Page 2 of Unexpectedly Wanted
“No, I’m not. I would have been happy if you’d just—”
“Just say thank you, Milo. I’m only trying to help.”
With that, he stepped back and closed the door, cutting off my view of him and taking away the chance for me to glare angrily so he would see it. As well as shutting up any grumbling I’d hoped to throw his way. Which meant he got the last word in.
Damn him.
Maybe I should have been grateful that he’d taken some casework off my hands. Most of my focus was currently being spent on one thing, and I was so close to where I’d been trying to get for months now.
So close to finding a way in.
There was a flaw in the code. A flaw that I was going to use to my advantage. I just had to make sure it was actually a flaw and not some sort of trap. That would be smart. Something I would think of to do. But I wasn’t exactly sure how smart these people were.
See, the thing was, if I could find a way to the other side, I might be able to shut them down for good. I’d be able to save a lot of people. Ones that were currently trapped, and even potential future victims. I’d be able to make the world just a little bit safer. Maybe even get some justice for those that hadn’t been able to make it out.
The Sons of the Holy Fire.
They marked themselves with a cross, lit up with fire from behind and three rings circling the top three parts of the cross.
This mark was the thing that had broken this case for us.
That and Kyle, I suppose, since he’d been one of the groups’ victims at one point.
This group was huge. So far, we’d pegged them as one of the largest distributors of pedophile pornography and human trafficking rings in the states. We didn’t doubt their reach went beyond the borders too, but so far, we hadn’t been able to prove any of it. We’d mostly been going through, taking out smaller branches of the organization. One day, we’d cut the head off the snake. But until then, we just kept taking them out as we uncovered them.
Well, not me, I suppose.
I was more of an office person. But the team did have a lot of strong, protective men that went out into the field. I might not have been out there right in the thick of danger, but I was doing everything I could to track these people down.
Just as I was about to dive back in, my phone began to ring. Hearing the ringtone, my eye began to twitch. The sound assaulted my ears, telling me this call was one I couldn’t ignore. If I did, the woman on the other end would surely cause my eye to twitch even more and my ears to bleed sometime in the near future with her displeasure about being ignored.
“Yes, Mother?” I answered, trying to keep the aggravation out of my tone.
“Have I taught you nothing? Where are your manners?” she scolded in a tone that was meant to not sound scolding. When I didn’t reply back, she sighed. “Well…”
“Well, what?” I asked, only half paying attention. I wished she’d just say what she was going to say and get off the phone.
“Please tell me you didn’t forget, Milo.”
I blinked, then my gaze shot to the date on the bottom of the screen in front of me.
Oh shit!
“Your father and I are standing in the lobby,” she said. I could hear the tight smile in her tone. The one she plastered on when she was irritated at the way she was being treated. She expected the world to bow down to her. How dare anyone tell her no? But she wouldn’t cause a scene because that was simply an unacceptable thing for a ‘Southern lady’ to do. “They won’t let us up to see you, even though I explained to this nice security guard that you are my son.”
I was rushing out of my office before she even finished.
The last thing I had time for was a visit from my parents.
And unlike Remy, they wouldn’t be so easy to get rid of.
1
Remy
Doing my best to brush off the shitty morning I’d had, I stepped out of the building and forced a smile as I took a left and made my way down the sidewalk. I wasn’t going to let work get to me, though that was a hell of a lot easier said than done. And more importantly, I wasn’t going to let Milo get to me.
Yeah, I understood how he could get when he was deep into a project and research. He was very… focused, to say the least. I wasn’t the only one around the office he could be short with, but lately, I felt like he went the extra mile to be an asshole to me. It was like we were in some sort of competition, only I wasn’t even aware of it. Heaven forbid I wanted to help him out with anything that crossed over into his area of expertise. I wasn’t as good as him— and I’d never claim to be— but that didn’t mean that I was useless. That didn’t mean that I couldn’t jump in and take over things he couldn’t focus on at the time. Didn’t mean that I was trying to outdo him or upstage his talents.
