Gideon:So, the thing is, Arabella lost a bet with me, so she has to agree to anything I want. This is my last chance to show her how I feel, but I don’t know what to do.
Celeste:Hmmm, the thing about grand gestures is, they can be hot in fiction, but in real life, they come off a bit creepy.
Winnie:Like that statue thing.
Gideon:I now see how I went wrong there.
Gideon:What do you suggest?
Winnie:Instead of horrifying her with more sacrilege to the art of sculpture, maybe you should apologise for whatever it was you did that made her hate you with the fire of a thousand suns.
Celeste:In a good second-chance romance, the heroine usually falls for the hero when he does something vulnerable, when he shows her a piece of his heart that no one else gets to see.
Gideon:But what if the hero is rakishly good-looking but not very good at being vulnerable? What if he spent several decades grieving this woman he thought he lost forever and is a TINY BIT terrified that he’ll mess everything up?
Komal:Even better.
Maisie:If he cries, that will seal the deal.
Gideon:I’m starting to think that none of you have any idea what you’re talking about.
36
Arabella
Gideon:Lovely Arabella, I’ve decided on how I’ll make you suffer for losing our bet. You must endure a date with me. Ha, am I evil? YES I AM. Meet me at the elevators to Sanctus Club tomorrow night at the stroke of midnight. Wear something devastating.
“EVERYTHING LOOKS IN ORDER.” Morrie stands up from where he’s been inspecting my home security system and taps the screen of his tablet. “I’ll run some checks on the camera feeds, but after I install my additional measures, no one will be able to get within a foot of this house without your express approval. Plus, I’ve taken the liberty of installing a booby trap in your garden. It’s simple, but should be effective against even the most bloodthirsty vampire.”
“Moriarty, you are a wonder.” I shake his hand while extending my other arm so Cleo VII can slither into her favourite position, draped over my shoulders like a scarf. “And just what exciting trap have you installed?”
“For legal reasons, it’s better you don’t know. All I’ll tell you is not to stand in your fountain. Now…” He cracks his knuckles. “Onto that other little task you wanted me to tackle.”
For several minutes, he taps away on his tablet. The conceited smirk tugs downward as he frowns at the screen.
“Hmmm.”
“What?” Cleo VII and I look over his shoulder but I don’t understand what I’m seeing.
“I’m inside the Sanctus network, at the deepest possible permission level. None of the members’ personal files are here.”
“Someone deleted them?”
“No. It means they’re not stored on this system. Members are identified by numbers only, which seems like a complicated way to manage a property development. Hmmmm. A company might do that as an extreme safeguard in case someone hacks their system. That way, hackers wouldn’t get access to sensitive personal information.”
Like intimate details about the vampiric lives of their members.
“But there have to be files, right? Gideon couldn’t have built all this without them. Are they on paper?”
“Doubtful. More likely they’re on a completely external system – a server or a hard drive that’s not connected to the Sanctus network. If you found the hard drive, I could poke around in it for you.”
I think back to something Gideon said when I deigned to accept him as a client. He has a safe in his apartment where he keeps the “heart of Sanctus”.
He must mean the hard drive.
Even with my powers of persuasion, I’ll never get Gideon to hand it over. His whole reputation is built on keeping the secrets of Sanctus members, and I’m coming to learn that when it comes to Sanctus, Gideon is a man of his word.
Which means that I need to find a way to steal it.
