Page 77

MARISELA

I crossed my arms over my chest, tapping my heeled foot as various officers and plain-clothed detectives poked and prodded around the building. Searching through files and storage cabinets. Confiscating the occasional laptop and interrogating staff members.

They weren’t going to find anything. Not even the emails from Adrian.

Those vanished on their own. That didn’t make this any less inconvenient.

Or irritating. It did, however, make it my fault.

Seeing as I’d been the one who’d paid to have a well-known public figure, the face of Prescott R&D, dragged out of his bed in the middle of the night and held hostage.

The media assumed Tate was missing, being kept for ransom somewhere until the board of trustees agreed to pay up. I knew the truth. I also knew it wasn’t likely he was coming back. Not if his brother had anything to do with it.

I should have known better. I did know better. It was just another impulsive decision I would have to get myself out of. Alone. Because I’d learned the hard way that everyone else was a complication.

I stormed out of my office and turned down the long hall that led out to a sea of cubicles, making my presence known by the loud clicking of my shoes against the tiled floor beneath me.

Pausing in my steps when I saw a pair of wide gray eyes and dark lashes staring in my direction.

My newest employee, watching a flurry of activity buzz by her while she stood there like a deer in headlights.

Then again, maybe a complication was exactly what I needed. Not for me but for him. Something to motivate my brother-in-law to undo the mess he’d made.

I still hadn’t figured out what Adrian wanted with the girl.

She was too timid to be his type, too young and na?ve to be of any use to him, but she was a survivor.

Had gone through hell and back, passed around the system when she wasn’t at the mercy of her alcoholic mother and parade of abusive boyfriends.

She was broken, and if there was one thing Dr. Lambert enjoyed, it was fixing broken things.

I might not have known everything that went on at Briarwood anymore.

But I did know it was where most of our research came from.

New medical devices that made it through the FDA’s approval process much quicker than was normal.

Or legal. Months instead of years. Palms greased and a shit-ton of cash made on both sides.

But it wasn’t the money that drove my shadow man. It was the challenge. He couldn’t help himself when there was a puzzle laid out in front of him. He needed to piece it all together.

Now it was just a matter of determining what about Emily piqued the doctor’s interests. What he wanted to fix—or break further—and see what he was willing to do to get his hands on it. Which meant I needed to keep the girl close, closer than just working in the same building as me.

“Ms. Shaw, I’d like to see you in my office now.”

Emily stared at me for a moment longer, almost as if she were in a daze.

“That wasn’t a request,” I urged her, not bothering to look back and see if she was following me. Like I said, the girl was na?ve, but she wasn’t stupid.

I dropped what was left of my cigar into my empty tumbler, the embers dying out as soon as they hit the ice, and smiled to myself.

I liked smoking Adrian’s Cubans almost as much as I enjoyed finishing his bottle of Michter’s.

They were small comforts when everything else seemed to be falling apart around me.

And so was this club. The anonymity of it, the way I could be someone and no one at the same time.

I pushed my glass forward and pivoted on my stool. Glancing to the other side of the room but not staring. It had been an hour, going on two. Me sitting at the bar and him positioned at his usual booth in the corner. Each of us alone, together.

I knew where he was, and I could sense him tracking my movements. Signaling the bartender every time my drink was empty. Just a wave of a hand that had the staff all doing his bidding.

I guess I couldn’t blame them. I remembered what that hand could do.

What it used to be able to do. What I wished it could do again.

But not much had changed over the years.

I traded orgasms for work and pills for liquor.

It was a way for me to lose control and maintain it at the same time.

For me to loosen up without losing myself entirely.

When I looked up again, as tempted to cross the room as I was to leave it, he was gone. My cue that our little game had ended prematurely.

Pity, seeing as I was feeling generous tonight.

And not because he deserved it. He didn’t.

But I did. I deserved the feeling of bringing him to his knees.

Of reminding him that he only got what I was willing to give him.

That he might be able to take but so could I.

And I had no problem adding to that box I kept on my mantle. No problem cutting lower if I had to.

I dropped a hefty tip on the bar, only to have it immediately shoved in my direction. I shoved it back, grabbed my coat, and headed for the door.

The night air barely had a chance to kiss my cheeks, my mask tucked under an arm and my hair slapping my face, before the bite of the brick wall was scraping against my exposed skin.

My favorite dress bunching at the hem as Adrian’s tongue pried my lips apart.

Fucking my mouth like I knew it could fuck my cunt.

I pulled away enough to glare at him. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” I hissed, my breath coming out in white puffs. Hot mixing with the cold.

“Same thing we’ve both been thinking about for the last two hours,” he grunted, and then he was on me again.