Page 60 of His Forbidden Alliance

I opened my contacts and tapped on X’s number.

“Rafael, what can I do for you?”

“I didn’t listen to your advice.” I wasn’t going to be able to ask for what I needed if I didn’t confess to working with Zach, so I decided to get that out of the way first.

X chuckled. “I never thought you would.”

“You thought I’d get involved with Zach?”

“Ah. I see you got his name out of him.”

“I know I was supposed to stay away, but⁠—”

“You were too charming, too seductive?”

“Too something.” Stupid, probably.

“Do you want my blessing?”

I huffed. “No, but I do have some news, and I need some advice.”

“Advice from me and not your family?”

“I’m not ready to introduce Zach to my family.”

“Yeah, that’s a big step.”

Shit. I realized how that sounded. “Not because we’re in a relationship or something.” Zach’s eyebrows rose, and I turned away from him as heat rose in my face.

“So it’s casual?” X asked. “That’s good. It means you’ll be fine when you wrap this up and he leaves.”

No, I would not. “That’s not important right now. We found the mole Ivanov planted in the casino, or at least we’re as sure as we can be.”

“Impressive. Are you saying you’d like me to check your work?”

“I’d feel better if you did.”

“Send me what you’ve got, and I’ll have an answer for you within an hour.”

X didn’t play around. I was somewhat convinced he was magic, or his hacker husband was. I held out my hand to Zach, and he handed me the zip drive where he’d saved all the information. I plugged it in and sent X the relevant files, which Zach had encoded. “The info should be in your drive.”

I heard a few keyboard clicks. “Got it. What else?”

“We need a plan for how to proceed once we interrogate this man. We’re going to need to bring more people in and⁠—”

“You don’t have to tell your family about Zach. You could plan everything with them and leave Zach out of it.”

“No. I… We have a deal.”

“Interesting. Very interesting.”

“Are you fucking with me?”

He chuckled. “Maybe a little.”

“I want you there to back me up. I don’t want there to be any chance that they cut him out.”

“No.”