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Vince holds up his hand. “Not now, Harlow. We need to get inside.” He starts punching numbers into an elaborate pin pad next to the door. Then another pad opens up from the wall with a hand shape on it, which he palms. Suddenly, the door clicks open, and he grabs me, drags me inside, then pushes the door shut quickly behind us. As we walk into the building, I can see elevators out of the corner of my eyes, but Vince holds tight to my hand, and pulls me toward the stairs .
“Please tell me you’re on the second floor…” I mutter .
“We’ll just go up a few flights and get the elevators there. I don’t want to deal with the lobby. Just in case .”
I groan as we slip into a stairwell, and start climbing flight after flight, until I’m sure we’re at the top of the building based on the burning in my calf muscles. Instead, we stop in front of a door marked “Fourth Floor .”
“God, I need to work out more,” I say as Vince opens the door with a laugh. He checks the hallways, then pulls me after him again as we run to the elevator. Once we’re inside, I’m about to renew my request for answers about his amazing self-defense abilities, when out of nowhere he pins me up against the wall of the elevator. His strong, muscled chest presses into me, his scent clouds my judgement. I know I should push him away, but every time he gets close to me like this, my brain turns to mush .
“Vince… this probably isn’t the time…” I try to protest .
“If not now, when?” he answers with a grin, then leans in and kisses me, slowly, patiently, almost painfully. I feel my knees start to go weak, and he anticipates it, his arm sliding behind my back as he holds me up and stops me from falling to the floor in a heap. Just when I think I’m about to lose my mind entirely, the elevator door dings and opens, and Vince pulls away as if nothing ever happened. I expect another round of peeking around corners and creeping down halls, but I realize that the doors have opened to what is essentially one huge open office space that takes up the entire top floor of the building .
And Vince was right. The office has been ransacked .
The furniture is all flipped over, and there are tan files and papers scattered everywhere. Vince sighs .
“I am not looking forward to cleaning all of this up .”
I nudge a clump of papers that are at my feet. “It might be easier to just move and sell the place as is .”
He chuckles. “Unfortunately, most of this is case work my father left behind. I can shred the majority of it eventually, but I have to make sure it’s nothing important first. There is months of work left here. And those assholes just added to it. Anyway, the reality is they wasted their time. They never would have found anything they were looking for. Speaking of …”
Vince walks over to the far end of the office, where an antique armchair is flipped over on top of a vintage rug. He lifts up the chair, then gently sets it down on the floor, before rolling up the rug. Underneath, there is a floor safe, with a lock system as elaborate as the one on the door outside. Vince squats down and sets about unlocking it, using a complex code, and then what seems to be a specific series of fingerprints. I can’t help but chuckle .
“What’s next? Are you going to stick your…” But I cut myself off, because I start giggling at the image of him with his pants down, unlocking the safe with his dick, and can’t stop. Vince shakes his head
with a smile .
“You laugh, but that’s an option the security company offers. It’s just a lot harder to change the system to allow for new users when you use it .”
I’m still chuckling when Vince snaps the handle on the safe, reaches inside, and pulls out .22 Magnum, cocks it, then tucks it into his belt. Next, he takes out a tan pistol like nothing I have ever seen before, and puts it in his inside coat pocket. The guns are followed by huge handfuls of cash that he folds up and slides into his other coat pockets. Finally, he starts hiding a series of tactical knives in his exterior pockets, and any trace of amusement I was feeling completely disappears .
“Okay, enough of this horseshit. Who are you, Vincent Loretto? I’m not taking another step until you tell me exactly what the hell is going on and why you look like an action movie character right now .”
Vince looks up at me with a mischievous grin, and while it softens me a little, it doesn’t change the fact that I am completely stressed out and beginning to think there is little chance that I might not be in the presence of a trained killer. Vince stands up from the floor, then crosses over to the desk and leans against it. He looks so strong, and handsome, I almost forget for a minute that he’s terrifying. This is going to be a problem , I think as he runs his hands through his hair .
“It’s not quite as nefarious as I’m sure you’re spinning it to be in that wild imagination of yours, Harlow. When I said I’d never killed people for the mob, that was true. But I have killed people before. I was a tactical leader of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command, or the Marine Raiders. Specifically, I was in the Unconventional Warfare unit .”
My mind is spinning. “The what? Raiders? Dear God… What is unconventional warfare ?”
He doesn’t look up from the floor. “It’s complicated. But basically we assist in situations of conflict by means other than traditional ‘boots on the ground’ kind of stuff. Covert subversion kind of stuff. I was an…” He mumbles a word under his breath that I can’t make out .
“Speak up, Vince. I can’t understand you when you mutter .”
“An assassin,” he says clearly this time. “I was a trained assassin for the government. I joined the Marines right out of high school, and within a year, they’d transferred me to the Raiders. I rose through the ranks quickly, but the burnout rate on people in our field is high, so I left after a couple of years. The military paid for me to go to college, then law school. And here I am .”
I shake my head, baffled. “So, what? You’re an entertainment contracts attorney who can kill a guy with his little finger? That’s insane, Vince. That doesn’t sound real. It sounds like something out of a movie .”
Vince laughs. “Tell me about it. I never expected to be living the life I am. In fact, I joined the military specifically to reject the kind of life my father lived. And yet, here I am. Anyway, can we dispense with the biography for now and move on to more important things before Adelardi’s thugs come back ?”
I nod, and cross over to the desk where Vince is leaning, then turn his desktop computer back upright. Thank goodness, the monitor doesn’t seem to be broken, and they weren’t smart enough to steal the hard drive. Vince rolls his desk chair over and takes the USB off his neck, then plugs it into the computer. It takes a moment as the computer seems to adjust to being functional again, but eventually, the screen lights up with spreadsheets, scans of handwritten lists, and shipping dossiers. Vince gets up from the chair so I can sit down and start scanning the information in front of us .
First I go through the contact list, and I don’t recognize anything off the bat. Then I start clicking through the notes, one by one, but nothing looks directly relevant, though I’m sure some of the people in our department would know better than I would. Just as I’m about to give up in frustration, I come across a hand-scrawled note, and my stomach drops .
8pm meeting with Mule at the Ivy. Bring the payment .
I get up from the chair and cross over to the window, unable to speak or process what I’ve just seen. Vince leans over to read the note himself, then turns to me .
