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“Okay…” she waited for me to elaborate.
“I need help with VRC, though,” I said. “Crew’s got some shit going on that I’m thinking might take a while. I have a weird vibe about it, and now that my claws are sunk in, I want to see where it leads me.”
She raised a brow, waiting for me to continue.
“What kind of weird vibe are you getting?” she wondered.
Instead of hiding anything, I decided to lay it all out.
“Crew was in the military. You remember that, right?” I asked.
She nodded. “A Navy SEAL. But I didn’t think you could just get out of the military like that.”
She snapped her fingers for emphasis.
“You can if there’s a family emergency where you have no other option,” I said. “His dad owned Vegas Royale. His father before him started Vegas Royale. It’s been in the family business for a very long time. Anyway, so right now, he’s still in the military. But they’re not quite sure whether or not he’s going to have to get all the way out or not because of a few family issues.”
“What kind of family issues?” she pushed, leaning forward to wipe at her nose with the sleeve of her shirt.
That move definitely should not have been sexy, but for some reason it made me want things.
I crossed one leg over the other then placed my hands behind my head as I started to explain.
“So it’s a really weird situation,” I said. “A week ago, a call went out to Crew’s command that pretty much told him his dad had died, and there was a kid he’d been taking care of. They think he might’ve been his son, but they’re also not one hundred percent sure.”
“Okay,” she tilted her head.
“Anyway, so he goes home, and it comes out that there’s a woman there that has been taking care of him, but it’s not her kid. She’s fuckin’ terrified of telling him the actual mother’s name. The actual mother is a worker at the show, but that person isn’t coming out of hiding. And overall, Crew’s noticed a huge pall over the entire circus. Everyone is fuckin’ terrified, and no one is talking. So for now, what I’m doing is setting up security, and possibly infiltrating into the crew and finding out what in the fuck is going on.” I looked at her, and her eyes were riveted on me. “That’s where you come in.”
“You want me to start working there, and possibly find out what is going on for you,” she guessed.
I sighed. “I also have a really, really bad feeling about all of this. There’s something going on here that I can’t quite figure out. Someone is terrorizing the workers. And we need to figure it out sooner rather than later because Crew needs to get back to the SEALS, and I don’t want to be here when it snows next week.”
She snorted indelicately.
“You don’t want to be here when it snows.” She scoffed. “Careful, you’re sounding old.”
“I am old,” I pointed out. “Forty-three. Things don’t move the same way they used to when I was younger. And all these years in the military weren’t very kind to me.”
She let her eyes trail down the length of my body, studying my shoulders and my chest for a long moment before focusing on my thighs. “You look pretty fit to me.”
I felt my dick jump at her words.
Damn, all she had to do was give me the once over, and I was ready to hand myself to her with a little fuckin’ bow.
“Looks can be deceiving,” I said. “Why are you out here in the cold?”
She twisted fully on her chair to face herself toward me then said, “Twenty questions.”
I tilted my head toward her.
“What?”
“Twenty questions,” she said. “You answer, I answer. Until we’ve gotten to twenty. When we’re at twenty, I’ll tell you my answer on whether I’ll help you or not.”
She’d help me.
She didn’t need the twenty questions.
But I’d give them to her anyway.
“Hit me,” I offered.
“Why did your mother name you Hannibal?” I asked.
I rolled my eyes.
“So unoriginal.” I readjusted my legs. They were fuckin’ cold. “As to the answer, my mother named me Hannibal because they’d just watched a movie where the main character was named Hannibal. So she thought that was the greatest idea ever. Meaning, instead of getting a normal name like my brothers—Harrison, Hunter, Holden and Hancock—I got a fuckin’ weird one that follows me around like a bad case of chlamydia.”
She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “That’s gross.”
“That’s life,” I pointed out. “Why did your parents name you Hades?”
Her eyes went a little distant as she said, “My mom wanted me to be a boy. My dad didn’t want me at all because I was an ugly baby…so Hades.”
I blinked. “That’s it?”
“That’s the answer they gave me,” she answered.
