Page 16 of Barristers & Bones

I nodded absently. “I want you to dig up everything. Her grades, her finances, what type of birth control she’s on, and what her weaknesses are. I want to know if she has a boyfriend, even her tampon brand if she uses them.”

Drakos shook his head and took a drink. “Her birth control, boyfriend, and tampon brand? Are you planning to fuck her before or after you fuck her over? You’re an evil bastard.” He looked like a successful Wall Street broker in his silk ties, cuff links, and excessively expensive suits–until he opened his foul mouth and biting sarcasm spilled out.

I raised an eyebrow and took another sip. “Both.”

Ivan studied me. “So you want the full monty on her. She’s what, twenty-four? That’ll take a day, maybe two.”

Xander lounged against my bookcase, rolling one of my rare, ancient Roman coins between his fingers. He was the silent one. His long, dark blond hair hung around his shoulders, and he’d untucked his shirt and rolled up his shirt sleeves.

“You’re obsessing again,” he warned me.

Xander was the philosophical, introspective one. Sometimes he wore suits, but when he got to the office, he always shed his jacket and lost his tie. He also looked like a California surfer.

“It’s not a fucking obsession.”

“Uh-huh,” Drakos needled. “That’s why you want the ‘full monty’ on a young law student.”

Unlike Xander, Drakos liked to stir up shit. We were tight like family, but black and white in temperament sometimes.

I stared them down. “Klim sent Ms. Cross to me to do with as I please. And since she’s a Cross, I’ll reel her in and ruin her slowly and methodically. But no one gets close to us unless they’ve been vetted. We protect our family.”

We all fell silent, and the mood went dark. After the nightmarish way we met and became brothers, we’d adopted that motto so we all knew we’d have each other’s backs.Protegat Familia: Protect Family. It meant protecting each other because our biological families sure as fuck hadn’t. The air in the office thickened as memories tried to claw their way to the surface. The past was a shadow we lived under and never quite escaped.

I sighed and faced the elephant in the room. “That fucking hellhole has a way of grabbing us by the throat, even now.”

Xander rolled the coin again and studied the movement. “It made us who we are, for better or worse.”

“Ruthless, soulless bastards who have no problem using daughters as pawns and skirting the law?” Ivan mused.

Drakos grinned. “We don’tskirtthe law, we fucking break the law most of the time.” His remark seemed to ease the tension.

Running my hand through my hair, I glanced over at Ivan. “She’s just a girl I need to use and inconveniently want to fuck. She looks like a wet dream even in mediocre clothes, asks a thousand questions, and is too smart for her own good. But we vet her.”

Ivan sipped his whiskey and studied me. “Then I’ll get you her tampon brand.”

When everyone was gone, I sat and studied the coin Xander had set on the corner of my desk. Luna didn’t want to be interning at The Firm or with me, but she’d made the most of it. She was unique, smart, and curious. I frowned.

The office had gone quiet, with only Ivan clattering on his keyboards a couple of offices down. Swirling the whiskey, I watched the liquid catch the light from the dim lamp on my desk and thought of Luna’s inquisitive mind and probing green eyes that didn’t miss much.

The scar on my neck twinged, and I absently ran a finger over it, feeling the raised skin. I’d gotten it years ago when a guard threw me into the side of an old outbuilding. I’d been centimeters away from being impaled through my throat on that long, rusty nail. Instead, the guards kicked the shit out of me as my neck bled all over, threw me into a cell, and left me for days. The wound had healed badly.

“Hey.” Ivan’s voice cut through the silence, snapping me back to the present as he studied me from the doorway. “Anything specific you're looking for?”

“Everything, every skeleton in her closet. I may or may not read it all, but I want it just in case.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. “She’s young, and she’s probably squeaky fucking clean. Are you sure you want to drag her into our shit?”

“Yes,” I replied with cold finality.

Ivan looked down at the coin. “You and your fucking obsessions. Alright, I’ll send you what I find.” When Ivan left, I drained the last of my whiskey and went home.

The gleaming glass panes of the cold, modern house reflected my headlights back to me as I turned into the driveway. The sleek modern structure, with a facade of concrete, steel, and glass, sat nestled in the foothills above Las Vegas. Intermittent greenery defied the desert, softening the house a little. The underground irrigation systems in almost every yard in the West still mystified me.

I left my Mercedes in the circular driveway and used my thumbprint to unlock the massive glass front door, shed my jacket, and threw it over the entryway table. Then I paused and studied the interior as if from Luna’s eyes. It unfolded like a gallery of shadows and sharp angles.

I absently wondered what she’d think of this house. It was so different from her odd, vibrant apartment. She lived above a sprawling mortuary in the middle of a cemetery, for fuck’s sake, but her apartment had more life and vitality than my cutting-edge, multimillion-dollar home. It looked like Ezra had renovated the space over the last ten years or so, but he kept the same 1960s vintage feel to match the mid-century modern mortuary it was attached to.

Looking around at my house with its natural stone floors, sleek furniture, and abstract art pieces, I still couldn’t decide whether I liked the space or not. The back of the residence had floor-to-ceiling windows that offered an unobstructed view of Sin City’s skyline and the infinity pool outside. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d used the pool.

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