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“This is about your online woman? Are you fucking serious right now?” Blaze sneered, rising to his full height, his hands in fists at his sides. “You better explain right now, brother, because I am about out of patience.”
“You know that I’ve been emailing back and forth with a woman I’d named Swan—she without a name. Well, things got serious between us pretty quickly, because…well, there was something about her that drew me in. I wanted her. I wanted to meet her, to bring her into my life and take things to the next level.”
Sly sneered. “That’s some Dateline Special shit, AJ.”
AJ couldn’t help it, he cracked a smile. “That’s exactly what Sally said.”
Sly snorted, cracking is own grin. “I bet.” His grin fell away as he asked, “So, Denise showed up, right? Saying she was Swan?”
“She did. The thing is, right from the beginning, I had my suspicions. The woman in the emails and the woman presented to me, didn’t feel like the same person, but what proof did I have that Denise wasn’t who she said she was? I couldn’t help but wonder if Swan really was Denise and I was just being picky.”
“We all know Denise, man. If you’re bitch alarm was going off, it should have been enough to nip that shit in the bud,” Blaze pointed out unhelpfully.
“I know that when I first realized she was claiming to be Swan, my first instinct was to run like hell. But then what happened if I ran, and I ruined my shot at having the woman I’d been falling for?” Fuck, he sounded like a pussy-whipped shit stain, but there was nothing for it. He needed to be open and honest with the two men he trusted the most in the world.
“So, you’re saying that she isn’t Swan, that she was lying—wait!” Sly barked, slapping his forehead and reeling. “You mean Maeve—my Maeve—is your Swan?”
Possessiveness jerked to the surface as he grumbled, “My Maeve, my Swan.”
Chuckling, Sly raised his hands placatingly. “All yours, man.”
“If Maeve is Swan, why didn’t she stop Denise when she came into the office hanging all over you, claiming to be her?”
“My guess is that, at first, Maeve was shocked. Wouldn’t you be if someone came in claiming to be you right in front of you?”
Both Sly and Blaze nodded thoughtfully.
“After that, I’m assuming, is when Denise first threatened Maeve to keep her quiet. That first week, Maeve was practically a shadow of herself, super skittish, looking like she was sicker than a dog but still coming in to work.”
“I noticed that, too. I just assumed she was sick, but that she was so dedicated to her work, she didn’t take the time off.” Blaze cursed. “I should have paid more attention. I should have checked on her, made sure she was okay.”
“She would have just lied to you. Denise’s threats are next level, man.” Sly sat down at AJ’s table and pulled the laptop toward him to click through the email again. “What the hell was Denise thinking? This email, if Maeve wanted to take this to the cops, Denise would be in deep shit.”
AJ, shaking his head, replied, “Denise is an IT genius. She could make all of this shit go away before the cops could even pull their heads out of their asses, and, by then, she’d have implemented enough of her plan to hurt Maeve for crossing her.”
“Can’t you lock her out of the White systems?” Blaze asked.
“She built most of those systems, she can backdoor whatever we put in place, and fuck us hard.”
“So, we just let Maeve live under threat while Denise gets to ride into the sunset with AJ?”
AJ growled, hatred fueling his fire. “That woman will never touch me again. If I had my way, she’d already be buried up to her neck, just before high tide. Thank God I never fucked her. I’d have to cut off my dick and burn it.”
All three of them hissed, wincing.
“I know a guy,” Sly interjected, leaning back in his seat with a hard look on his face. “I’ve been trying to recruit him for White for years now. He currently works for a private security firm in Vegas running their cyber security department, tracing black hat motherfuckers, and digging up shit on terrorists. The man is a genius with the keyboard, but he’s also deadly with a sniper rifle.”
“You think he’ll help?” AJ asked, hope surging beneath the surface of fear.
“For the right price, yeah.”
“I’ll pay anything.”
Sly cursed, pushing to his feet to punch the table with a meaty fist. “Fuck that. That bitch threatened Sally. I’ll make sure Samson gets whatever the hell he wants. You can count on that.”
Slumping against the counter, the strength leaching from his body, AJ closed his eyes and sighed.
Blaze’s confident voice cut through the weary fog in AJ’s mind.
