Hunter
I’ve walked these halls enough times to be able to do it with my eyes shut.
Day or night, I know my way around. Having Xavier beside me is a novelty, though.
Worlds colliding. Considering their history, I’m not so sure that having Xavier and Sebastian in the same room again is a good idea.
If Jericho ever finds out about this, he’ll disown me.
“Are you sure your lawyer will help us?” Xavier asks. If I didn’t know him as well as I do, I would have missed the light tremor to his tone.
“I don’t plan on giving him a choice,” I reply mildly, glancing at him. He’s not wrong to be nervous after everything that happened. However, “asking” has never been part of my arrangement with Sebastian.
Xavier gives me a look that sends a heat flush running over me. “Careful, sweetheart, you’re turning me on.”
He says that like it’s difficult. Physical attraction—even emotional attraction—has never been our problem.
Our issues go deeper than that, infecting everything.
Only now, instead of just the poison that I willingly drank, even when it was bad for me, there’s a flutter of something else at this point. Something better. Hope.
After all these years, a happy ending seems too much to hope for. But it’s sitting there all the same. Waiting for me to hold it and allow it to grow. I’m scared to want that.
“Follow my lead,” I murmur, watching him out of the corner of my eye.
He checks his tie and slides a hand down his front. “Always.”
That shouldn’t affect me the way that it does, after all these years.
No matter how much I try to bury it, Xavier will always make me feel exactly what he did the day we met.
That blooming love, palpable excitement every time I see him.
It never goes away. Our first day, every day.
Love is supposed to settle into something warm and comfortable.
Nothing with Xavier has ever been settled, emotions always running high. I doubt that will ever change.
As soon as we reach the hallway that leads to Sebastian’s office, his assistant spots me.
Her instincts are impressive, her loyalty even more so.
I’d have poached her if I thought she’d be amenable.
She’d never leave Sebastian, even when her face twists like she wants to find the nearest window and throw him out of it.
It’s a face I’m familiar with, as it’s the only one that’s ever directed at me.
The second person in this firm that I would bring to the table also belongs to Sebastian.
Caleb Denver is intelligent, shrewd, and incredibly stubborn.
All traits that I admire and look for in my team.
Not to mention that he’s a beautiful specimen of a man.
All sharp lines and vibrant eyes. I’ve been tempted by him before as a brief flirtation, nothing more.
I enjoy verbally sparring with him, and I know he’d be just as sharp and fiery in bed.
I also know that if I’d wanted to do it in the years that I’ve been acquainted with him, it wouldn’t take more than a single push to get him naked.
He’s not someone that has an interest in a serious relationship, and for a long time, neither was I.
Despite all of that, I’ve never asked, he’s never offered, and it’s not a place either of us will go. It would mean nothing to me, and that’s simply not how I’m built. Even if I’d gone against myself and done it anyway, it wouldn’t have been him I saw.
Pointless and meaningless. An empty mirage.
He’s a pretty bauble to look at, and that’s all.
Nothing could ever compare to the way that Xavier takes my soul apart, or the way that Miles sinks in like caramel melting in coffee, or the way that Matthew quietly finds himself a space, belonging without needing to say a word—though he says plenty.
After the last few days, I look at Caleb and feel absolutely nothing, everything eclipsed by the three men who spent last night in my home.
Monica’s face sours further as we approach.
“He’s busy,” she says flatly, eyes darting between us like she’s figuring out who she wants to stab with her pen first.
“Oh, he’s never too busy for me,” I reply casually, dismissing her attempt to dissuade me.
It hasn’t worked before, and it won’t now.
If Sebastian didn’t want to deal with me, he should have made different choices a long time ago.
He signed on the dotted line, and I’m not a good enough person that I would set him free.
Not when he’s so useful to me. “Should I open the door, or will you do it for me?”
She stiffens, lips pursing. “You’re not welcome here.”
“I’m always welcome here.” I’ve been here longer than she has.
Besides, if she wants to direct her ire somewhere, perhaps she should look closer to home, to the very detective that put Sebastian in my path in the first place.
I never once sugarcoated what I wanted from the then-rookie lawyer, or what I could give in return. He chose to be here.
She leans back in her chair, raising her eyebrow in an eerily similar way to her boss. She doesn’t move, giving me nothing. I bet she’s a wonderful chess player.
Sebastian is alone in his office, hunched over his laptop, glasses perched on the tip of his nose. He absently pushes them back up, a habit rather than a conscious movement.
“That’s terrible for your posture.”
He briefly lifts his gaze to me. “I’ll take it under advisement.”
While I wait for him to finish whatever he’s doing and accept that I’m not going away, I make myself comfortable on the couch, holding my jacket closed as I sit.
Xavier stands beside me, a silent protector. It should bother me that he thinks I need it, when he knows exactly what I’ve been through, and what I’m capable of. Instead, it’s warmth, spreading like having a hot drink on a winter morning.
