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“Yes, what is it?”

“We need to decide on the campaign we want to run for Topaz in California! Which of these do you like?”

She was holding up cardboard mock-ups with different designs and colors. They all looked the same to me, though.

“You decide,” I said, distracted.

“Me?” She looked at me like I was losing the plot. “You told the graphic designers last week to start again from scratch and insisted only you make the final call!” She was exasperated by me and not hiding it very well.

“What can I say?” I pulled a face, “They’re all fine, okay?”

With a sigh, she put down the boards.

“There is a girl, right? That’s why you’ve gone off Charlotte and have lost all interest in work?”

I denied it but I could see Natania didn’t believe me. I didn’t care though.

I had more important things to think about. Like the fact that Kaya was softening in her attitude towards me. I was picking up on a very subtle change in attitude and I had to think about my next move. Kaya was unlike any woman I had ever been interested in before. Where others liked to be treated like ladies, Kaya was almost the opposite. She wanted no specialconsideration, no doors to be opened for her. She obviously did not think of herself as the weaker sex.

I had gone to her place the night before. The place was messy but comfortable. She didn’t try to apologize for it either. Not a homemaker, clearly. I didn’t mind at all but it did seem out of the ordinary.

They were having a late dinner and I sat with her and Princess at the kitchen table, observing the two of them together. Afterwards, Princess went to bed and Kaya was able to spend time with me.

She was more relaxed around me now but there was still distance between us. She was a long way off from trusting me.

She shared the information she had found out about me and I told her how my family had been at war with the ruling elite in New York for centuries. After a violent clash between families almost a century ago, my family had agreed to stay as far from the city as possible and I had honored this agreement, wanting to focus on growing the business and staying alive.

So far, it had worked.

“I couldn’t locate the original paperwork with details about how you were found guilty and the transcripts of the trial,” she said, clearly troubled by this information.

“That suggests tampering. A serious offense.”

I could tell she still believed in the system, which I had stopped doing long ago.

She made herself some coffee and I asked her for information about herself.

“Not much to tell,” she said, clearly unwilling to share details from her life.

“That can’t be true,” I said, coming to stand perhaps a bit too close to her.

“And why not?” she whipped around to face me. She was gorgeous when she got furious like that, her eyes flashing like smoldering coals.

I had to fight the urge to smile.

“I’m just saying, your reaction to vampires feels personal to me.”

She bit her lip and clearly decided to give an inch.

“It is, I guess.” She paused. “My family was killed when I was young, I was the only one to survive. I never found out what happened to them. The sheriff who found me said it looked like a vampire. But I never remembered anything about it, I was too young. He took me home to his wife Stephanie. They ended up raising me.”

I listened closely.

“What made him think it was a vampire attack?”

She frowned. “I don’t know. It was… very violent, that’s all I know.”

“I’m not saying that isn’t what happened,” I said gently. “But it doesn’t really sound like one of us,” I said, carefully.