Total pages in book: 119
Estimated words: 116268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 116268 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 581(@200wpm)___ 465(@250wpm)___ 388(@300wpm)
“It’ll be faster if I call your dad,” he says.
It reminds me that everyone—the entire security team and all of the families—know that I’m on the worst terms with my father. He accepted every single tattoo, every piercing, every means of self-expression, but the day that I quit medicine, he looked right at me in front of these famous families, in front of the giant security team on a hot Labor Day vacation, and he said loudly and clearly, “You’re a disappointment.”
If I call him right now about medicine, there’s a chance he may hang up on me.
I nod to Maximoff and let him talk to my father. I stay during the conversation, but it lasts maybe three minutes, prescription ordered, and he hands back my phone.
“You’re in for the night?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Okay.” My ticket out of his townhouse has always been the information Price wanted. About the Camp-Away event. I feel like my time is up, and I have to board a train to an undesirable destination. I’d rather stay here, but duty calls. “I just need to know your plans for December’s Charity Camp-Away.”
Maximoff crosses his arms over his bare chest. “You can tell the security team that the plans are the same except for the entry process.”
I shift my weight. “What do you mean?”
“There won’t be hellishly expensive tickets to purchase in October. Instead, there’ll be a raffle.”
“A raffle,” I repeat flatly.
“My team projected we’d earn fifty million with the Camp-Away with either entry process—and I recognize the higher security risk with a raffle—but I want to give people who can’t afford the tickets an opportunity to experience the event.” He explains, “So for every one dollar donated, a person enters their name to the raffle. One week before the event in December, we’ll randomly pick the attendees out of the pool.”
I cement in place. “Basically, you’re opening your three-day camping trip to anyone who has a dollar.” The public. I raise a hand, my pulse pounding against my throat. “How many attendees will be chosen through the raffle?”
“All of them. So three-hundred.”
Three-hundred. Security is going to have to background check three-hundred people in seven days. And if anyone with mal-intent slips through the cracks, Maximoff will be put directly in harm’s way.
10
FARROW KEENE
Sweat dripping down my temples, I jab a red punching bag and finish my combination with a right hook and hard left kick. 4:23 a.m.
Not even five hours after I radioed security about the raffle, Akara called a mandatory and “emergency” Omega meeting at the Studio 9 gym.
See, I recognize the danger of the raffle, but if I can’t even convince Maximoff to let me drive his Audi, then I highly doubt anyone can convince him to alter a charity event that he’s poured months and months of work and thought into.
And I warned Maximoff that the entire security team would overreact about his Camp-Away changes. He just said, “I’ll speak to the Tri-Force and comply wherever necessary, but the raffle is staying.”
Not many people ever volunteer to speak to all three lead bodyguards at once. Price Kepler of Alpha, Akara Kitsuwon of Omega, and the bane of my career, Thatcher Moretti of Epsilon, are all at the peak of the security hierarchy.
The Tri-Force.
My gaze travels to the closed door; the silver plaque reads: office.
Maximoff has been in there with the Tri-Force for fifteen minutes already. The three leads think they can “further illuminate” the risks to him, but Moffy contemplates too much. Whatever they have to tell him, he’s definitely already considered.
In short, they’re wasting their time.
I peel off my black boxing gloves, my chest rising and falling heavily. Three rows of red boxing bags line the right side of the gym, where I stand. The left houses the boxing ring, racks of weights, and other gym equipment.
There are only five bodyguards in Omega. We’re all young compared to the other Forces, and that’s by design. The Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts hired us on to last a couple decades in this career, not just a couple years. Being closer in age to our clients, it’s more likely we’ll stick around for the long-haul.
While we wait for Akara to leave the office, the four of us squeeze in a workout, but we all slow around the twenty-minute mark.
Oscar tugs off his blue gloves, his damp, curly brown hair hanging over a bandana. “You guys hear that Luna pierced an ‘unmentionable’ place?”
I’m used to news traveling fast within the security team. Bodyguards gossip like family, but we never leak info to the public. Not even accidentally. Everyone’s too careful.
Quinn pauses his sit-ups on his punching bag. “What…like her…?” He gestures to his crotch.
I roll my eyes and unravel my black hand-wraps.
Donnelly tosses his towel over his shoulder. “Her clit? It’s not a big bad word.”
Oscar butts in, “Everyone lay off Quinn—alright, my little bro is young, impressionable, and still has his innocence and virtue; whereas the rest of us have lost our ever-loving minds.”