10,000 Hours With A Rich Menace (Caselli Family Book 1)

As soon as we stepped outside, another large truck pulled up and Menace headed to the black one of the two. Jeffie headed toward the one that had just pulled up and turned for me to follow her. I was still trying to wrap my head around being in this warehouse for a week. Beans was super nice to me and made sure that I was comfortable.

When one of his workers started eyeing me funny, he broke his nose, and I hadn’t seen him since. Since he was so nice to me, in return I doodled a tattoo for him on some loose papers in the back office.

Sleeping on the cot that was provided for me wasn’t the best and my back was still suffering from going to a luxury resort suite to a small room in the back of a smelly, dirty, warehouse. The man that had kidnapped me held the door open for me.

“I thought we were friends,” I gave him the stink eye and he laughed, holding the door open wider for me.

“Boss’s order… nothing personal, Stevie.”

I climbed into the back and looked around the massive truck, melting in the soft butter leather seats while Jeffie pecked away on her phone. “Is he not coming with us?”

“Menace has a full day, and usually I would be with him, but I need to get you settled and this situation under control,” she spoke as she continued on her phone, never breaking her stride in texting.

“Jeffie, my cousin cannot find out about this… please promise to keep this secret. I promise I will tell her when I’m ready, but it has to come from me.”

She paused, lowering her phone to look at me. “Why did you trust that girl, Stevie? You’re a smart girl, none of what she was doing sounded shady to you?”

“I should have been smarter and listened… sometimes it’s easier to turn my brain off. I can’t explain it, but I like living in my bubble… I’m happy there.”

She held her phone again and pointed it at me. “You need to make sure your cousin knows. I hate keeping things from her… that’s my sister-wife… not healthy for me to keep things from her and Core.”

“She and Core are broken up,” I reminded her.

“And I have plans on reuniting them… enough about my family. This isn’t a joke… he needs a wife, and he’s really going to marry you. You’re really going to live with him,” she reminded me.

My father and Priscilla both deserved whatever came to them. I wanted to pretend that I didn’t care so much. He had been out of my life since my mama’s funeral and I hadn’t heard a word from him.

Why should I care for a stranger?

My father was a stranger, and I shouldn’t have given a damn about what happened to him. It was safe to say that he was innocent when it came to betraying me. He had no idea that Priscilla knew me.

The betrayal was hearing that Priscilla was willing to offer me up to this man without a second thought. Bringing up my virginity, something that I had told her in confidence really hurt. For a brief second, I wanted to die because all eyes were on me.

Menace was most definitely scary, and his eyes were very menacing with how he stared at you. Like he wanted to rip your head off and then eat a full course meal after. Even I could see his eyes soften when he heard what Priscilla had said about him being fine, and it wouldn’t be that bad.

“I don’t want my father or Priscilla to die. What they were doing was wrong and they should have to answer for what they did. Death just seems so final.”

“It is final,” Jeffie nonchalantly replied.

I looked out the window as we continued to drive. “Where are we?”

“Your new home… Staten Island. We’ll make arrangements for you to get your things from the condo with Skyler… I guess that would be the time for you to be honest with her.”

“Not yet… give me time to tell her. Skyler is always so hard with me, and she will tell me that she told me so, which she was right. I just don’t want to deal with that right now. I’m her big cousin, not the other way around. Allow me to tell my own business and sit with this for a little minute… you know?”

She nodded her head at me and agreed with what I was saying. It was hard to admit to my cousin that I didn’t listen and ended up in this situation. I’ve always been raised to look at the bright side of things, and the bright side was that I wasn’t dead.

It was because of the people and connections that Skyler knew that had prevented me from dying in that warehouse when that could have been my fate.

“I’ll give you that. Remember, your business includes me knowing and will break the trust me and Skyler have. She’s my best friend, and we don’t lie to each other.”

“I understand. I promise I will tell her that I made you promise not to tell.” I smiled at Jeffie, who went back on her phone. “What is he like?”

Jeffie laughed. “Well, he calls me his soul mate, so please don’t get all weirded out.”

I screwed my face up and she laughed.

“Not like that… me and Menace have been through a lot together… all of us have, and I’ve been the constant in his life. The one who never left, and the one he has always had. He’s a big brother to me… best friend, and I’ll deny it if you tell him, a soul mate in a way. I believe our paths were supposed to cross because he needs me.”

“Wow. How am I, as his future wife, supposed to fill such shoes?” I snickered, and Jeffie became serious.

