Page 28 of To Curse A Knight

Soooooooo in love. Kinda cute—Barbarian falling for Barbie. Stuff of movies, that.

My hands rose in mock surrender. “Aye, mate. Lips are sealed.”

Opening the car door, I stepped out onto a slippery patch of ice and almost kissed it with my tongue before catching my balance.

Dublin was temperate for the most part—barely cold enough to get snow throughout the winter, let alone parking lot skating rinks. America—this part of America, at least—was a frigid wasteland in December modern man shouldn’t touch. Miserable.

“Will you be waiting for me, Jeeves?”

Another sexy grunt that I interpreted in Neanderthal to mean “yes.”

I delicately traipsed across the parking lot, fighting for my life on the makeshift ice rink in my Tom Fords, to deal with the next Neanderthal on my list.

Gertie greeted me when I walked into the office. Her warm smile and sunny disposition were an instant balm to my chapped face.

“Hey Gert!” I pulled her in for a hug, a definite HR faux pas. But given Marco’s private dealings with women, he could fuck right off. It was purely platonic, anyway. Gertie had quickly become my lesbian little sister, even if she was at least five years older.

Her smile waned as she pulled away from me, dainty eyebrows knitted into a worried frown. “He’s very crabby today, Lauchlan. Tread carefully in there.” She gestured toward the open doorway where loud, terse voices emptied into the hall.

“Aye, thanks for the warnin’.” Winking reassuringly, I waited for her to announce my arrival. I was in no mood to waltz right into a madhouse of pissed off gangbangers posing as upstanding businessmen.

There were to be no secrets between us according to Hillary—bollocks, because there were definitelyplentyof secrets between us—but Kellan had let Hillary know, who let Aaron and I know about the raid Antonio had ordered on the Alvarez clubhouse. Right bloodbath with mass casualties apparently, but mostly on Alvarez’s end.

Couldn’t say I knew much about running a billion-dollar criminal empire, but I imagined Marky Marco had quite the gory mess on his hands. I looked forward to serving him the tech equivalent on a platter. I wasso close.

Gertie pressed the button on her center console and muttered into the receiver. “Lauchlan is here, sir.”

The indiscernible voices stopped abruptly. Drawing in a cleansing breath of bullshit-scented air, I sauntered into the room.

Three oversized gits stared back at me, with Marco, the king git, at the center of the lot, his watery shark eyes roving over me like I was the next meal.

“Welcome, Lauchlan. Please, take a seat.”

Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I sat in the uncomfortable glass chair facing the ‘roided-out penguin crew; there was an obvious leader—the slimmest of the three men looked to be about sixty, with silver hair and wrinkly skin with a sallow sheen like he smoked three packs an hour. The other two were poorly disguised bodyguards and looked so out of place they might as well’ve been strippers.

Marco dipped his head to the men in introduction

“Lauchlan, this is Xander Analo, one of our top clients.”

“Pleasure to meet you, sir.” I stuck out a hand in offering. Top Client sniffed in the way that onlyDaddy Warbuckspeople could, raising his eyebrows in disgust as if I’d shit on it; I hastily brought it back to my thigh and turned my attention back to Marco. “What is this about, sir?”

“I was singing your praises to Xander at a recent event—we’re considerably impressed with your team’s progress on several projects, and it’s quite clear you have other skills we can better use. I’ve offered to lend you to Mr. Analo for a specialized project for the remainder of the year.”

Fuck. The next three weeks was shitty timing. It’d be suspicious—if I actually thought Marco had any inkling what I was doing. If he did, though, I’d already be dead.

Nope, this was a demonstration of that fun little clause he’d snuck in when he hired me. “Special duties as needed.”What a crock of—

“You will come to my facility starting tomorrow.” Top Client’s voice sounded freakishly likeVoldemort’s—all wheezy and high pitched, like he was choking on a lozenge. “Security is very high—you may not take in your phone or computer. One will be provided for you while on site.”

He cleared his throat and continued. “We will require your expertise on penetration testing—specifically of the security measures we’ve designed for a new application.”

So, they were hiring me to hack them. Interesting.

So much for my freedom and flexibility. Tethered to creepy Top Client by the day, and the scary squad by night. I wasn’t a man who liked to be tied down, unless I wasactuallybeing tied down.

By the look on Alvarez’s face, there was absolutely no way I was saying no, though. Fucking HR clauses.

“Alright, then.” Forcing a practiced, charming smile, I dipped my head in acceptance. “Looking forward to working with yeh, Mr. Manalo.”

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