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“Is that so?” That glint in his eyes was back, sharp and dark and full of promise.
“Don’t play coy. Youlovetrying to boss me around.”
“Trying?” His voice dropped, low and dangerous. A growl on the edge.
“You heard me.”
His thumb traced my lower lip, slow and deliberate.
“You know what happens to people who play with fire,” he murmured, voice velvet-wrapped steel. “They get burned.”
“Not me,” I said, catching his thumb between my teeth, biting just hard enough to make his breath catch. “You’re watching my back. No one’s burning me.”
The last bit of tension bled out of him. His smile curled slow and dangerous.
“Oh, I definitely enjoy your attitude,” I said, stepping back and peeling off my shirt deliberately. My muscles ached, but I moved like I didn’t care. Like Iwantedhim to look.
“Going to shower now,” I added over my shoulder. “Feel free to keep watching my six.”
As I caught his gaze in the mirror, dark, heated, andhungry. I smiled to myself.
Yeah. I liked playing with fire. And this one? What was a little scorch between friends?
Chapter
Twenty-Nine
ALPHABET
It was early, not as early as the day before, but early enough for the sun to paint through the dust-coated windows in streaks of smudged sunshine.
The files spread out like wreckage.
Flash drives. Printouts. Screens glowing with decrypted data pulled straight from Reznik’s servers. Names. Transactions. Travel records. Coordinates. Bidders. Victims.
Not one of them Amorette.
It was in the first search string of every single program I ran. They’d started the night with me, but one by one, the team had dropped off. Sleep wasn’t an option for me. Not right now, not while I dug through what we’d found, what it meant, and started putting together what came next.
The deeper we dug, the more complicated it became. It wasn’t just one organization, it was several. It wasn’t just one crew handling transport, it was dozens. It wasn’t one geographic location at the epicenter, it was quite literally the world.
Layer after layer peeled back to unveil tangled knot over tangled knot. Decryption revealed the involvement of more than just criminals, oligarchs, aristocrats, and executives. It was probably the ugliest who’s who list of entitled scum.
The one thing that frustrated me each time I managed to drill down past a new web of concealment: Amorette. Amorette Monet Black wasn’t even a blip on the radar. Nor anysubjectthat matched Grace’s physical description and measurements.
They had reams of data on Grace, a mountain of it. I tracked every single place they’d pulled the info.
Social media
Agency websites.
Photographer’s files—watermarked and not so much.
Reddit threads.
Substacks for fashion.
Gossip sites.