Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
NELL
Ididn't dream of wolves last night. But I did wake up with the ghost of Magnus Blackwood on my lips. Along with the clinical awareness that I had almost made a very satisfying mistake.
The man had taken command of my mouth like a hostile takeover; swift, total, and structured so that by the time I understood what was happening, resistance was no longer a viable strategy.
One hand at the small of my back, pulling me flush against him.
The other buried in my hair — and here was the thing, the thing I was going to need a moment with — I had not protested that.
I did not tolerate strangers touching my hair. My locs were not some novelty or exotic thing. I'd had to slap many a curious hand away. Magnus, though. He had snared that big hand of his in my hair, palmed my scalp, tugged at my interlocked tresses, and I had not said a single word of protest.
Nope. I'd moaned. I'd angled my head to give him more access. More access to my crown. More access to my body. More access to my mouth.
He had mastered me with a kiss that was focused, unhurried, and hungry. I pressed my thighs together. Because if that was what he did with his mouth standing up in a garden, he would likely devastate me horizontal with his lips at my core.
He hadn't come back last night.
I had lain awake longer than I was going to admit, waiting for the sound of the door.
It had not come, and at some point the waiting had become sleep, and the sleep had become morning, and Magnus Blackwood was still off running a pack war somewhere while I was in bed dreaming about his oral capabilities.
I sat up. The window showed early light. The window of opportunity was closing. Once we were back in the city, back in the building with both our names on it, back in the clean transactional territory of business partners and asset management, this became a different conversation entirely.
I was serious when I said I did not mix business and pleasure. I didn't shit where I slept. I didn't fuck where I filed my reports. If Magnus didn't hurry back and fuck me fast — and hard — the window of opportunity would be closed.
I was standing at the window in yesterday's slip, watching the Blackwood estate's grounds staff move through the early morning with the silent coordination of people who were definitely not just grounds staff, when the knock came.
I did a quick assessment. Hair — acceptable. Lips, already slightly parted. Slip — doing what God and a lack of better options intended.
I pulled the door open. Not Magnus. Addie.
She was holding a garment bag in one hand and a pair of heels in the other. "Get dressed, bitch. We're going to work."
I took the garment bag. "That's not the line, Regina."
"You're such a Cady." She pushed past me into the room. "The suit is Loro Piana. Mei Ling picked it. Don't ask me how she knew your size."
"We're going to the office? I thought it was too dangerous."
Addie made a shooing motion and huffed a breath. "The boys aren't back. It's Monday morning. Vidar knows better than to stand between me and a skyscraper. Besides, we'll have a detail on us at all times."
I couldn't admit to my best friend that I was stalling because I wanted her brother-in-law to come back and kiss me lying down.
That was not boss bitch behavior. So I slipped into the dress, which hugged my curves perfectly, and stepped into the shoes, which were my perfect size.
Twenty minutes later I was dressed, heeled, and standing in the Blackwood kitchen while Mei Ling pressed an honest to god lunch box into my hands. Except it contained breakfast.
Addie and I moaned indecently in the car over the breakfast sandwiches Mei Ling had prepared for us.
They were built on thick slices of milk bread, toasted to a perfect gold, with a smear of something that tasted like ginger and fermented black beans that had no business being on a breakfast sandwich and was absolutely the reason the breakfast sandwich worked.
Between the slices was a fried egg with a yolk that ran into the nooks and crannies, caramelized scallions, and thin-sliced Wagyu beef that had been seared for what I estimated was approximately thirty seconds on each side.
It was still pink at the center in a way that should have bothered me and didn't. I'd always preferred my meat blue-rare with a sear on the outside but red at the center.
The fat was rendered just enough to be silky against the tongue; the beef so tender it barely needed chewing.
"Where's Magnus?"
Addie paused for exactly half a second. "Handling things."
"What things?"
She reached over and straightened my collar, which didn't need straightening. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but the less you know right now, the better."
I gave her The Look. The one we'd perfected over seven years of watching men in expensive suits try to hide money in places they thought we wouldn't find it.
"I know how that sounds coming from me. I hated it too when they said it to me. And then I found out what I didn't know, and I understood why they'd said it."
I looked out the window at the estate disappearing behind us.
The tree line gave way to the long private road that eventually became a real road that eventually became the city.
The two men in front said nothing. One of them was tracking the mirrors with the systematic attention of a man you did not want to follow.
When the car pulled up to the Sterling building forty minutes later, Addie put her hand on my arm before I could reach for the door.
"Don't try to slip your detail," she warned, with the tone of a woman delivering information she had learned the hard way. "These wolves don't play around. They are not your bodyguards. They are your perimeter. There's a difference."
"What's the difference?"
"A bodyguard keeps things from getting to you. A perimeter keeps you from getting to things." She squeezed my arm once.
I got out of the car. And looked up.
They were already halfway through it. A crew of workers on scaffolding, removing the letters of the old sign. Below the gap where Sterling my desk from my old office.
The nameplate on it read N. ODHIAMBO, CEO in the same clean sans-serif font that was going up on the building outside.
I pulled out my chair and sat in it. I gave myself exactly ten seconds to feel it. The view. The nameplate. Then I fired up my computer and got to work.
The first thing I noticed was that I had access to the Blackwood infrastructure.
It was vast and entirely organized. There were seventeen subsidiary companies nested under the main holding entity, ranging from active operations to what appeared to be dormant shells that hadn't filed meaningful activity in years.
I worked through them methodically. Not looking for anything specific, just building the map.
Most of it was what I expected: logistics, real estate, two legitimate restaurant supply chains feeding the Fang Dynasty's operations, and a security consulting firm.
And then, nested three layers deep under a holding company called Blackwood Maritime Solutions LLC, I found something that didn't fit.
The company was called Vantablack R&D. Incorporated six years ago, active for eighteen months, then dormant.
Its listed assets included seventeen autonomous maritime vessels, a fleet of medium-range cargo drones, proprietary navigation software, and a series of patents for unmanned cold-chain logistics systems.
Autonomous vessels. Unmanned. Operating outside conventional shipping lanes by design, because the navigation system had been built to avoid standard maritime traffic corridors.
I thought about what the wolf in man's clothing had said in the garden last night before Magnus disappeared into the dark. The Volki had hit the Queens terminal.
I pulled up Vantablack's patent filings and started reading.
An hour later, I had seventeen browser tabs open, three pages of handwritten notes, and the beginning of something that felt like the answer to a problem nobody had asked me to solve.
But this is who I was: a problem-solver.
And the Blackwood problem was more interesting than anything sitting on my desk.