Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 147415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 737(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 491(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 147415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 737(@200wpm)___ 590(@250wpm)___ 491(@300wpm)
Crap.
Crap crap crap crap crap.
Just twenty-four hours ago, I thought there was nothing worse than the fact that I might never see him again.
Now, it’s staring me in the face.
How the hell do I make him believe me?
13
A Little Malicious (Shepherd)
This job.
This fucking job.
Hectic mornings always feel like slamming back into reality from a fifty-foot drop, but this isn’t just reality now. It’s a concrete fucking floor.
I’m so livid I might burst a blood vessel.
If I could, I would fire every single person in this building.
As for Destiny—
No. Don’t think about her.
I can’t.
The second I dwell on what she’s done to me, I’m going to come unraveled, and all of Hannah’s protests that I need to keep quiet will be for nothing.
I bite my tongue and close my eyes.
Count to ten.
Resist the urge to hurl something through the massive windows, the only thing between my problems and a cold, indifferent city going about its business, blissfully detached from my shit show of a life.
Seattle looks damnably beautiful in the morning light, draped in silver and gold.
I hate it.
And Hannah Cho stands by silently.
Aside from suggesting in the strongest possible terms I should keep my yap shut, she hasn’t said a word.
I glance at her and try not to yell at the video playing on her tablet.
It’s déjà vu all over again.
The same thing we went through with Vanessa.
The same bullshit we were trying to stop.
But that was child’s play compared to this.
I never fucked Vanessa Dumas, for one.
But Destiny? That little hellcat got under my skin and made me forget the rules.
Now, I’m paying the price for my little sin trip to Eden.
I’m the only one to blame.
Seduced by another pretty face until I believed she was authentic.
All because a forty-two-year-old man with cigarette burns on his past let his cock do the thinking.
Pathetic.
The video comes to an end as the girl in the overdone makeup and cat ears or whatever the hell it is on her head sweeps a hand at the camera and tells her viewers to follow.
Who knew the harbinger of my doom would look so ridiculous?
Whatever vile shit she’s spewing for views is working.
The video already has six hundred thousand views and I know those view counts lag. Millions of followers, mostly kids who’ve probably never heard of me before logging on to watch my real-time detonation.
Pure bullshit.
I’m deathly quiet, but my anger is a wordless force that almost makes Miss Cho flinch from across the room. She closes the video and looks at me again.
Still steady. Still calm. Still worried and trying so hard not to show it.
“Sir?”
“Obviously, Destiny Lancaster is off the program. Scrap the whole goddamned thing,” I bite off. “Once I calm down, I’ll decide if this is worth a lawsuit.”
She doesn’t say anything.
Unusual.
“Also, I’m going to have words with her. It can’t be avoided. Send her up the second she steps foot anywhere on my property—if she deigns to show her face.”
Maybe she won’t. That would almost be better.
Maybe she knows I’ll have a shit fit worthy of a Greek tragedy, so she’ll stay home and reap the consequences of her newfound celebrity status there.
Hannah purses her lips.
A clear sign that she disagrees with my strategy.
I shouldn’t care, but dammit, I do.
Silence is Hannah Cho’s greatest weapon. She wields it in meetings like an assassin’s sword. Unshakable, implacable calm whenever she disagrees.
I grind my teeth together and pace the floor a few times, waiting for her to speak.
Of course, she doesn’t.
“Well?” I clip. “You obviously have something to say, so spit it out, Miss Cho.”
She flicks her gaze up to mine, her eyes dark and cool. “Mr. Foster, I don’t believe Miss Lancaster is behind this hatchet job.”
I squint at her.
“You don’t...? How the hell can you possibly think that?” I snort. “I see it now. She suggested the otter trip so she could get us alone in a remote place. How she hacked my own goddamned drone, I can’t begin to fathom, but I’m going to find out. You have to admit, it’s deviously logical after Miss Dumas kicked off open season on my reputation.”
Devious because it worked.
I fucking let it, as easily as dropping a rotisserie chicken in a piranha tank.
I let my little head dictate my destiny.
She showed enough skin and too many angelic smiles, and I came running like a scraggly coyote with a bone.
“You’re certain it was ours? There wasn’t another drone following you?” she asks.
My jaw snaps together. “Certainly not. Do you really think I’d have gone ahead with it if I thought we were being followed? Besides, we’re the only private entity with a completely silent drone. Unless Destiny is with Naval Intelligence or an undercover alphabet agency, she couldn’t have dreamed of getting access to the lab.”
“No, sir. That’s my point.” She brings up pictures of the shots in Meghan’s video and holds up her tablet. They’re probably all over the internet by now. “But did you notice how close these shots are? If there was a drone following you, I’m sure you’d have noticed.”