Page 83 of Undeniably Corrupt

Stone: And your parents, Vander.

Right. On both of those accounts.

Me: Not exactly my style.

Owen: Admit you love her and end both your suffering. She won’t run then.

Me: Again, not my style.

Owen: No, you’re more the suffer-in-silence type, and for the record, you didn’t deny that you love her.

Me: I’m a criminal and she’s a single mom.

Stone: Your mom married your dad, who is in the same line of work as you are.

Me: My mom was also a billionaire heiress and a midwife.

Mason: Shit. You’re actually thinking about all of this.

Am I? I sigh. Yeah, I am. I always have with her. Even when we were kids, I was. We weren’t going to end, and then Cassian died, and I blamed myself for not being there to stop him when I should have been, and he never wanted me with her, and I don’t know.

Me: There’s a fake FBI agent working for her father who knows a lot more about me than he should. I’m also nearly positive he’s more than just a hired goon. But I can’t find anything on her father. Not even a speeding ticket, if you know what I mean, and she has no communication with him. Something isn’t right. She’s keeping something major from me.

Or maybe I need to dig harder than I have been. I’ve been holding back because it’s her and it felt like I was continuing to invade her privacy and space, and my father told me to take it slow. Maybe I’m going too slow, though.

Owen: All the more reason to keep her close.

“You know, even with your hot, nerdy glasses on, I can still see you staring at me.”

Busted. I grin. “Wasn’t trying to hide it.”

“Well, you can stop anytime.”

“Probably when I’m dead then.”

She makes a noise in the back of her throat as she continues to work on her paper on her new laptop.

“You think my glasses make me look hot?”

“And nerdy,” she adds as if I forgot that part, which I hadn’t.

“Mama, Mama.” Hazel comes over holding a doll. “Sally is hungry.”

“Sally just had lunch an hour ago.”

Hazel shakes her head. “No. She’s hungry now.”

Liora sighs and goes to set her laptop aside when I climb off my stool. “Hazel, do you like cookies?”

Liora’s tiny doppelganger blinks at me. Thank God she looks like Liora. If she looked anything like her biological father, I’d have to not only ruin him financially as I’m doing but also fly to Italy and kill him with my bare hands.

Admittedly, I have a problem.

“Cookies!” Hazel screams in delight, and Liora throws me a look. Crap. I likely should have asked her mother first. Too late now, and the woman hates me anyway.

“Want to bake some with me?”

“You know how to bake cookies?” Liora throws at me.