“That’s changed?”
Why did I blush so much around him, dammit?
“I wouldn’t be here if my preference hadn’t shifted.” I yelped then giggled when he smushed me up against his chest. “So, the house?”
“We took it by force.”
I felt my eyes bug out. “What, like it was a castle under siege? Is your life a PS5 game?”
He chuckled at my bewilderment. “Yes. But it’s more likeDestinyorBorderlands?—”
“What are they?”
“Looter shooter games.”
“Ah.”
The curve of his lips deepened. “We retook our territory and Fieri’s widow signed it over to us after... Well, you don’t need to know what.”
“Ugh, sure I do.”
“We took her hostage. Just for a little while.”
“Jeez!”
“Safer with us than that fucker of an ex, Kitty. That bastard was a rapist fuck. We didn’t hurt her aside from an unexpected house arrest.”
“How does that work with the Office of the City Register?”
“It’s cute that you think that would be an issue for us.” When I made an explosively exasperated noise, hepracticallychirped, “A lot of the questionable design choices are her fault, not mine. I include the gold toilet in my bathroom.”
Though I burst out laughing, I scoped out the mansion that made a Versace palace look low-key. “You haven’t changed it?”
He hitched a shoulder. “I changed the basement and my room.”
“Into?”
“The basement became my lab and I expanded my quarters.”
He had ‘quarters.’
BrooklynDownton Abbey, here we come.
I tugged on his hand. “Can I see your lab?”
Sliding his sunglasses into his jacket pocket, he grimaced. “If you wish.”
I could tell he didn’t want to go down there, but I didn’t put it off. I couldn’t. I had to understand what I’d be butting heads with.
The situation was both better and worse than I imagined.
The lab had three people working in it at this time of the night. That meant, I assumed, some kind of a team rotation was in play—on a 24/7 basis? If I hadn’t known he was rich-rich, proof just smacked me right in the face.
His staff nodded at Stan in greeting before going about their tasks. Competently.
I recognized some of the lab work they were undertaking and found a smidgen of comfort in his team consisting of accredited professionals—one check in the + column.
But what went in the - column was the fact that none of them had managed to stop him from testing the drugs on himself.
