“Left through the service entrance about ten minutes ago.”
“Then I’m going to find him. And I’m going to make sure he understands that threatening you was the biggest mistake of his life.”
“Ares—” She grabbed my arm. “Don’t do anything that gets you arrested. We need you at the gala. At the hearing.”
“I’m not going to kill him.” Though the temptation was strong. “But I am going to make sure he can’t hurt you again. Trust me?”
She searched my face for a long moment, then nodded. “I trust you.”
“Good.” I kissed her forehead. “Now go make your decisions. Show Frank that brilliant mind of yours. And stop worrying about Marcus. He’s my problem now.”
“What are you going to do?”
“What I should have done days ago.” I headed for the door. “Find out exactly who Marcus Talbor really is.”
I wanted to kill him.
The impulse was visceral, immediate, and entirely inappropriate for a man who prided himself on control. But after leaving Tashi in that conference room—still shaking from Marcus’s threats—every protective instinct I’d spent forty-two years honing screamed for violence.
“Replay it,” I told Neville, who sat at his bank of monitors in the security command center.
“Ares, you’ve watched it four times?—”
“Replay it.”
Neville sighed but complied. The footage started again: Tashi rounding the corner, Marcus stepping into her path, the conversation I couldn’t hear but could read in every line of her body—shock, then anger, then that steel-spined determination that made me love her even more.
“He’s threatening her,” I said.
“Obviously.” Neville paused the footage on Marcus’s face—that calculated smile that made me want to rearrange his features. “The question is what we do about it. Legal channels? Escort him off the property?” He glanced at me. “Do you want to handle this personally?”
“All of the above.” My phone rang and I saw it was from our attorney.
“Kolykos.”
“Ares, Wilson Pryce.”
“Yeah, Wil.”
“This lawsuit is retaliatory garbage designed to cause maximum PR damage before your hearing.”
“I’ll move to sever what’s left of his access.”
“You can’t—and you know it. That’s why you didn’t move when he first made his allegations. Ares, this suit is just a way to make his allegations more public.”
“How so?”
“Lawsuits are public information.”
“It’s more. This is psychological warfare.”
“Look. Let me talk to some people. I may be able to slow-track the suit in the system, so it doesn’t torpedo you at the Gaming Commission hearing.”
That doesn’t sound like much, and doesn’t seem capable of stopping the steamroller that Talbor set into motion.
“Thanks, Wil.”
I turned to Neville, who was on the phone. I had him checking everything on the asshole—employment records, background check, security footage, digital footprint.
