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“The sexiest,” he repeated.

ChapterNine

Colum: Which accent is sexier: Irish or French?

Franco: For the sake of our friendship, I’m not answering that.

“Who’re you?”Colum demanded as the video call connected.

The man on the screen sighed.“Hello, Colum.I’m Sebastian.We’ve met.Several times.”

“Ah, right, then.”Columhadmet Sebastian, but he’d been expecting Franco.

Sebastian’s gaze shifted, and Colum assumed he was looking at Xavier and Annie, seated on either side of him, all of them facing the laptop on the coffee table.

“Annie.”Sebastian inclined his head.“It’s a pleasure to meet you.I’m one of the Grand Master’s counselors.”

Colum felt Annie go still next to him as she processed that.He knew the person she’d been in contact with was female, but he wasn’t sure if it was Juliette herself pretending to be a counselor or Rose.

“And I hear you saw my brother recently.”Sebastian’s formal expression relaxed into an amused smile.

“He makes an excellent waiter,” Annie agreed.“And it’s nice to meet you, Sebastian.”

Colum put the pieces together and sat back.“The room service waiter was a Trinity Masters’ member.”

“Yes.”Annie’s lips twitched.“Hotel room service doesn’t deliver pot brownies.”

“They should,” Xavier drawled.

“Anyway,” Sebastian said.“Another one of the counselors asked that I call you with an update.To be clear, this is not a briefing so that you can use the information to hunt down the source of the attack.This is informational only.Your job—youronlyjob—is finding the rest of the manuscript.”

“Would this other counselor be a man named Franco?”Annie asked.

Sebastian sighed, staring directly into the camera.“Colum.”

Colum was both irritated and embarrassed.He shoved Annie’s knee with his own, and she muffled a laugh.“It’s mad that the Trinity Masters insist on all this secrecy.Everyone knows who our admirals are, and knows who the fleet admiral is.”

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t your last fleet admiral murdered?”Sebastian’s brows rose.“In his own home?And half your admirals got blown up?”

“Sure, but it’sgoingto sound bad if you say it like that,” Colum protested.

“You’re taking too long,” a new voice said.

The video spun dizzyingly, and Franco’s smiling face filled the screen.

“Franco!”

“Colum!”

Colum grinned at the sight of his friend.“How’re you getting on?”

“I’m good.Well, actually I’m annoyed because hubby won’t let me come chase the manuscript with you.”

“Why not?”Colum would love to have his friend along on this adventure.Though… Colum looked first at Annie, then at Xavier.

Maybe he didn’t want Franco here.It would mean losing the intimacy of it being just the three of them.

“Some espionage thing.”Franco shrugged negligently.“Not that interesting.But guess what I found?”