Page 37 of XOXO, Little Butterfly (The Storyteller’s Bodyguard #2)
Butterfly Man
Manipulation. Intimidation. Deceit. Bribery. Blackmail. Shank. My list goes on and on. Top ways to take care of scumbags like Shane Fletcher and Blake Abel.
Like Tristan Morra.
I’m guessing the man with the motorcycle didn’t get Reagan’s ex-husband a tablet out of the goodness of his heart.
What is his plan? Manipulation. Morra makes Shane believe he’s a philanthropist to gain his trust. Intimidation.
Morra pretends to be someone he’s not, someone with leverage that intimidates Shane to leave Reagan alone.
Deceit. Morra pretends to be a liaison of Blake, his lawyer maybe, to get Shane to spill whatever the fuck he’s planning with Blake.
Bribery. Morra offers Shane a better deal than Blake’s.
Blackmail. Morra bugs the tablet, tracks Shane, and gathers any information he can use to blackmail Shane into silence.
All of these ideas came to me first. They say great minds think alike, but you’re not great. Obviously, you’re a copycat. You’re trying to be me to get her attention since you’ve failed to get it any other way.
Whether you like it or not, Reagan likes me more than she’ll ever like you. She wants me more than she’ll ever want you.
She will love me, never you.
“Because unlike you, I don’t waste time with fruitless plans. I’d have given you credit if, let’s say,” I retrieve Blake’s mirrored device on my computer, “you’d figured out a way to open that fucking dead man’s switch app without triggering it.”
It was easy to get my hands on his phone.
The tricky part was to clone it without Blake noticing.
The text from the cheater was only a door, but I needed to enter through without making any noise.
Lucky for me, Blake and I had someone in common, someone we could charm into doing anything for us, like dropping her pants and betraying her best friend’s trust, like slipping Blake drugs to borrow, for a few minutes, his other phone where he saved the authenticator app that opened the dead man’s switch app…
Oh, Gia. I understand why she helped me. After Reagan explained what kind of monster Blake was, Gia wanted revenge. She didn’t need any convincing to steal his phone for me. What I couldn’t understand was how she’d thought for a second I’d have spared her life.
I mean, yeah, she was trying to redeem herself, but doing one thing in my pretty little butterfly’s favor isn’t enough.
You should have thought about that when you spread your legs for that motherfucker, Gia.
You should have known that your soul was the only price I’d take for redemption.
I lean back in my chair behind my desk, sighing, “What a shame.”
You know what else is a shame? Blake Abel being a smart piece of shit.
Not smart enough to stay loyal to the most beautiful, intelligent, creative and kind woman in the world or treasure and protect her instead of hurting her, or say no to drugs.
But smart to turn this fucking app into a fort even I can’t infiltrate.
With every step I take to get closer to retrieving the message he’s hidden in there, I find another obstacle. The authenticator was enough to open the first layer of security, but to get to the message or the interception settings, he’s made sure no one, but him in person, can.
I’ve thought about sending the cloned phone to Reagan to show her I’m on track, but that will give the man with the motorcycle access to it. I doubt he can do any better with it, if not worse. He cloned Shane’s tablet for fuck’s sake.
“Can’t you see? Manipulation. Intimidation. Deceit. Bribery. Blackmail. They don’t work here. While Blake clings to a trump card that lets him slither through another day, Shane doesn’t. Because for vermin like Shane, I opt for shank.”