35. Addie
ADDIE
PARAMORE – MISERY BUSINESS
I suppressed a scowl for the fiftieth fucking time since sitting down at this bar, listening to the discordant waves of saxophone, piano, and electric guitar as they assaulted my eardrums. I’d never liked smooth jazz—it was too inconsistent.
Too unpredictable. The notes my mind predicted were never the notes the musicians chose to play, and I was left reeling with the itching, jaw-clenching vexation of an unfulfilled melody.
But jazz was a common selection for high-end hotel bars.
Something about it just seemed to scream sophistication—or the pretence of it, anyway.
Or maybe it was that it was essentially aural wallpaper.
A complementary backdrop to conversations about money, business, or both.
Something that didn't detract from the rich making deals to get richer.
It was always more, more, more with these people. And I hated that some small part of me still felt unworthy of sitting at their bar, in their fancy hotel, in their designer clothes. That a scrap of my soul felt like I wasn’t worthy of their attention, however fleeting it might be.
Like I wasn’t actually the wolf within their flock of sheep.
The bartender placed a glass of something disgusting, fizzy, and golden in front of me, and I nodded my thanks.
Ugh, champagne.
I hated their fancy wine, too. Everything about this place—this assignment—chafed at me. But it was a role to play. A job to do. One I was being paid for, though the Academy would take the larger cut.
“You’re slumping, Ice Queen.” Hunter Beckett’s deep drawl sounded in my left ear, where the communication device I had almost forgotten about sat.
My gaze flicked up to the hotel’s security camera above the bar, the lens I was certain my boys were watching me from, in the nondescript Ford Transit parked down the block. I switched hands, readjusted my grip on the flute, and unironically flipped them off as I took my first sip.
Faint snickers buzzed through the comms as carbonation fizz danced across the tip of my nose, tickling it. The bubbles’ tiny caresses taunted me, mocking me with their implied joy.
Champagne was for celebrating. Everyone knew that.
But tonight was no celebration—at least, not for me.
And though it was technically a new job which should warrant celebratory champagne, and I was actually outside the Academy’s walls for the first time in almost two years, I didn’t feel any joy at the prospect of what I had to do to earn more nights out—to earn my team more nights out—or to earn every breath that passed through my lungs from here on out.
My mark didn’t need to know all that, though. The six-foot, solidly-built business tycoon had already clocked me sitting here—supposedly stood-up—in that very same ruby-red gown Beck had almost ruined.
He’d noticed, because I’d engineered it.
I had assaulted three out of five of his senses in a matter of minutes, drawing him in with the desire to experience more.
More, more, more.
I had entered the lounge just after nine in the evening, my Louboutins striking the tiles in sure, sharp strides.
The ca-clack, ca-clack, ca-clack of my sexy red soles—the ones Beck hand-selected—tapped out the cadence of my pace like the opening beats of a song.
A song that wasn’t at all drawn out and contradictory like jazz—thus, targeting my mark’s audition.
Where others were chaos, I was fluidity and predictability. And clad in an unadorned gown of deep, blood red, I stood out in the sea of endless beige.
Beige walls, beige furniture, beige people.
Targeting his vision.
My path to the bar was direct and just so happened to breeze right past him—just as my team manufactured, unbeknownst to the mark, of course.
But that straight shot allowed my rich, satin skirts to stir up the expensive-smelling musk-and-lilac perfume Stanley picked out specifically for these missions.
Olfaction.
Targeting sound, sight, and smell in tandem was usually enough to draw them in, under the guise that any further knowledge-seeking was their own idea and of their own volition. At least, in theory. I’d never tested it out in the field before.
I motioned to the bartender for another drink.
While I waited, knowing my mark was watching, I crossed one sun-kissed leg over the other in a move that had the slit in my skirt falling open, exposing the bare expanse of my right thigh.
I made no move to pick up the fabric, though, just curled my fingers around the flute stem of another mocking dose of champagne and tipped it back, too.
Might as well be a little inebriated before this next part.