“This is a business arrangement in a way. You marry him to help him with his problem, and he’ll keep your people alive, although he really wants to kill them. You have to know that what your father and friend did is a death sentence… that man has done worse for less, and the fact that he has agreed to keep them alive because of you is really big. I know this is an arranged marriage, but don’t think of it like that… get to know him.”

“Okay.”

You know how the most outrageous things happen to someone, and you joke and say that would happen to me because wild things always happened to you? That would be me in this moment. Crazy things always happen to me, and I always just roll with the punches, and make the best out of them.

Things could be worse, like me choking on my blood in that warehouse. Marrying a billionaire couldn’t be that bad… right?

When Jeffie showed me that the chair had heat, and it reclined back, I was dead to the world. Drool spilled out of my mouth when I felt the car jerk and go over what seemed like a huge pothole. I jumped up, thinking Jeffie had betrayed me and I was going to meet my maker. There were men in suits with a mirror on a long pole sticking it under the truck, and then nodding for him to proceed.

“Relax, he has security monitors on the floor, so when the truck goes over to get to the main gate, if there is anything on the car, it will more than likely fall off, and it scans to let him know who is entering the property. They are there to do a sweep under the car as well.”

“Does someone want to kill him? Who does all of this for a home?”

She smiled. “He’s Menace Caselli… a name that is very powerful. There’s a lot of people that want his position and he makes sure that they can never get it, and his family is protected.”

“Family?”

“He has sisters and a brother.” Jeffie looked at her watch. “I’m not sure when you’ll meet them… they don’t come around much.”

“That’s sad.”

Her phone sounded, and she quickly picked it up and jumped into work mode. I admired how she could keep everything together without a strand of hair being loose.

As we inched closer to the gates, the driver put the window down and waited a second before he quickly punched the number in and looked into the camera that moved in his direction. Soon as the camera verified who he was, he pulled up and lowered Jeffie’s window down, and she repeated the same process with the phone tucked between her ear and shoulder.

Soon as she was verified, the iron clad gates opened, allowing us access into what looked like trees. Each tree along the winding gravel road had a light that illuminated near the root of the tree. It was an overcast day, so the sun wasn’t out, and it appeared darker, even for it being in the afternoon. We drove for a mile before we wrapped around a turnabout, and the house in question came into view.

My breath was caught in my throat when I took in the home in front of us. Forget home, this looked like it could be a college campus or something. It was so massive and black.

Very dark.

Every inch of this home with its sleek glass balcony, slate exterior and black gloss material screamed luxury. We pulled onto the Nantucket pavers that were perfectly layered.

On the ride up from the gate, I felt my ears pop and looked at the driver and Jeffie to see if they felt the same thing. Now, I knew why my ears had popped. We were surrounded by forest; however, this home was elevated on a cliff, far away from everything and everybody.

Talk about isolation.

The lush greenery made the harsh lines of this modern mansion soften. It was a give and take, and I think both elements, the home being slate, concrete and mostly glass, along with the greenery that surrounded it, complimented each other.

“This…this is where I’m going to live?”

Jeffie smiled as the driver opened the door for her. “Yes… not too shabby, huh?”

I didn’t move from the seat as I watched her easily walk around the front of the truck and look through the windshield. The door on my side opened and I stepped out, not knowing what to do or say.

This was normal for Jeffie because she had probably been here over a dozen times. She picked up her phone again and gestured for me to follow her through the wide glass door. Soon as we walked in, we stepped through another door, and I jumped when a mist fell down onto her from the glass doorway.

“It’s a sanitizing mist… kills germs.”

I walked through and felt the cold mist sprinkle over my clothes as I walked further into the foyer. There were no family pictures on the wall, just massive pieces of art and statues. The textured walls, dramatic modern chandelier and the floating staircase didn’t disappoint.

The marble floors were so clean you could eat off them. They were sparkling as we walked into the house.

“He doesn’t mind shoes downstairs; however, no shoes are allowed on the second and third level. Well, the third level is off limits to you… it’s his bedroom, office, and his sanctuary.”

“Noted.”

“Mess… he hates a mess, Stevie. Legit will flip out if he sees crumbs or anything. The man has a way he does things. In the fridge, everything has an order, and he makes sure of it.”

As I half listened to Jeffie running everything down, my stomach felt uneasy. It was so much, and I was suddenly feeling overwhelmed by it all. She spoke so quickly and knew everything that he liked and didn’t like.

If her telling me everything wasn’t enough, I nearly passed out when she slid a door open off the kitchen, and there was a full room dedicated to fridges.

