Page 306 of Incisive

CHAPTERSEVENTY-NINE

The calendar pages slip past.After Stella’s funeral my parents turn their attentions toward the plans for building the guest house. It keeps them busy and makes them happy, knowing we’ll be visiting them a lot.

The three of us make it a priority that at least one of us calls them once a day to check in and say hi. It’s hard to believe that at age fifty-two I finally feel like I have my personal shit together.

Just in time to leave office and retire.

It’s not long before the public’s collective attention is absorbed by another shiny object, and another…

Two weeks after my sister’s funeral and you’d be hard-pressed to find daily reporting about the attacks in any regions where they’ve already recovered or rebuilt, much less anywhere that didn’t experience an attack. Some of the regular political bloggers and reporters are covering the legal aspects of the trials and plea deals but for the most part the average citizen is now distracted by other things.

Including the presidential election.

In that way, the attacks on our country are still front and center and the polling runs heavily in Ciro’s favor.

Russia was able to stop all the attacks planned there before they could be carried out. I was honestly shocked when the president of Russia called me to speak in person to thank me for the help our intelligence agencies gave them, the sharing of information. During the conversation I make no mention of the sudden spate of rich Russians catapulted out of windows.

I’m certain it’s no coincidence when, six hours later, several Russian-based bot farms that usually pump a flood of political disinfo into social media streams have also gone…dark.

Utterly. As if the server farms never existed.

I can play that game. The next afternoon I sign an executive order easing a couple of financial restrictions on three Russian business entities, which I’d placed on them my first year in office.

These secret dances mean the Russian president still gets to look like a strongman and have his ego stroked at home. I don’t care about claiming glory for the US intelligence services. Don’t need to.

Innocent people didn’tdie. That’s the important thing. And ahead of the election it means less disinfo flowing via social media sites.

While a hollow victory, it is gratifying to know my instincts about Belyaevskin were right on.

And the poison pill he left behind has helped the US intelligence services clean out moles from foreign posts, as well as gave us valuable insights into choking off or more closely monitoring financial streams we’d overlooked.

I mean he left a fucking digital topographical map of everything he did, from start to finish. Apparently he wasn’t convinced his girlfriend’s accident was an accident. The irony is he somehow overlooked the fact that she was an informant forus.

His poorly focused paranoia proved key, in the end.

The Argentinians arrested an elderly man for the poisoning. He was a Russian expat who’d served twenty-three years in the FSB.

He was also the uncle of one of the rich oligarchs who accidentally on purpose fell out of a window.

Unfortunately, the Argentinians didn’t watch him very carefully. He either “accidentally” or on purpose hung himself from his bunk his second night in custody. Meaning we’ll likely never know where he obtained the Polonium-210. Traces of it were found in several places in his apartment, so we know for certain it was in his possession at some point.

Another dead end.

Literally.

During all of this my ongoing sexy games with Jordan fell by the wayside for obvious reasons. In fact, between Leo’s bum knee and the attacks and evacuation, then Stella’s murder, there hasn’t been anything more than snuggling between the three of us for quite a while now.

Meaning I awoke this Monday morning feeling horny as hell for the first time in weeks. Not just horny but feisty as hell, too.

Unfortunately, I was running behind and moving too quickly to do anything about it. I wanted to get in a workout, because I hadn’t done that in over a week. Jordan was busy helping Leo start his morning and prepare for his PT session, which happens here in the White House.

Which is why Jordan’s not expecting it when this afternoon I summon him to my study not long after lunch and ask him to lock the door. When he turns back to me I grab his necktie, quickly taking several turns around my left fist and pulling him hard against my body.

“Hello,slut,” I whisper as I stare into his sweet hazel gaze, which is now wide with a delectable mix of lust and fear. “Miss me?”

Hewhimpers, which makes my erection throb even harder than it already is. “Yes, Mister President,” he whispers.

I lead him over to my desk and bend him over it. “Hands on the desk. Don’t move.”