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Archer’s eyes narrowed into thin slits. “You just want to keep him busy playing with toys while you find out where the angels stashed that shipment.”
“Perhaps.” I leaned back in my chair with a smirk. “Let him experiment with some new methods on them before we find it.”
“You know their prince is going to demand a meeting if we raid that warehouse before the next trade talk,” he mumbled.
I cocked my head to the side. “So reschedule the talk. Move it up to tomorrow night.”
It only took a moment for him to catch my intention. His amethyst eyes lit up and the same smirk spread across his face. “You want to blindside them about the guns during the meeting.”
I locked gazes with him as my own lips twitched. “Bingo.”
“You’re a sadistic man, boss.”
Snorting, I grabbed the woman’s original photograph and studied the angelic face that was oblivious of me. It wasn’t much of a kick to the balls where this group was concerned. Losing money was certainly infuriating, but it wouldn’t be the cause of my kingdom’s collapse. That didn’t mean I would let it continue occurring under my watchful eye, so I would accept Anita’s greedy offering. I would take each and every single one of them to be an example to the rest of humankind. Even this little bird with different names.
Perhaps I would take this one for myself. A little torture at my own hands seemed necessary, and I thirsted for some excitement to jumpstart this dead heart of mine.
Would Quinn Rossi be the one thing I needed to accomplish that?
QUINN/ASPEN
“Did you sleep here last night?”
It didn’t take much more than Beau’s baffled voice to break me from the intoxicating haze of watching all the pretty white numbers warp into others in front of my eyes. As soon as I allowed my gaze to flicker to him as he stood on the other side of my desk, every part of my body hated me for it. Half of my body was stiff from standing perfectly still while my eyes ached from all the strain. Hell, they were so dry that it made the sensation a thousand times worse.
That didn’t mean this man was any less appealing. He could’ve been standing there butt naked with every part of that body for the world to see. Clearly, I was so sexually deprived that any male could come in my general vicinity and I would get horny. That didn’t mean a goddamn thing that I wanted to jump his bones when he wouldn’t come near me if he knew the truth.
Beau arched a bushy eyebrow while we studied each other. “I saw the bundle of sheets in the storage room, Blaire. I’m a little concerned. Pavement is uncomfortable as hell. Why didn’t you ask Theo to use his couch?”
“What, so I could give the others the impression that I’m sleeping with the bosses? It’s bad enough that they think I opened my legs just to convince them to let me join the hack tonight.” Scoffing, I returned my attention to the computer screen. “Besides, I couldn’t get into the house last night before a patrol was heading for my street. The bitch locked me out.”
The concern on his face quickly shifted into shock. “Anita locked the doors? What the hell crawled up her ass and died?” He reached out to swing the monitor his way.
I was quick to snap it back toward me. “What hasn’t died up there? It stinks to hell and we are never in the same room for long.”
Beau released a weary sigh and leaned against the edge of the table. “Doesn’t your grandmother know how dangerous it is to be caught outside after curfew? My next door neighbor locked himself out of the house. The patrol happened to be passing by. They tranquilized his ass. His wife says she hasn’t seen him in days.”
I don’t think he’s coming back, either. A wave of rage leaked into my veins. Every finger that struck a key came down harder. I didn’t realize how noticeable it was until my coworker’s weary brown-eyed gaze fell to the keyboard and those lips pressed into a thin line. Delighted chills trickled down my spine when my mind shifted gears, wondering what he could do with that mouth.
Fuck… I really need to get laid.
I pulled back with a weary sigh. “Are you really that surprised about Anita, Beau? You know how she is. The woman can’t stand me and this isn’t the first time she’s tried to do it. I had to completely avoid going outside near curfew. She just happened to catch me on a day when my guard was down.” I closed my eyes and rubbed at them. “It’s my own fault.”
An annoyed snort escaped him. He came around the desk and seized me by the shoulders to turn me towards him. “It’s no one’s fault aside from Anita’s. She’s your grandmother. Just because she doesn’t like you doesn’t mean she should betray her own blood like that. You’re both human. We’ve gotta stick together if we want to survive the demon conquest. That reason right there should be enough to convince her to protect you, not leave you out to dry.”
For a moment, his words left me stumped. My grand — oh, right…This was the downside to converting to my second false identity in the last century. The truth of how we were related didn’t matter. Anita looked old enough to be a young grandmother for me. It certainly would have made it easier to alter my papers if she’d been willing to take on that role.
The fact that I didn’t age only solidified her hatred towards me. I was a bastard child, the spawn she had never wanted. She never let me hear the end of it — or the way I had almost killed her just by being born forty years ago. It was the main thing that kept that fiery rage against me burning with a neverending heat.
Only the gods knew that I wasn’t aging like everyone else. My survival depended on these identities to hold up so that no one else would uncover my secret. I had to take on a new one every so often just to keep myself under the radar.
The most Anita had been willing to do was accept the role of a distant aunt. As far as she was concerned, I had been brought over with my blood parents from Italy. Only they’d left as soon as I reached the legal age to take care of myself. It was far from the truth — not that she’d admit she was the one that had given birth to me.
She didn’t give a damn if the story I spun matched up with what was on paper.
“Blaire?” Beau snapped his fingers in front of my face until I finally pulled back from him with an annoyed noise. He didn’t try to keep me within his reach. “Are you sure you’re up for hacking today? You’ve got bags under your eyes that anyone could see from a mile away.”
I slapped his hands away. “I’m fine. Besides, it’s Aspen now. What’s the point of faking my death to achieve a new identity if you’re going to be the one to ruin it all for me?” It was harsher than I had intended and he flinched. Guilt immediately took dominance out of all the waging emotions within me. I reached back to grab my chair, sinking down into it with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Beau. I’m just tired.”