I felt his eyes track the movement with predatory focus, confirming as much in my periphery. We were swiftly heading into Phase Two, and my heartbeat picked up, anxious at the knowledge of what was to come.
Since finding out about the hastiness of my first mission, Mercy, Ida, and I had undergone a crash course in Swallow training. And that training dictated we do three things on any given mission: lure, song, silence.
Lure them in, get them to sing, then—well, it didn’t take a genius to work out Phase Three.
It just so happened that sitting at a bar drinking champagne was a textbook execution of Phase One: Lure.
“Ensnare their senses, Sinclair,” Marie had drummed in.
Yes—the very same Marie who took a sick sort of pleasure in stripping every errant hair from my body in as painful a way as possible.
That Marie was also, somehow, the seduction instructor—though she was about as appealing as a barbed-wire anal plug.
But she drilled routine into us so well in a single day that it was now second nature to glide through a semi-crowded hotel lounge at 9:02 p.m., be seated at the bar by 9:03, pretend to be waiting for someone who doesn’t show for the next twenty minutes, then ask for a drink and have it in hand by 9:25—all while angling my best side to my keen-eyed mark, who rose to his feet, buttoned his suit jacket, left his companions watching curiously, and perched on the conveniently empty stool beside me by 9:28.
Twenty-six minutes. That was all it took to complete Phase One.
Henry Lewis had taken the bait—hook, line, and sinker.
“Who was he?” fish boy asked, opening the conversation dancefloor with a leading question. “The poor chump who screwed his chances with you?”
I peered at him over the rim of my glass, taking another long sip before I replied. His eyes tracked every movement, homing in on the sweep of my tongue across my red-painted lip as it chased the errant drop of wine left behind.
“Who said anything about there being another poor chump?” I answered his question with a question, earning a quick scolding from the handler in my ear when I uttered the next part, raising my glass in a sarcastic salute. “There’s one already seated beside me.”
“Adelaide!”
But Lewis, living up to the mantle of the man I’d pegged him to be, curled his lips in a smooth grin and lifted his glass to clink against mine. “Touché, sweetheart.”
I barely concealed the stomach-churning disgust at his casual use of the term of endearment.
I bet he calls all the ladies sweetheart so he doesn’t have to bother remembering any of their names.
“I admire a woman with sharp wit”—he leaned in, reeking of cigar smoke and whisky—“and sharper words. My friends do, too. Would you care to join us? Maybe use that tongue of yours to put one or two of them in their place?”
He eyed me with all masculine ego and suave pride, picked up the fresh tumbler of whisky the bartender had wordlessly placed in front of him, and rose smoothly—waiting.
“Why not all three?” I murmured back.
“And that’s a go,” Van remarked, his tone emotionless and unaffected. And somehow that stung more than if he had been affected by the situation.
Brushing off the pang of hurt, I stood—more steady than I felt—and took Lewis’ proffered arm. He led me over to his lecherous circle of friends, eyeing me like I was a lamb being led to the proverbial slaughter.
Silly men—didn’t they know they were the lambs and I was the slaughter?
Lewis dropped into his previously vacated leather armchair, the one placed with its back to a wall so that he could keep watch over the whole room—and no one could sneak up on him from behind.
Clever man. But unfortunately, cleverness would only get him so far, since the real danger was staring him right in the eye.
Lewis, having no doubt already realised there were only four seats in this corner and five asses to fill them, smiled.
It didn’t reach his eyes, though they did gleam for an entirely different reason.
He leaned back, resting both arms on the armrests like a king on a throne—but not before patting his left leg in audacious invitation.
Expecting me to sit like some obedient pup.
I’m no fucking dog, but I will bite.
“Thanks, but I think I’ll stand,” I murmured, popping a hip and tossing my immaculate Hollywood waves over one shoulder—thank you, Gina.
“Look out, Boss, we got ourselves a live one,” one of his companions leered, extending his arms and grabby fingers out like he was about to wrench me down onto his own lap.
