Page 25 of Twisted Trust

“Levi,” Chip says quickly, and there’s alarm in his tone. “It’s not what?—”

I’m moving before I’ve even processed the thought.

My hand collides with Maeve’s shoulder and I shove her back into the elevator, following just in time for the doors to close behind me.

Her cry of indignation barely reaches me as my heart pounds so loudly in my ears that I’m deaf to everything other than the screech of the elevator brakes when I hit the emergency stop.

“Let me out,” Maeve demands immediately.

She surges toward the floor panel but I’m quicker.

My arm loops around her waist and I shove her back against the back wall, caging her in with one arm above her head.

“Levi, let me out! There are cameras in here, you know. Everything you do will be recorded!”

Her voice is high-pitched and strained and she genuinely seems to think such a threat will sway me.

Cameras mean nothing, video proof means nothing.

A click of my fingers and the footage will never have existed.

“The fuck are you doing here?” I snap, bringing my face within an inch of hers. “Seeing you once after all these years is something I’d accept as a fucking coincidence, but twice?”

“I fucking work here,” she snarls, slamming both her hands into my chest and shoving at me, but it does nothing to dislodge me from blocking her in against the wall.

“Fuck off.” She’s right.

When her arm falls, I glimpse the name badge pinned to her blouse just above the rise of her bosom.Maeve, Head Event Coordinator. “Fucking hell, you actually found something to commit to for longer than a summer.”

“Fuck you,” she spits.

Her anger burns as hot as mine and the heat inside the elevator rises, but she’s scared.

I can see it in the way her lower lip trembles, how her eyes constantly dart between me and the elevator control panel, how sweat beads her temple and each breath she drags in is short and sharp.

“I already did, remember?” My eyes narrow. “You’ve got some nerve showing up here.”

“At my place of work?” Despite her anger, her voice wobbles slightly. “God forbid a girl earns a paycheck.”

“Is that all you’re doing?”

When I knew her, she was never the honest paycheck kind of woman.

She was frantic and exciting, preferring to travel and party more than anything else.

The perfect kind of free person to work on a party yacht.

Event coordinator sounds too stuffy for a woman like her. “You running some kind of scam, is that it? Trying to pull one over on all the poor sods that cross your path?”

“Fuck you,” Maeve snarls again, then her knee suddenly collides hard with my crotch.

Pain explodes through my balls and up through my lower gut.

As my knees weaken, I’m forced to stumble backward and Maeve once again lunges for the elevator panel.

I stumble, gasping as the sharp blow to my balls sends a blast of tension right up to my chest and I almost can’t breathe.

Just as her fingers make contact with the control panel, I spin and grab her by the arm.