Yes, plural.

This man had a wall full of industrial refrigerators, and they were all color coated. One had every green fruit, vegetable, smoothie, and drink color coded, and neatly put. Then another had a bunch of red smoothie drinks in it, along with red apples, because God forbid we put a Granny Smith in there.

“You can help yourself to anything that you would like… just make sure you don’t mix things up. Colors go with each other, and then…” she walked over toward the other side and slid another door open, and my eyes nearly fell out of my head.

It was a candy store.

A literal candy store filled with different variations of candy. I was no longer worried about everything that Jeffie had run down to me, I was focused on all the candy and snacks she had shown me.

“I know this is a lot, and I do plan to run everything to you. Just wanted you to have some of the knowings of living with Menace Caselli.”

“Some?” I blurted.

Jeffie laughed. “I know, I know, it is a lot and that is the reason I no longer live with him.”

“You used to live with him?”

She waved me off. “Years ago, when we were younger… me and Menace practically grew up together.” I watched as she checked her watch. “I have a meeting to make for this ball in Monaco… we’re hopefully finalizing the last details, and I can’t miss this one. Let me show you where you’ll be staying, and the driver has brought in your suitcase and cell phone.”

I followed her through the museum of a house. It looked unlived in and perfect. There wasn’t a pillow or carpet out of place. As we made our way through the house, I started to see if I could spot something that is out of place.

I never did.

Jeffie opened one door to the double doors down the hall on the second level. “This is my room?”

She smiled. “Yes… maybe one day you both will want to share one room.”

“Yeah, no thanks,” I muttered and walked past her into the room, taking in the hues of beige, cream, and mauve. The tufted wall behind the plush bed filled with bedding that matched the entire room had me in awe. The plants in the corner were fake, still, it added to the decor of the bedroom.

My room was right off the backyard, so there was a sliding door and a glass balcony I could utilize. From where the house sat in the hills, you got a full view of Staten Island, and the Verrazano bridge in the distance. It felt like we were royalty looking down on the kingdom.

The driver came into the room and handed Jeffie something. She thanked him and gave him an ETA on when she would be done and ready to leave. “You’re leaving me here alone?”

“You’re not alone… my assistant is here as well. She’s interning right now, and the goal is for her to be able to fill some of my roles when I decide to step back some.”

“Hmph.”

“You are probably tired and want a shower…I know this is all a lot and happened so fast. I can also tell that you are overwhelmed as well. Call your cousin and everyone who has been looking for you.” Jeffie handed me my phone and I slowly took it while sitting on the edge of the bed.

“We’re supposed to get married and then live life together… for how long?”

Jeffie sat down beside me and put her hand on my shaking leg. “Me and Skyler talk… a lot. I know life hasn’t been easy for you since you lost your mom, Stevie. Don’t think about how long you’ll be married, look at it as a way to reset. Focus on you and the things that you love… reinvent Stevie and find that spark again. Yeah, sure, you’re sharing a home with a stranger, but I can assure you that you’re safe with him.”

I released the tension in my shoulders and swiped away a tear. When she mentioned my mother, something inside of me broke. I don’t know why hearing Jeffie mention my mother caused me to break down.

“I always find myself in some foolishness… none of this would have happened if my mother was here.”

“Or this happened because your mother put this into play. I mean, without the stealing and killing. However you choose to look at this is up to you.” She smiled, squeezing my knee and standing up.

“Thanks, Jeffie.”

“Don’t mention it… call your cousin please. Greene is somewhere around here, probably in my office on the ground floor. The buttons on the wall near the night tables can connect you to the kitchen, housekeeping, valet, and takeout.”

“Takeout?”

“He rarely uses the button. Menace is particular when it comes to his food… so it’s rare that he eats out. He has his chef prepare anything, anyway… Lupita lives in the guest house through the trees… she spends the day in the house, so you can catch her in the kitchen or out back if you’re hungry.”

“Thanks, Jeffie.”

She smiled and then headed out the room as I sat there with my cellphone in my hand. The second I powered it on, I waited for a few seconds before all the messages and missed calls bombarded the screen.

Skyler, Alex, and even Core’s name popped up on my screen. He called twice, which I assumed he stopped calling because he found out what his sick best friend was up to. I pressed Skyler’s name and took a deep breath as the phone rang.

