Chapter Text
“Like your dad.”
It would be easier if it hurt. Right? Easier to feel something than this gaping nothingness that yawns in her chest where she thinks she had a heart, once. Your dad, dropped so carelessly. It should hurt. It should piss her off that he thinks she’ll be that easy to work over, as though she’s got lost little daddy’s girl seeping from her pores.
But it doesn’t hurt, doesn’t even sting. She’d kill for – something. Anything. A bump of that coke, a swallow of the whiskey she’s been pretending to drink since he poured it for her. She laughs just for the sound of it, settles herself back in her chair. “Yeah.”
Matsson smiles at her, like they’ve reached some unspoken understanding.
“Except I’m not sure that’s a compliment coming from you.” She swirls her glass. “I mean, you hated his fuckin’ guts, right?”
One sweater-clad shoulder rises and falls, non-committal. “Maybe. I don’t know. Didn’t you?”
Like it’s the most normal thing in the world for him to ask, and not something so achingly personal that it’d knock the air out of her lungs if she hadn’t stopped breathing two days before. Like her dad’s not laid out cold on a slab a few thousand miles away (in a fucking kilt, apparently). The folly of this whole trip splays open before her. Kendall and Roman, basically just a two-headed collection of unfixable daddy issues and emotional fault lines waiting to crack wide the fuck open, Ken who takes himself more seriously than the goddamn Pope and Rome who’s been thirty seconds away from a total breakdown for fifty-odd hours – this guy, this arrogant coke-focused Viking giant who’d pulled the blood out of his own veins in the service of some fucked-up joke, is gonna dismantle them.
Across everything, they’d promised her, but she can’t shake the hunch that they’re trying to fuck this and fuck her by extension. And the only person in the world who can fuck them the way they might fuck her is sitting there, watching her. “Maybe,” she says, and copies his shrug. “I don’t know.”
“None of you know.” A dismissive little wave of his hand. “That’s why your brothers got their feelings hurt with this new deal, because it’s not what Daddy wanted. But you don’t give a shit about that, do you?” He leans forward, elbows on his knees. Eyes scanning her face, solving something from what he finds there. She hates it.
“Honestly?” She drums her nails against her glass, matches that casual tone of his. “ATN’s a cesspit. Buy it, neuter it, strip it for parts, turn it into a shining goddamn beacon of middle-of-the-road centrist bullshit. I don’t care. The board and the shareholders and the markets want this deal closed.”
“And you, too?” His head cocks. Still that long, studying look. “You still want the deal?”
“For a competitive price,” she reminds him. “Sure.”
“Okay.” He unfurls, arms spreading along the back of the couch, leans back and continues to regard her. She doesn’t know how long it’s been since he looked away last. “You have an interesting face,” he tells her. His thumb sweeps the black leather of the couch. “Maybe not conventionally beautiful, but interesting.”
“Oh, thanks a bunch,” she retorts. “That’s also not a compliment.”
“No, it was,” he counters, frowning. “All these fucking Instagram girls. It’s so boring. Same lips, same hair, same tits, same ass. Just fillers and silicone and shit. You, though, you look… soft.”
Either they’re going to fuck or he’s going to murder her. Then again, could be both. “Soft?” she echoes, scoffs. “Right.”
“You could be soft, Siobhan.” Her name runs down her spine, borne on his voice. “I could make you soft.”
She feels it like an electric shock, low in her belly. Laughs. “You think so?”
“Uh-huh.” He takes a gulp of his drink, the glass almost swallowed inside his hand. “You should let me fuck you.”
He forgets she’s already seen this trick - tribute band, parts shop, blood bricks. If he wants to mindfuck her, he’s going to have to try harder than that. She’s way ahead of his chronically-online edgelord bullshit, not to mention she’s stone cold sober, so she just says “Ha,” dry, unmoved. “That’s not happening.”
“Why not?” He looks genuinely puzzled. “I’m a terrific fuck.”
“Oh yeah, who told you that? All your Instagram girls?” She snorts. “And anyway, maybe I heard something different.”
“Like what?”
“Like… podcasts?”
He’s got the nerve to laugh. “Not always. Sometimes it’s news. Conference calls. Whatever.”
“Jesus fuckin’ Christ.”
“And not with everyone.” He huffs, swallows some whiskey. “Sex, it’s mostly just one of those things you do, you know? Eating, drinking, sleeping, fucking. Same old. I get bored. But you’re – “
“Interesting?”
He nods. “Siobhan,” he says again, the syllables coated in his accent, softened into something filthy. “Shiv. Like a knife. I like that.”
He does want her. She’s got him. It’s not the kind of power she deserves, not even close, but it’s what she has. And it’s something, at least, something she can use, something to hold clenched in her fist. “Lukas,” she says, pitches her voice low, husky. “I am not gonna fuck you.”
(Although, come to think of it, that’s not a sentence she’s ever uttered aloud to anybody she didn’t end up fucking. That probably doesn’t bode well.)
“I’ll land the deal,” he offers.
Shiv throws him an unimpressed glance. “You’ll land the deal anyway.”
“Probably,” he agrees. “But you could really lock it in with something tangible.”
“Tangible? Wow. Be still, my heart.”
“You’re still going to fuck me, though.” He says it like it’s incontrovertible.
“Why, because you’ve got abs and money?” She pulls a mock-astonished face. “Ooh, big fuckin’ deal. You and every other guy I’ve known my entire life. I’m good.”
Matsson blinks at her, takes a while to answer. Maybe he’s trying to figure out whether or not she’s fucking with him. Good – let him wonder. “Okay,” he finally says, his tone of voice suggesting that he’s humoring her. “Sure.”
She raises her glass to him, sets it aside. “I mean, thanks. For…” She gestures vaguely at the coffee table, the whiskey, the drugs. “But this is just business.”
“Uh-huh. Just business.”
“Right.” She adjusts the collar of her sweater, stands. He rises with her, the bulk of him silhouetted against the window. “So I should call it a night.”
“I don’t have your number,” he says, as though he doesn’t have access to whatever the fuck he wants.
“Why would you need my number?”
“So we can talk,” he says, innocently. “About business.”
When she puts out her hand, he fishes his phone out of his pocket, unlocks it, drops it into her palm. She can feel him watching her, edging closer, as she logs herself into his contacts, sends and kills a call to bounce his number her way. “There.” She holds the phone out to him, and his fingers brush hers when he takes it.
“Thanks,” he murmurs, and pockets it. “So I’ll call you if I need you?”
“Don’t call me,” she counters. “Don’t need me.”
“Okay,” he agrees. Grins. “I’ll call you.”