“I say it because I enjoy keeping Kade out of jail.” Baxter’s voice flattens further. “Which remains an active hobby against my will.”
I end the call before he can find a new insult and sit back in my chair. My phone stays in my hand, Emrys’ number three taps away. I can see the message I want to send, the call I want to make, the sound of his voice when he answers.
Sloane watches me, though it’s Dana who sighs first. “Oh, you’re gone bad.”
My eyes lift. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Gone bad. Rotted from the inside. Completely compromised.” She points her pen at my phone. “You’ve checked that thing twelve times in twenty minutes, and half of those were before Baxter called.”
Sloane folds his hands on the table, face almost solemn. “So when does the courtship start, and does this include the hot detective?”
My brows furrow with confusion. “What the fuck?”
“He was in here yesterday, Kade.” Sloane’s mouth barely moves, but his eyes are amused. “You might be emotionally stunted, but your scent isn’t. Neither are the frustrated growls you start doing every time your phone lights up.”
Dana lifts her coffee. “For the record, I support the Omega and the hot detective. I have concerns about your communication skills, but I’m choosing optimism because the alternative is watching you stare through walls for the next month.”
A laugh gets out of me before I can stop it. It feels strange in my chest after days of nothing fitting right there. “There’s still work to do.”
“Does this mean we get to call it an early day?” Dana asks.
“No.” I set my phone facedown and push the tablet toward the center of the table. “He won’t be home until at least four, and I need something to get lost in until then.”
Sloane’s amusement softens just enough to be dangerous. “There he is.”
Before I can tell him to shut up, Marco appears in the doorway with a tablet in one hand and the expression of a man who knows he is interrupting but has decided survival depends on it.
“We got another request this morning,” he says. “Same family of shell companies. Different front name.”
Dana’s coffee stops halfway to her mouth. “Please tell me you declined before coming in here.”
“I declined the meeting request, yes. I also dug through what Dana gave me yesterday.” Marco steps in and sets another tablet on the table. “It came through as a private consultation. Same general ask hidden under risk review and client-flow evaluation.”
Sloane leans forward. “What were they offering?”
I look at Marco. “Last time they were offering nearly fifty thousand for the contract.”
“Two hundred and fifty.” Marco swipes to the next screen. “It’s been moved around through three accounts, but that’s the number attached to the new proposal.”
I stare at the figure on the screen, and for a second the need to call Emrys gets buried under something colder. “What the fuck are they trying to hide that they would pay a security company a quarter of a million dollars?”
“That’s not the only thing.” Marco taps the screen again. “Not a smoking gun, but the routing chain overlaps with a large donation processed through the Vesper Hotel two weeks ago. Different account name, same intermediary, same transfer window. Could be a coincidence, but it’s a weird coincidence.”
Dana sets her coffee down. “That’s not nothing.”
“No,” I say. “It’s not. Preserve everything. Original request, headers, payment language, routing trail, the Vesper overlap, all of it. I need to make sure we have everything laid out.”
Marco nods. “Already started the export.”
Sloane grumbles under his breath. “Fuck. Another late night.”
“No overtime tonight.” I look at him, then Dana, then Marco before glaring back at Sloane. “We all have places to be, and I do not want your Beta screaming at me through the phone again.”
Sloane grins. “She’s a dream, and you know it.”
“She isyourdream.”
Dana snorts into her coffee. Marco makes the mistake of smiling before he looks back down at his tablet. For another fourhours, I keep my hands occupied, giving my mind a place to go that isn’t the shape of Emrys’s mouth around my name or the memory of him trying to defend me with blood on his lips.