Before he could, however, I stepped out of reach, overbalancing by mistake. The entire contents of my champagne glass tipped over onto Mr. Sleazeball’s front, ruining what I was sure was a Very Expensive Shirt that probably cost more than I’d ever made waitressing in a month.
“You fucking bitch!” he hollered, leaping to his feet and raising a fist like he intended to land a sloppy right hook.
“Randall!” Lewis snarled, stalling his companion. “Go clean yourself up.”
Wait staff immediately mopped up the champagne like it had never existed in the first place, before Henry Lewis could even deign to acknowledge them. Not that he would. They were invisible to people like him.
“And Miss…?” His cold, dark eyes turned on me, juxtaposed by his polished grin.
“Ward,” I answered stiffly, a muscle flickering in my jaw.
“Miss Ward. Please have a seat. Randall won’t be needing it.”
His other two companions hid their existential dread behind their whisky glasses, leaving me to occupy Lewis’ sole attention.
Fine by me.
“Does Miss Ward have a first name?” he all but purred.
“Katarina,” I answered in a practised sultry tone. A tone, Marie said, was designed expertly to make a man think about what other sounds I could make in the bedroom.
“And is Miss Katarina Ward here for business… or pleasure?”
Okay, he definitely purred that time—and had the balls to try and x-ray vision my kitty.
“Miss Katarina Ward,” I mimicked, perfectly echoing the rolling of the r’s, “is here for a job.”
“Adelaide,” Hunter warned.
“Ah, a job. Hmm.” Lewis took the opportunity to slide his oily gaze down the length of my body and back up again. “I wonder what line of work someone as beautiful as you might be in.”
A snort rolled through the comms and I couldn’t help but wonder which of the three it originated from.
I flashed Lewis a dazzling smile—one I’d much preferred to have given any one of my handlers—and leaned in, just enough to give him a clear line of sight down my propped-up cleavage.
“The kind that leaves men breathless,” I whispered with a wink, letting my real amusement show when a guffaw thundered through my left eardrum.
Whoever was front and centre on the mic got a real kick out of that one.
But Lewis, a man accustomed to people putting on shows for his benefit, assumed my smile was just for him—and as much as it sickened me to do so, I let him. He leaned in as well, finally brave enough to take what he wanted, and slid his palm up my exposed thigh.
Tactition, check. One sense to go.
“You don’t say,” he mused. “And what, exactly, would a night with you cost a man like me?”
I craned my neck, exposing it, and whispered back. “More than you could afford, I’m afraid.” Then I withdrew with his whisky glass in hand, subconsciously prompting his last remaining sense—gustation, or taste—to want more.
It was the only one left, and I knew he was salivating at the thought.
Good.
I finished his drink off, shot him a smirk, and placed the lipstick-stained glass on the mahogany table in the centre. Just where he could see it, study it, wonder what else I could leave lipstick kisses on.
Before he had a chance to stutter any coherent response, I stood up and sauntered over to the bar and signalled to the bartender.
“What are you doing, Deadly?” Dek hummed in my ear, eliciting exactly the type of bodily response Lewis thought he was capable of.
“Wait for it,” I murmured back. “In three, two…”
A body pressed in on my left as a rough hand groped my right ass cheek.
“One.” Dek finished for me. “Nicely done.”
“What kind of game are you playing, Katarina?” Lewis asked, voice low and grating.
“I think you’ll find games are beneath me. I was just ordering you another drink,” I said, twisting slightly to reveal the fresh—expensive—whisky the bartender had placed in front of me.
He chuckled. “You shouldn’t have, sweetheart.
I think I’ve had enough alcohol for one evening.
I find I’m craving something sweeter.” He squeezed my ass again.
“I don’t know who was dumb enough to stand you up tonight, but I am more than happy to fill the gap in your schedule.
And you’re already dressed for the occasion anyway,” he drawled, relinquishing his hold on my ass to sweep my hair over my shoulder.
Then he leaned in, brushing his lips across the side of my neck as he spoke and I had to fight the violent wave of nausea it unleashed. “Name your price and I’ll double it.”
And so begins Phase Two.