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“So yeah, this room is definitely under construction at the moment.” Not only was the carpet ripped up, but Nicholas had cut away a section of drywall to remove the insulation that had also gotten soaked from the roof leak.
Distantly, she could hear Ramona meowing from downstairs, in the angry way she got when she was distressed. Had she seen another cat or dog out the window again? Sloane should have remembered to close the curtains whenever she had a client meeting.
A thump from downstairs had her frowning, though.
“Sorry to cut this short, Saint,” she headed back towards the stairs, trying not to let concern color her voice, “but it’s time to feed my cat.”
What had Ramona gotten into this time? You’d think giving her all those kitty climbing trees would satisfy her, but no, there was no surface Ramona considered off limits, no jump she thought was too far.
And that damn cat had used up her nine lives about five lives ago.
But when Sloane got to the stairs, ready to sit down and head down them in a similar humiliating fashion to the way she’d gotten up them, she stopped in her tracks and screamed.
Because at the bottom of the staircase stood a man.
And it wasn’t Nicholas or even Tom.
It was a stranger. In her house. Holding a phone and looking up at her like a cat who’d just gotten the cream.
“Time to tell me your real name, darling. Because I know it’s not Chrissy.”
Chapter 7
Nicholas
Nicholas was taking a nap when all his alarms went off. Buzzer after buzzer—his phone, his laptop, his watch—all of them beeping and blaring that Sloane’s perimeter had been breached.
Nicholas jumped up from his couch, blinking blearily and reaching for his laptop.
He typed in his password and clicked into Sloane’s camera feeds. It hadn’t been difficult to patch into the feeds while he’d been doing work on the house.
And when he saw Olezka Tereshchenko creeping through her front living, the front door still open behind him—
“Fuck!” he yelled, all but tripping over his own feet as he jumped up, reaching for his shoes and his go bag at the same time.
He grabbed his phone and dialed her cell but she didn’t pick up.
Why the fuck had he been napping? Sloane hadn’t been live-streaming, for one thing, and he tried to protect her privacy and not watch all the time. He didn’t like aligning himself with the pervs who watched her Chrissy persona as much as they could get.
That wasn’t her, not the real her anyway. He got to know Sloane, not the pin-up sex doll she pretended to be for all the horny fucks who jacked off to her on-screen. Sure, there had been the first night when he’d logged on, but apart from that, he tried to respect her and only check in occasionally. Just to make sure she was okay.
Which she most definitely was not right now.
Nicholas was out the door in less than a minute, his car peeling off down the street the next.
That fuckhead better not be hurting her. Nicholas would rip his balls off if he hurt one hair on her head, regardless of the fact that his own very scary boss would not be happy about the fact. Nicholas had very clear orders. Olezka Tereshchenko was to be delivered very much alive and intact.
Unfortunately.
The five minutes it took to get to Sloane’s house felt like hours. He’d turned on his phone’s feed and saw the fucker head upstairs. Had he gone up there to hide out? Sloane never went up there. But when he panned through the rest of the house’s cameras, he didn’t see her in any of the other rooms.
Fuck, she had to be upstairs! There weren’t any cameras up there. What was happening? What was that fucking bastard doing to her?
Nicholas pulled into her driveway, jammed the car into park and unzipped his bag. Everything in him wanted to race into the house guns blazing. Adrenaline was pumping through his blood. His ears were ringing with it.
But he forced himself to slow down, to stop and take a breath.
He had to be smart. He didn’t know much about Olezka. The family was famously private and shut-away. They always sent lieutenants to do their dirty work. It was what had made this such a golden opportunity in the first place. One of the Tereshchenko’s finally had a weakness they could exploit.
But Nicholas couldn’t afford to fuck this up, and not just because his own boss wouldn’t hesitate to string him up by his dick if he failed.
Sloane was in there, and she needed his help. She needed him.
No one had needed him in a very long time. The feeling was foreign but not unwelcome. Playing house with Sloane these past few weeks had been like something out of another life.
