Total pages in book: 143
Estimated words: 141165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 141165 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 706(@200wpm)___ 565(@250wpm)___ 471(@300wpm)
Maximoff detaches slightly from Farrow. “Are you going out?”
“I’m making an announcement, and you all need to hear it.”
Concern washes over his eyes. “What kind of an announcement?”
“You’ll see.”
15
THATCHER MORETTI
Banks slides out from underneath the Volkswagen Beetle, oil staining his palms. Since we were teenagers, he was always fixing friends’ cars for an extra buck. He got a job at an old mechanic shop down the street when he was fifteen.
I hand my brother a torque wrench. “That briefing was fucking horseshit,” I tell him rigidly, both of us in the garage.
We just got back from Studio 9. The Alpha lead and the new Epsilon lead spent the majority of the team’s time rephrasing the same fucking point and hammering it to death.
Do not fuck Jane.
Do not have sex with a client.
Do not sleep or screw or push forward inside that girl in any goddamn way. Direct quote from my superior.
Men yelling in my face to make me take it is just a fucking side salad. Tastes like nothing, I chow down in silence, and I move on to the main course: my purpose, my reason for being.
My responsibility.
My client.
Jane.
But the fact that two leads opened a crass can of worms—talking about her and sex and me in graphic warning—it didn’t taste like nothing. I was chewing on a bag of rusted nails.
It hit a nerve.
She means something to me, something that I should release in the fucking wind, but I’m clutching tighter. Bringing her closer.
I’m walking the thinnest line with security, and even tempering my anger is becoming harder.
I left the briefing with Banks, both of us glaring, and I muttered to him what I held back from saying earlier, “Respectfully, sir, shut the fuck up.”
Banks bounced his head, up and down. “Amen.”
Back in the garage, Banks uses the torque wrench to scratch an itch on his neck. “Old guards are still clearly paranoid since Farrow slept with Maximoff and kept his job. They already promised the parents that it wouldn’t happen again.”
The team wants to maintain trust and respect with the parents.
I stare hard at my brother. “I was one of the men who promised the parents.” Back when I was a lead. I had to douse the fire that Farrow lit.
Banks motions his hand to my chest. “And I told you that was a bad call.”
I narrow my gaze. “You don’t even like making one fucking call, and you wanna tell me that one was bad?”
Banks prefers not being in charge, but briefly, he’d been a lead right after I stepped down. And when he relinquished the role, he was so fucking happy he kissed the pavement in Studio 9’s parking lot.
“Just because I don’t like making them doesn’t mean I can’t see a bad one from a good one.” Banks points toward the door to Jane’s townhouse. “You set course for trouble the second you joined her detail.” He tosses and catches the wrench. “Probably even before that.”
I give him a hard look. “Don’t go there.”
I never thought of her as more than the oldest Cobalt daughter: a quick-witted girl with a big heart. Who was constantly berated by fuckbags in public. Who should be kept safe and shielded from that hatred.
Being her bodyguard strengthened a feeling of duty that existed, I’ll give my brother that, but I wasn’t thinking about breaking Jane’s knees apart and sinking my cock into her—because that’d be fucking wrong.
Unprofessional.
I only mentally booked a room for hell around the time we shared tight space on a tour bus. And she was admittedly sexually frustrated.
I was sexually fucking frustrated, and we kept looking at each other. I wouldn’t cross that line to help her.
I couldn’t. I couldn’t.
I still can’t.
Banks pats the torque wrench in his palm, thinking, and then he nods his chin to me. “Remember that time when you wanted to put three full-time bodyguards on her after the chokehold incident?”
My muscles tense.
Yeah.
I wasn’t her bodyguard. But I was in charge of the team back then.
Banks leans against the Beetle’s tire. “You care beyond your duty.”
He always says that when he brings up Jane.
You care beyond your duty.
One other phrase rings shrilly in the pit of my ear: the chokehold incident. Lines crease my forehead, eyes searing.
Some entitled piece of shit thought Jane was into BDSM, and he tried to choke her when they were hooking up at the townhouse. Her bodyguard had to break down the door and pry the guy off Jane. He followed protocol, but knowing that happened to her…
I hate men who take advantage of these girls. Who try to screw with Jane. And I fucking hate when she’s hurt.
I needed to protect her. It always feels bigger than a job, but that was my job too.
“I was a lead,” I tell my brother.
“So was Akara.” Banks lifts one shoulder. “But he didn’t vote to put three full-time bodyguards on her detail.” Neither did Price, the Alpha lead.