Free Criminal Pleasures by Darien Cox

“Brendan, Gina DiPietro is here.”
    He stood and rounded the desk. “Hi, Gina, nice to see you again. Thanks, Willa.”
    “Hello again,” she said, beaming at him. “Thank you for fitting me in.”
    “Come on over and have a seat.”
    Willa left and closed the door, and Gina took the chair on the other side of his desk. “So what can I do for you, Gina?”
    Her smile wilted. “I have three children. A few months ago, their father—we’re divorced, you see. He stopped paying child support. He says he got fired from his job and has no money.” Her pretty face folded in a vicious scowl, and she pointed a long, manicured fingernail at him. “But that son of a bitch is lying! He works for his father. He didn’t get fired, he just had his father take him off the payroll. He’s paying him off the books, I know he is! And he’s collecting unemployment on top of it!”
Brendan nodded. “I see.”
                “He thinks I have all this money because Poppy owns the restaurant, but it’s not easy supporting three kids on my salary. I need help.”
    “Gina, if he’s collecting unemployment, we can garnish his unemployment check. They’ll take the child support right out and send it to you, he’ll get what’s left.”
    Her eyes widened. “You can do that?”
    He smiled. “Absolutely. I’ll need to get some paperwork from you, but it should be a simple matter. The courts put child support before any other expenses he might have. If he’s collecting, then he has to pay.”
    “Oh, thank you, Brendan.” She visibly relaxed, her shoulders dropping. “How much will this cost me?”
    He remembered Marc’s words again. But perhaps doing a favor for the DiPietro family was not as dire a sin as professional entanglements . “Don’t worry about it. I won’t charge you.”
    “What? No, Brendan. I couldn’t ask that of you.”
    “It’s all right. It really is a simple thing. It will be my pleasure to nail your ex, he sounds like a bastard, if you’ll pardon my language.”
    This got him a huge grin. “He is a bastard. And worse. Thank you so much. Hey, at least come down to the restaurant tonight. I’ll buy you drinks. Marcello and I are working the bar together.”
    Brendan’s gut flipped. “Oh, that’s all right. It’s not necessary.”
    She stood and her stern face returned, as did the long fingernail pointing at him. “It is necessary. It’s the least I can do. Now you better come down tonight, I’m serious.”
    Shit. Well, maybe he could go down, just for a little while. It would give him a chance to explain to Marc that he didn’t mean to go behind his back seeing Gina. That it just happened upon him. But seeing Marc, after his dramatic exit last week? Could he do that? He wasn’t sure. He’d be a nervous wreck. And seeing Marc would only ignite his desire again, he was sure of it.
    But maybe it will ignite his, too . He smiled at Gina. “All right. I’ll come down to Bibeta’s for a while tonight.”
    “Good! I won’t feel right about not paying you if you don’t at least let me buy you drinks. I’ll see you at the bar later. And you’re not paying for nothing! That’s an order.”
    He smiled at her, raising his hands. “I won’t argue, I promise.”
    She laughed. “Sorry. I gave you my scary Mom voice.”
    He chuckled and gave Gina some paperwork to take with her, and she kissed him on both cheeks before leaving.
    Brendan tried calling Marc again, but again, he got the no service message. What is the deal with this guy? Nothing about him added up. Maybe Marc was just crazy. Like legitimately crazy, a personality disorder of some kind. Delusional. The more he thought about it, Brendan couldn’t believe this hadn’t occurred to him already. It made sense. For crying out loud, the guy had thunder and lightning inside his apartment. Charming as it may be.
    “You think I am crazy?” Marc had asked him this question that night at his apartment. At the time he’d taken