” Billie asks.

Winter chuckles from across the table.

“Aleck. And Please.”

He dumps the paper bag on the table, drops two spoons beside it, then pulls a stack of paper napkins from his back pocket and sets them down before disappearing back to his crevice.

“What’s in the bag?” Winter lifts an eyebrow suspiciously.