Sebastian rubs his eyebrow, thumb flicking over his piercing. “What are you doing here?”
“I have a job for you.”
He ignores that and looks to Xavier. “You look familiar.”
“We’ve met,” Xavier replies lightly. “I’m surprised you remember any of it.”
He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Xavier Alicent. Of course. You kidnapped me.”
“It entirely depends on your definition of the situation.” Xavier shifts, placing a hand on my shoulder. Proprietary. Ownership. “I merely assisted.”
I go to push him off, tell him that this is no place for that kind of posturing. Except the moment our fingers touch, everything else disappears, and I find myself clinging to him. Needing him. I can’t escape that feeling, of a hollowness inside me only he can fill.
Sebastian gives Xavier the once-over, barely looking at where we’re touching.
He gives a self-deprecating half shrug. “Most people don’t agree with my definition of things.
That’s why I’m a lawyer.” He pushes back on his chair and stands, smoothing down his jacket.
“I have something for you.” He opens the top drawer of his desk, pulls out an envelope, and drops it on top of a stack of papers. “This is yours.”
Xavier’s?
“I believe it has your name on it,” Xavier says neutrally, not moving.
My curiosity is piqued, and I rise from the couch to pick it up since no one else seems to want to. Settling back down, I slide out the single sheet of paper inside. A cheque. With a lot of zeros. I shoot Xavier a sardonic look, and he just gives me a half smile in return. “Overcompensating, X?”
“Paying my dues.”
“I don’t need your money,” Sebastian says flatly.
“Neither do I. Keep it, throw it out, donate it; I don’t care what you do with it.”
Sebastian’s jaw twitches. “Fine,” he bites out. “Our business is concluded; get out.”
I chuckle and lean back on the couch, spreading my knees. “Don’t be rude, Sebastian. You know it doesn’t work like that.”
“I don’t work for you anymore. There’s the door; use it.”
“Not your call.” It’s amusing that he thinks he gets to make the shots, or that he’ll ever not work for me.
He sold his soul, and I have no intention of giving it back.
For Jericho’s sake, I’ll at least be a little gentler with it.
Regardless, I have work for him. “I have a job for you, and it takes precedence over anything else that you have on your desk.”
“Is Jericho in jail again?” he asks sarcastically. “I told him he should have stayed home today.”
“Not this time.” Still strange to hear “home” being referenced with my brother and not having it be the one I shared with him. It does remind me to rearrange his old room again and send a picture. So that he knows I’ve moved on.
“What do you want?”
“A man named Terry Inman was arrested at four-thirteen p.m. yesterday. He’s currently being held in custody.”
Sebastian narrows his eyes at me. He leans back in his chair and laces his fingers over his chest. “What do you want with him?”
“Him leaving the prison, at three sharp today.”
“I don’t perform miracles.”
“We both know that’s a lie.”
Sebastian scowls and pushes his glasses back up his nose. “What do you want with him?”
“Now, now, that’s not part of our arrangement,” I say lightly.
The less he knows, the safer he is, and it’s that simple.
Ignorance is bliss as they say. He doesn’t need to know my business or be involved in the things I deal with.
He does what I ask, and in return, when he needs to dig deeper, I give him access to all the vast resources I have at my beck and call.
“Now it is,” Sebastian says flatly. “I’m not doing anything blind for you anymore.”
I share a look with Xavier, who raises a brow at me as if to say, Well, your move, darling. I can hear each word enunciated perfectly. Infuriating man.
“We’re looking for a man; Terry knows where he is.”
Sebastian lets out a sharp laugh. “When I say ‘not blind,’ I don’t mean blurred vision. Try again.”
“It’s the truth.”
“I don’t doubt it. But if you think I’ll let you give me a crumb like that and leave it alone, then you’re not the man I thought you were.” He tilts his head. “This has something to do with Roger Vickers.”
“Jericho still has a big mouth, I see,” Xavier murmurs.
“Careful,” Sebastian warns. “I don’t have to give you anything. He doesn’t keep secrets from me, and you won’t insult him in front of me when he isn’t here to put you down himself.”
For the defence of my brother alone, Sebastian can have whatever information he wants.
“Yes,” I say, before Xavier can respond.
That path will only lead somewhere aggravating for us all.
For all his suave swagger, he’s not always the best communicator.
“We can’t find him, so we’re looking for the next best thing: his head of a security and right-hand man. ”
“And this Terry knows where to find him?”
“That’s the theory.”
Sebastian sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “Alright. Three o’clock. Do you need me to—”
“No. Someone will be there to pick him up.” Six and Moira will take care of it.
Sebastian rubs his eyebrow again. He does that when he’s particularly aggravated about something. The ire is directed at me, I’m sure. I don’t care as long as he gets me what I want.
It’s time to put an end to the man who thinks he can threaten me, or the people I care about, and get away with it. He disturbed the beehive and found a hornets’ nest instead.