“Nothing to worry about,” I said, opening her message.
A rec filled the frame with her beautiful face illuminated by golden light. Her eyes were accentuated with the same blackpoints as her profile image, making them appear impossibly large and mysterious. Her lips, a softer shade of red today, looked invitingly plump and biteable.
“Yes, sir.” She winked through the rec as I drank in the sound of her voice, feminine, but with a sexy roughness to it, like she’d just woken up from a nap. The recording ended and I played it again, my cock heavy and too alert for this meeting as I focused in on the corner of her mouth curling in a dangerous little smirk.
“Fuck,” I muttered, typing fast.
Me: What a perfect little wife you’re going to be for me. You look beautiful, Aneah. I have some work to do now, but I’ll talk to you tonight. Be good.
Cora: I’ll try. ;)
Another notification came through, and I turned off my frame, dropping it into my pocket.
“What are you so happy about?” Zacal asked, scowling at my grin.
“Masoh’s here,” I said. “I’m ready to make him bleed.”
Zacal likely thought I was lying, but it was at least half the truth. I’d flirted with a beautiful female I meant to have as my mate, and now, violence. It was a satisfying day, and it wasn’t even lunchtime.
Masoh approached, his crew fanning out behind him. Smooth and sure as the tides, my team locked in on them.
“Masoh,” I said, striding forward to meet him. “I was worried about you.”
The smuggler’s shifty eyes darted behind me and back, noting Zacal’s presence. “The buyer was late.”
“Was he?” He wasn’t. Te’ve sent me a rec of the entire handoff, right on time, including a visual of the cache ofuntraceable credit markers with the full five hundred mill verified and accounted for before Masoh arrived. The smuggler didn’t know it yet, but he’d just handed his business over to one of Zacal’s many nephews. His mate’s sister’s son, smart and, more importantly, loyal to the family.
“Late, sloppy, and rude,” Masoh complained. “Took forever to offload the tech and hand over the cache.”
“You checked it?” I asked, still grinning from Cora’s teasing rec and the prospect of chaos to come.
Masoh squinted at me, unnerved by my good mood.He should be. “Of course,”he said, motioning for one of his soldiers to bring it forward.
Nerus, my second, dropped down from his position on the upper deck and took the cache. He didn’t take it inside the cabin like usual. No, today, we’d be doing a full verification in broad daylight. I had enough tech and crew running interference that it wouldn’t be a problem. For us. Gone were the days of trust between Masoh and my family. It was a shame he’d gotten greedy. He used to be a good business partner.
“That’s risky, don’t you think?” he forced a laugh as Nerus went to one knee and opened the cache, reading every marker through a nexus frame, one by one.
“It would be a risk not to check it,” I said, still grinning, “after your last delivery came up short.”
“This is the first I’m hearing about it,” Masoh blustered. “I’ve never been short before.”
“Funny,” I said. “I had our accountant look back, and it seems like ithashappened before. For weeks, in fact.”
“Your accountant must be stealing from you,” Masoh said. “He’s trying to pin it on me, but he’s the one?—”
“I doubt it,” I said, as Nerus grunted and tossed aside a marker that came back flagged. “We own the elder care complexwhere his parents live. The accountant knows his place. The problem is with our smuggler.”
Nerus discarded more markers, one after the other, the pile of useless credits growing rapidly. I shook my head as I moved closer to Masoh. One of his crew took a step forward, and before his foot met the deck, a phaser shot through his skull, leaving a smoking hole. The male collapsed in a heap.
Lifting my brows, I looked around at all of them. “You’re in Covara. Ahlon soldiers have had you in their sights since you arrived.” I put an arm around Masoh’s shoulders, pulling him into my embrace. “You made a mistake, friend. You took more than your share.”
“Yiri, I?—”
“Shh, shh.” I hugged him closer, speaking in his ear. “You knew what would happen.”
“Let my crew go,” he said, purple eyes wide.
“They’re free to go,” I said graciously, “as soon as we’re done here.”
