Page 270 of Money Reigns
The second desk was weird when Amato did it.Now I get it.Olivia Baker is a flight risk and a fucking force of nature, and I’m not letting either out of my sight.
My gaze lingers.
I should turn back to work. But I can’t stop watching her.
Her hair falls forward as she types, her lips pursed in concentration. and I feel it—how lucky I am to have her here, in this office, in my life. How easy it would’ve been to lose her. Never thought I’d deserve this kind of love.
She catches me staring.
Without even looking up, she says flatly, “Stop eye-fucking me and go back to pretending you work.”
I grin. “Can’t help it. You’re my favorite view.”
She rolls her eyes, muttering something aboutridiculous men and their God complexes,but I catch the corner of her mouth twitching, like she’s trying not to smile.
Andthat?That’s how I know she loves it here.
My phone buzzes on the desk.
Olivia’s head pops up at the same time I reach for it, her eyes curious. I glance at the message, and a grin spreads across my face before I even realize it.
“Guess what, baby?” I say, turning the phone so she can see the notification. “Time to furnish the Parker Building.”
Her eyes go wide, lips parting. “It’s finished?!”
Relief slams into me, heavy and sweet, loosening something in my chest I didn’t even know was still wound tight. A smile breaks across my face, bigger than I’ve let myself have in a long time.
“It’s finished.”
I watch her light up, that spark in her eyes turning molten. She shoots up from the chair like she can’t help herself.
The office door creaks open.
“I waited months,” Wesley says, stepping inside like he owns the damn floor. He raises a brow at Olivia, arms crossed over his chest. “And yet not one apology.”
Olivia freezes.
I stiffen.
Wesley closes the door behind him, slow and theatrical, and levels a stare so sharp it could slice glass. “Let’s see.Unauthorized login. Accessing a terminated WesTech account. Tracing financial paper trails through archived Bratva holdings. And—my personal favorite,hacking into Maksim Korsakov’s juvenile psych records.”
“Wesley—” she starts, eyes wide.
“I thought you were better than that,” he deadpans. “You left a trail.”
I’m already rising from my chair. “If you’ve got a problem with her, you bring it to me.”
Wes throws me a lazy glance. “Relax. She didn’t break my company. Just bent it.Impressively.” He turns back to Olivia, and his voice softens, not much, but enough. “I should be mad. But I’m mostly just…” He exhales. “In awe, honestly. That was damn near beautiful work. And terrifying, you’ve grown since you were sixteen.”
She blinks. “You’re not mad?”
“Mad?” Wesley grins. “I nearly stole you back from War with a promotion. You breached six layers of encryption, rerouted through a dormant honeytrap Ipersonallycoded after your first little breach, and did it all from a Beaumont Realty laptop that I technically had blocked.”
I sit back down, tension easing. “So you’re saying my woman’s a genius.”
“She’s amenace,” Wesley corrects. “But yeah. A genius.”
Olivia tries to hide her smile. Fails. “You should really patch that backdoor access.”
