Chapter Text
Tora
I can’t help but just sit there and stare at her. The scowl on her face, the wrinkles between her eyebrow, and the look of deep concentration she has directed at her phone as she types out a rather lengthy text.
I’ve lived in Narin City for a good part of my adult life and I’ve seen (and even worked for) several “illegal syndicate” groups, as she likes to call them. It was never anything big, but due to my size and intimidating demeanor, I had played bodyguard and bouncer to bring in some extra cash every now and then. I had dealt with tons of thugs and mafia lords since being in the city, but never one that looked like her.
She sat across the too-tiny-to-be-functional table at a coffee house that was way too pretentious for my taste, but it’s not like I was going to say no when I saw the text from her asking me to meet her for a drink.
Today she wore tight leggings that appeared to be made out of leather, accompanied with a white flowy top that had some kind of geometric cat face on it and as always, a pair of strappy heels. She told me once that she liked wearing heels because it made her taller, yet she still barely reached my chest when we stood beside one another.
She kept retyping her text and I was enjoying the extra time I had to steal looks at her, trying to copy everything to memory so I wouldn’t forget any of it.
“I’m so sorry! I promise as soon as I send this message, I’m all yours!” she said with a worried glance at me. I just shrugged and smiled at her.
It still amazed me that something so fucking adorable belonged to one of the head gangs in Narin . Sure, the Balthumans ran the place but the Wilkes’ were just as terrifying, seeing as the two head honchos were business patterns in 90% of their dealings. And then there was Poppy. This squishy little hamster that looked like the ideal girl for you to bring home to mom, but in reality, she could quite literally have you killed If you made her mad enough...like by refusing an invite to a pretentious coffee house. And boy did she have a temper. I had only seen it once and that was enough for me to know that I would never intentionally cause that side of her to come out again, no matter how unbelievably sexy her “game face” was. She wasn’t quite to angry yet, but I could tell she was getting restless while still concentrating on her phone.
Finally, she slammed the phone down on the table in defeat and said “Forget it! I’ll just deal with that later.”
“Anything exciting?” I asked, pointing to the phone, not sure if I really wanted to know the answer. We had talked very little about Poppy’s family business and usually stuck to the topic of what I was writing about at work, or any exciting news that Goldfish was going to be publishing soon. Part of me figured she was just trying to see what everyone else knew or trying to get the latest scoop from an easy target (something I take pride in saying that I had never been, until she came along) but the other part of me felt like it was truly genuine and she was actually interested in what I was doing at my day job.
“You remember Bodie that was with me last time we had dinner? Well, he’s kind of-” she paused for a minute, studying my face, but I made sure not to give any kind of reaction to deter her from speaking freely. “He’s kind of my bodyguard, but he and one my best friends are about to have a baby together and so I told him he could take some time off, ya know, for daddy duty.”
“Okay? That’s a good thing right?” I said, not really knowing where she was going with this.
“Well my mom isn’t happy about it, and is trying to find someone to replace him for the time being, but her brilliant idea is to try and bring two.....families-” she said the word almost questioningly, like she was trying to decide if that word actually worked as a good substitute “together by asking her business partner’s son to step in. That way I have some protection, we’ve furthered our alliance, and she’s hoping it will also help teach her partner’s son some responsibility.”
“Again, that sounds like a good thing, right?” I say and smile. She immediately lowered her face and looked up at me through her long eyelashes, cutting her eyes in a face that screamed boy please.
“ It all sounds great, but-” she kept hesitating and looking around the place like someone was actually listening to what we were saying. “He’s a damn yuppy! I love Quincey, don’t get me wrong! But the man is a human version of a chihuahua. He’s more likely to help get me styled every morning than he is to get me out of a dangerous situation.” The words flew out of her mouth like water from a dam after a big rain.
I just sat there, too long probably, trying to think of the right thing to say. Once I started my job at Goldfish Publishing I promised Alice that I wouldn’t take any more dangerous mafia side jobs, but I knew that in this moment, staring down at those gigantic brown puppy dog eyes, that I would never be able to tell her no if she asked me. I weighed my options carefully before speaking. I can throw my offer on the table and hope the idea of us spending all of our days together in close proximity excites her as much as it did me, or I can just stay out of it and try to be supportive and hope she’ll still want to spend all of her time with me and hopefully without the human chihuahua standing over us. I was happy at my current job, I got to write cool stories, see new places, and work regular job hours; plus, I had dental insurance which was always a plus. On the other hand, this could mean no more having to do mock up reports, no more bull shit business presentations, and most importantly, I could finally tell Gil to go fuck himself. Yeah, he was my superior in the work force, but damn it if he didn’t give me the creeps.
“Poppy. Just hear me out on this for a minute. What if I-”