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I figure that’s better than asking where I am. What point would there be in knowing that?
He taps his fingers on the table. “Straight to the point, hmm?”
“Well, I think we had enough small talk earlier,” I say.
Leander nods. “A feisty Aster. Well, this is new.”
No. This is the real me, the me he never knew.
I shrug. “Well, this is a new Leander I’m talking to.”
No longer the sweet guy I adored. No longer the football superstar who had so much confidence and everything under control. Or maybe this is the real Leander, too, and everything else was a disguise. Maybe I’m getting to know Leander for the first time.
“I’ll ask again. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing,” Leander answers as he pops a chip inside his mouth and crunches on it. “We don’t need anything from you.”
We again.
I narrow my eyes at him. That can’t be true. If so, why am I here?
“It’s Mason we need,” he says.
Ah. So they’re just using me to get to him. I figured. After all, I don’t have a lot of money of my own. I don’t have any special skills. I don’t have friends in high places. Just a husband who’s a billionaire trying to change the world. I should have known he’d have lots of people trying to get in his way, trying to pull him down.
“You mean Mason’s money?” I ask. “How much did you ask him for? Ten million?”
“We don’t need his money, either,” Leander answers.
No? What do they need from him, then?
“We need him to hack into someone’s system for us. A very secure system.”
And I have a feeling it’s for nothing good.
“Hack?” I look at Leander with creased eyebrows. “Mason doesn’t do that.”
Leander laughs. “You don’t really know the man you married, do you?”
“I know he’s probably capable of hacking,” I say.
He’s a computer genius, after all.
“Capable?” Leander laughs louder. “He’s been hacking since he was what? Seven years old?”
My eyebrows arch. Is he serious?
“Let me tell you just how capable Mason is. A few weeks ago, I had a friend who approached him for his skill. He’s a little cocky. He has a tendency to rub people the wrong way, so Mason turned him down. He had a tantrum, tried to blow Mason up…”
What?
“And just days later, my friend ended up in jail, neck deep in his own shit. Shit he tried to cover up, and I’m telling you, he was good at that sort of thing. But Mason found out anyway.”
“Well, secrets have a way of coming out,” I tell Leander. “No matter how hard you try to hide them.”
Leander grins. He stuffs a handful of chips into his mouth and then shakes the crumbs from his hands.
“Speaking of secrets, do you know that Mason did this big hacking job for the military?”
“I know he was in the military,” I answer. “Doing stuff on computers.”
“Yeah. Including hacking a weapons satellite.”
I arch an eyebrow. A weapons satellite?
“Ah. Got your interest, didn’t I?” Leander taps his knee. “But I don’t think I’ll tell you the story. You ask him.”
Fine. I will. When all this is over.
“So you think you can make him hack something for you?” I ask Leander. “Because you’re his brother?”
He shakes his head. “Because we have his wife.”
Now I understand why I’m here.
“I know Mason.” Leander stands up and leans over me. “He doesn’t like anything being taken from him, especially not the woman he married.”
“Oh, is that why you were asking if our marriage was going well?”
He ignores me and puts his hand on the back of my chair. “I’m sure Mason will be here soon.”
“Yeah,” I say. “And he’ll be pissed when he finds out what you’ve done.”
Leander sits down and shrugs. “I don’t care. Pissing people off is more fun than pleasing them.”
I shake my head in disbelief. Wow.
“What happened to you, Leander? You used to be cooler.”
“I lost everything.”
So he told me before. “That’s not true. You still have your family.”
“Fuck family.” He bangs his fist on the table. “I lost the most exciting thing in my life – football.”
“So you what? Decided to join a criminal syndicate?”
The look on his face tells me I’m right. Okay.
“Like I said, football was exciting,” Leander explains. “I need that excitement. More than anything.”
And he found it again in a life of crime. Well, I guess breaking the law does provide an adrenaline rush, too. And that explains the bullet graze.
“So you got yourself some exciting friends?” I ask him.
He shrugs. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“Okay.” I tap my fingers on the table. “Just one question. Are those the same friends who beat you to a pulp?”
Leander’s expression turns serious. Ah, I’m right again.
“Are you saying you don’t fight with your friends?” he asks me.
“We don’t try to kill each other, for sure.”
