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“Well, we’re all here,” I sigh, quickly jutting my arm out to snatch Callie’s iced coffee out of her hands. I take another heavy pull, grimacing before I give it back. “Should we start this thing?”
“One sec,” Ares glances at his watch. “We’re just waiting for—”
The door behind him swings open.
Fuck.
I mean, ofcourseshe’s here. She’s our family’s legal counsel, and a partner at Crown and Black, the firm we use for most of our legitimate business legal needs. But even still, the second Elsa Guin strides into the room, my brow furrows deeply.
The woman’s my fucking nemesis.
Honestly, I don’t even know how that started. It’s not like we ever clashed over something big and important. It’s just…her. Everything about her gets under my fucking skin. The fact that she’s a fucking ice queen with a stick up her ass the size of the Chrysler Building. Those conservative, drab, gray skirt suits she’s always wearing, with her ice-queen white-blonde hair—hair that makes her look like a long-lost Targaryen sister onGame of Thrones—scraped back in a severe bun or, on the days she’s feeling wild, just a ponytail.
There are some people you meet in life who are just your fucking opposite. And that’s Elsa for me. She’s the decaf chamomile tea to my shot of whiskey. The electric scooter to my gas-guzzling American muscle car.
The wet fucking blanket to my raging fire.
She’s a bloodhound for anything fun, and anexpertat extinguishing that fun with her schoolteacher-in-charge-of-detention vibe.
But, all of that aside, there’s another thing about Elsa that pisses me off beyond anything else. And try as I might, I can’t fucking change a thing about it.
She turns me the fuck on.
It’s complete and utter bullshit. Something totally fucked with my inner wiring. A critical flaw in my programming. But whatever it is, despite being a thorn in my side and the coldest ice queen in the western world…Elsa’s fuckinghot.
Not in an overt way. I mean the woman is like a robot who’s been programmed to find zero humor in anything and speak like a goddamn legal briefing all the time. She wears thick-rimmed glasses, and I honestly doubt she owns a single piece of clothing that isn’t office attire in various tones of gray or black.
She isn’t hot in the way the women I’m usually attracted to are—leggy model types with vapid thoughts, nothing but slutty clubwear in their closets, and mouths far better suited for sucking my cock than engaging in anything even remotely approaching intelligent conversation.
No, Elsa’s hot in that sexy librarian you want to gag with a paperback while you fuck the shit out of her against the shelves of the Classic Lit section kind of way.
…Notthat I’ve thought that particular scenario through.
Several times.
I think it’s her accent, too. There’s something about that posh British tone that makes me want to hear her sayfilthythings with it.
When she walks in, her eyes catch my glare for just half a second. But it’s enough for her nose to wrinkle, a small sneer curling her lips before she almost instinctively rolls her eyes and pulls her attention away from me.
Her boss, or at least one of her bosses, Alistair Black, strides in behind her. I don’t really know Alistair at all. But I do know that despite being a champion of the law, there’s a darkness in him. Call it game recognizing game, or one individual with fucked-up tastes recognizing another. But that blond-haired, blue-eyed charm of his doesn’t fool me. Plus, rumor has it that he’s a member of the very club I plan on going to tonight. The kind of club deviants like me go to.
Alistair shuts the conference room door before he shakes Ares’ hand.
“Hope we didn’t keep you?”
My brother shakes his head. “Not at all. We were just starting.”
Alistair flashes the room one of his charming million-dollar smiles that seems like it was custom made to win over juries and judges before he unbuttons his jacket and takes a seat at the table.
Elsa, meanwhile, looks around the room like a teacher surveying the detention room she has to monitor. The facade only cracks a little when she gives my sister—who she’s been helping with the legal aspects of re-opening The Banshee—a quick flash of a smile before taking her seat.
Ares clears his throat. “Since we’re discussing the acquisition today, I’ve asked Mr. Black and Ms. Guin to sit in on this meeting.”
I arch a brow, perking up when he says it. “The acquisition” is something we’ve been idly talking about for months. But if we’re all here to talk about it, with legal representation, I get the feeling it’s become more than a hopeful idea.
“As we’ve all talked about before, Serj Mirzoyan, the head of certain Albanian”…he glances at Elsa and Alistair, clearing his throat…“enterprisesin New York…”
It’s a cute way of avoiding the word “mafia” in front of the lawyers. Even if they’re both painfully aware of what our family does and who we are, plausible deniability is always a good thing.
