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Better than dick breath, I think to myself, taking a giant bite and chewing as fast as my jaw is able to work.
I force myself to swallow before I speak again. “Look, I’m going to the board meeting. If you see anything about Everett’s death online, I want to hear about it. Even the mundane chatter in the rooms. I’ve got AI monitoring, but it’s better if your eyes are there, too. I don’t know who is hunting down my guys… three deaths in five months is one too many to be a coincidence.”
Blake understands.
At least, he better understand.
He’s been in this game longer than I have, practically a legacy with the Black Market Syndicate, even though he’s only a few years older than me. His hair is a light shade of gold, almost too light to be described as any one color, and his eyes green with a hazel star around the center.
Right now, he’s watching me, only a shade fromaghast,with his hands steepled above his desk. If I wait too long, he’ll start to say how worried he is about me and how I’m focusing on the wrong things.
The usual.
I grab a folder from my desk and hustle toward the elevator, hitting my code for the top floor. The boardroom where Broderick prefers to meet with partner and competitor. The elevator ride takes less than ten seconds, and I use the chance to wipe my face, my mouth, beneath my eyes. I smooth a hand over my hair just in time for the doors to open, bringing me face-to-face with Broderick himself.
A wicked smile splits his face and adds wrinkles to the ones he already boasts. My stomach takes a dive at the expression.
“Well. You look like my own personal dessert today, darling.” He bends to kiss my cheek.
Sometimes, it’s hard for me to reconcile the reputation he’s clawed out of the mud of this city with the actual man in front of me. He’s older, yes, by a long stretch, but when we’re alone, the man is sensational. Sexy. Dominant.
I love feeling like I’ve pleased him. And in the past ten years, I haven’t stepped a foot out of line or even looked at another man. Until today.
What if he finds out?
Shit!
His arm slides around my waist, and he squeezes me into a terse hug. “Trouble?”
The smooth voice slicks through my system, and I shiver, every part of me electrified. This is the god who rules our little slice of underworld heaven, except he’s not the traditional kind of good-looking. Despite his reputation, he’s a fit, middle-aged man with a slender build and masculine features.
He looks great in his three-piece suit and coal-black button-up shirt.
“Never anything I can’t handle.” I lean into him, licking my lips. “You know I’ll make you proud.”
“See that you do.” He brushes his finger along the ridge of my nose. “See that you do.”
He steps away from me a second later, leaving me off balance. Then leaving me altogether as Broderick strides ahead toward the meeting room. He wasn’t the kind of man anyone with half a brain messed with—he’d evaded law enforcement for years as he carved out an unbreakable toehold in the underbelly of Empire Bay.
“Come with me. I’ve been waiting for you.”
The gravelly timber, combined with that single word I’d heard so often, has me hustling into motion behind him.
He’d told me once about his start, holding these meetings in a warehouse he owned down by the bay. Humble beginnings where he saw an opening in the market for his particular brand of sadism, and it paid off.
Now we are in his private residence, and he has only to snap his fingers to have the others hustling like rats toward a primo piece of cheese. The foyer of the penthouse is seamless marble and all white walls. Monochromatic and opulent. It takes people off guard, which is probably one of the reasons Broderick chose such starkness for the entry.
His personal office, the one he uses more than the room where he sticks me and Blake, is directly across the hall from the boardroom.
The doors to the boardroom are wide open, and I walk in, taking a seat against the wall like I always do.
A few men higher up in the Syndicate like to joke and mock that I’m in the whore’s corner. But what they don’t know is this: I’ve got the best fucking vantage point in the room. I see, I watch, I gather any tells and memorize them to report back to Broderick later.
His second in command, Antoni, is already leering at me before I have a chance to settle. Antoni is a roach in human form. The dirty-blond hair, beard, and three-piece suit do nothing to hide his carapace.
It doesn’t matter what Antoni thinks or any of the others. Let them call me a whore.
Broderick might be the biggest crime boss in the city, but he damn well makes sure I have what I need because he understands I bring a lot to the table. And I’ll never go back to being on the streets again.