“Stevie Raye, you better be gone and calling me from the spirit world… one second. How can I help you? Yes, DA Fern is out for a family emergency… I can take a message and schedule something when she’s back in the office… sure… Berkeley? I thought I recognized your voice. You want an interview with her? Um… sure. Let me take a message and give it to her when she’s back to work… cool…you, too.” I could hear her hang the phone up, which meant she was at work. “The fuck she wanna interview Capri for?” she muttered, probably forgetting I was on the phone.

“Skyler?”

“Where in the world have you been? What happened to keeping communication when on vacation? I’ve been calling, worried sick about you. I even called Alex.”

“And got him worried.”

“For good reason… I tried to look into your hotel, and it said that you checked out. Priscilla was no use because she didn’t answer her phone. Are you alright?”

“Yes, I met someone,” I prepared myself to lie to my cousin about what I was involved in. What she didn’t know at this moment wouldn’t kill her.

“What? You went ghost because you met someone?”

“He’s perfect, Skyler… such a gentleman, and sweet, too. God, I think I’m in love,” I continued to lay it on thick. “We wanted to commit all our time to each other.”

She groaned into the phone. “Who is this man, Stevie?”

“You’ll never believe me.”

“Try me.” I heard her slurping an iced coffee. How did I know it was an iced coffee? Because Skyler had at least three a day. We both would have so much coffee and forget to eat, then complain about a headache.

We were just girls. Okay?

“Menace.”

Skyler broke out in a fit of choking, so much so that I could hear someone in the background asking if she was alright. “I’m…I’m alright,” she choked out as she tried to get her coughing under order. “Who?”

“Menace Caselli… we met in the Bahamas, and I think I’m in love.” I rolled my eyes, while my tone remained excited.

“Core’s best friend, Stevie? You cannot be talking about Menace, the nutcase.”

I held back my laugh. “Not too much on my love.”

It felt so weird lying to her because I always told her everything. This time, I couldn’t bring myself to tell her what I had gotten myself mixed into because I knew how she would act. Skyler was the kind of person that always wanted to fix everything, and this was my mess, and I had to fix it on my own.

This was something that I had to do and prove to myself. Skyler couldn’t get me out of my mess every time. She was a mother, and if she stopped being stubborn, she would have a family with Core.

Where did that leave me?

Marrying Menace was outlandish, however, what if it wasn’t the worst thing? If anything, it would be cool to be friends and married. We were helping each other out and could still live our own lives.

To the public we were married and in love. Behind closed doors we would do whatever we wanted with our own lives.

“Where are you? When are you coming home, Stevie?” she sounded fed up listening to me tell her that I had fell for Menace.

Skyler knew him better than I did, so I wasn’t convinced that she believed me. He did seem out there at the warehouse, and a bit of a loose cannon. Every time he wanted to do something impulsive; I noticed he would rub his hands together.

Seven times.

I was so nervous that I watched his every move, counting each time he did it. One of the times, we made eye contact, and I was sure that he was going to kill me for watching him too hard.

“Soo, about that… I’m not coming home. He invited me to move in with him, and I think I’m going to do it.”

Skyler was full on choking now and I could actually hear someone hitting her back to help her stop. “Drink some water… Jesus,” I heard someone instruct her in the background.

“Pam… I am alright… Thanks,” she replied. “Moving in with him? You don’t even know him, Stevie? What were you doing… drugs?”

“He makes me feel so good, Skyler.” I yawned, wanting to shower and then climb into this bed to get some sleep.

“Well, I’m coming to see you at his house…I want to make sure you’re not being held against your will… do you need me to bring anything?”

I ran down everything I wanted her to bring before she told me to reach out to Alex and we ended the call.

I grabbed my luggage and rummaged through what I had and found a pair of pajamas before walking into the massive bathroom. The glass encased shower was the star of the bathroom with a rain shower head.

Between the bamboo ceiling and travertine and glass shower, the bathroom was like a dream. I looked at the controls on the wall and smiled as I pressed whatever. When I discovered how to control the temperature and make the glass frosted, I went over to the sink and unpacked my cosmetics bag that had my makeup and skincare along with my travel toothpaste all in one bag.

Looking in the mirror, I smiled at myself and then closed my eyes and said a prayer to my mother. I needed her to lead the way, show me what I was supposed to be doing. Tell me if this was the right move for me.

No matter if Skyler wanted to admit it or not, she was slowly building something – a family – when it came to her, Core, Jeffie, and Estella. She just needed to stop being stubborn and realize it.

I just wanted my own thing, too, so even if I had to fake it until I made it… I had no other choice but to become Menace Caselli’s wife.