Chapter Four #5
and out of hospitals and chemo and radiation. She’d been declared cured at the
age of seventeen but stayed close to her parents for college. She’d worked for
McKay-Taggart for half a year, and then at Top for a while before her uncle
offered her a job as his assistant.
Vivian knew the decision to go to London had caused a lot of
tension in Sophy’s family, but in the end Sophy’s parents had bought her a
gorgeous penthouse condo and came in frequently, allowing their daughter the
freedom she desperately needed.
“I can see that. Tarquin is about as far from my dad and the
uncles as a man can be.” He cared about his wardrobe and public in a way that
had formed a love triangle. She’d been in a love triangle with a British aristocrat
and his own image. And she’d lost.
“And Malcolm Mays is not. Not if he’s hiring on here and you
met him at a club.”
“Don’t get that in your head. I’m serious. The man is a
walking red flag.” And he was gorgeous. And she felt for him.
“Then why did you pick not one but two vanilla guys after
the night with him?” Sophy asked.
She sighed. Sometimes it sucked to have a bestie who had
been around long enough to know which questions to ask. “I enjoyed his
discipline. I didn’t enjoy his humiliation. I don’t think he was trying to do
that, but the effect was the same. And now it seems he’s had some kind of
accident.”
“Accident?”
“I didn’t fully read his file,” Vivian admitted. “I’m sure
I’ll get the gist at some point, but it was bad enough that he lost a leg. I
noticed it. He immediately accused me of… I don’t even know what he was
accusing me of but he was angry.”
From what she could tell, Malcolm Mays was always angry.
Sophy whistled. “Do you want me to figure out how to get rid
of him?”
Sophy had learned a lot from her uncle, including inventive
ways of making problems go away. There was a part of her that wanted to say
yes, please use your incredible connections and wild amounts of cash to protect
my peace.
She didn’t. “No, I think he needs this place as much as I
do.”
“But you were here first.”
Sophy always had her back. “I don’t think we’ll see much of
each other. From what I can tell Damon is bringing him in for his military
skills. He worked some intelligence, I think. That means he’ll likely work with
the MI6 team and not hang around the office.”
“Oliver’s mentioned him like a thousand times, though he
didn’t say anything about him hiring on,” Sophy admitted. “Which is weird
because he really likes to talk, but lately he’s been all about the club. I
think we finally fixed the mouse problem.” Sophy managed the club when Oliver
wasn’t around. Which actually meant she coordinated the numerous work projects
being done on the building. “No idea how the little buggers are getting in.
Oliver spent thousands on pest control. I adopted a cat.”
“Nice.” Her bestie was a problem solver.
“I talked to Lucy and she suggested getting a barn cat or
rather a club cat,” Sophy explained. “She’s adorable and apparently a vicious
predator. A little like the woman who inspired me to adopt her.”
A chuckle came from the door and there was Lucy Brooke
Flanders. “Told you. A cat is going to work much better than a shit ton of
chemicals that will only make people sick. And the earth. It doesn’t have to be
a cat. I have a friend in Virginia who has a barn snake. Big guy. Does a great
job.”
Sophy’s eyes went wide. “We are not getting a club snake.”
“And yet we have so many of them,” Vivian quipped because it
was true. There were a couple of mean girls. Oh, they were perfectly sweet
around the Doms, and not a one of them saw through
their acts, but Vivian wouldn’t mind getting whatever liked to eat mean girls
as pest control.
“I’m pretty sure I worked with the new guy. I annoyed him.
Is he an MI6 agent?” Lucy asked. “He’s worked with Oliver before, right?”
Vivian nodded and hoped her cheeks weren’t pink. “Yes. From
what I can tell he’s being hired by Damon to help with the team, but he’s not
MI6 himself. Seems like a competent hire.”
Lucy’s eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head. “You slept
with him.”
Nope. They were totally pink now. “You can’t know that.”
Lucy suddenly grinned. “Of course I can. I’m a spy. I
listened in. Rude, I know, but Damon was saying something to Ariel about you
acting weird. We need to talk about your performance. I can give you tips. Come
on. Let’s get some lunch and we can talk. That dude looks like trouble. Like
Shakespearean trouble. He radiates it. I would bet my sister would faint if he
walked by. And then she would try to save him. And then I would have to kill
him.”
Lucy loved her sister, but she was fairly certain Lucy
thought Poppy was a saint walking the earth and she herself was the demon sent
to protect her.
But she wasn’t wrong about Malcolm.
She knew his name. Malcolm. It suited him. He didn’t suit
her. She stood. It would be good to get out of the building for a while. “That
would be fun. I have a case I can go over with you.”
Lucy’s head fell back on a groan. “Girl, you have this great
degree and this posh office with air conditioning. Why do you want to be in the
field? You would be shocked at the lack of air conditioning here in Europe. You
aren’t ready. Also, cobblestones suck to run on.”
Vivian didn’t like the sound of that. She was going to be a
more stationary spy. “I’m not planning on running.”
“Oh, there’s always running. You need cardio before you play
spy games,” Lucy chided. “You should start training with me.”
Actually, that wasn’t a terrible idea. “I would like that
and some advanced self-defense training. I’m presenting a case to the team
tomorrow. I want to be ready if I need to go into the field.”
“You’ll have a bodyguard,” Sophy added. And then leaned in.
“Tell me you’ll have a bodyguard.”
“She will have a bodyguard,” Lucy said, and the words
sounded like a promise. Or a threat. It was hard to tell with Lucy.
“I have to get a case through first.” Vivian grabbed her
bag. “So let’s get started.”
Sophy stood, groaning lightly. “I wanted to gossip.”
“We can do that, too,” Lucy promised. “But I think Viv needs
to understand that getting a case through isn’t as easy as it sounds. Damon
only takes like ten percent. I’ve brought cases and gotten turned down.
Assholes. They didn’t think we should spend company money figuring out who was
running a dog fighting ring in South London. Apparently that’s something the
police do, but the police weren’t. It’s okay. I found them. They won’t do it
again.”
Sophy passed a look that said everything Vivian was
thinking.
They’re probably dead and being fed to Lucy’s pigs on the
Welsh farm.
She followed her friends out and tried to forget about
Malcolm Mays.