Page 153 of Unwritten Rules

What an odd human. “Does that mean you’re old?”

“Old enough. Why do you ask so many questions? Eat your food.”

I heard a faint meow from the corner of the living room and a small, grey cat came out from hiding and pranced its way over to us.

“When didthatget here?”

“That’s Pumpkin. I found her stuck in a pumpkin patch and took her home.”

If Pumpkin lived at his house, it made no sense as to why she was at my house. “Why is she here?”

He shrugged and continued eating. Pumpkin jumped into his lap and laid down to take a nap after he gave her a piece of meat from his plate. Who knew scary looking men had affinities for little kittens? They looked happy together.

“She likes to travel, and I figured you might like her. What’s got you up so early?”

Shoving food around on my plate with my fork, I rested my chin in my hand. That was a great question. “I couldn’t sleep and Brent snores.”

“Good to know—I’ll write that down for our next meeting. Snores. Do you need pills to sleep? I have great ones for insomnia. It’s called melatonin.”

Brent really should have warned me about this guy. Not only was he...strange, but he had the weirdest sense of humor. I never thought someone could be this dry but so witty at the same time. And he liked cats.

What did this guy get into in his free time?

“Do you always wear this pink ski mask?”

“Do you always ask a lot of questions?” His eyes flicked to mine as he ate. He had thick eyebrows and haunting green eyes.

“Sorry,” I grumbled.

“Here’s a sight I never thought I’d see.” Brent was in the hallway leaning against the wall.

Reaper grunted again. “Your girlfriend is chatty.”

“Why don’t you come back to bed, babe?”

They were both so casual about everything, but with what I could only assume they saw on a regular basis, what I was going through was probably a walk in the park for them. Brent and his men were out torturing and killing people in their line of work and organizing illicit trades, a straightforward situation like mine had to be easy.

He was also back to calling me babe again.

“I can’t sleep. I have a meeting with Evans today and there’s just too much going on in my mind right now.”

I didn’t know what to expect from going to New York. The meetings became need to know only after Evans pulled certain people out of the company. Cleaning house was going to be messy, and the fallout would be insane. We had rats in the legal team who worked in tandem with my aunt to give her certain rights to what was mine with documents signed and forged in my name.

Before I turned eighteen, she was my legal guardian and signed everything as such. We combed through the documents; she forged agreements under my name that she would make decisions through lawyers until I was twenty-one. That meant she had secret plans to pull the company out from under me on my birthday.

Evans would have questions to answer as to how this happened under him and all the names of those who may have seen those documents or let this happen. Augustus Vaughn was right about cleaning house.

How much death would come from those words, time would only tell.

Brent lightly rubbed my shoulders and played with my hair. “How about a movie? We have time to kill, and I hate to see you miss out on sleep.”

“Actually, since you’re both here...”

Reaper gave me a look of annoyance. He didn’t like to be bothered by the looks of it.

“What is it?”

“I’m about to find out how many people have been secretly working behind my back to pull the rug out from under the company. Why they wanted to ruin the company makes no sense to me since everyone gets paid well and the company is a successful one.”

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