12. Chapter 9 - Lauchlan
E enie, meanie, minie, mo.
I quietly roamed Hillary’s apartment being the good little captive I was, taking my time to browse through her things.
I wasn’t even trying to be discreet about it.
It was what she’d be expecting of me, and I wanted nothing more than to deliver on her expectations. I picked up a polished trinket that looked like it came from India—from a visit to the countryside, not a sweatshop—and placed it back down on the bookshelf, wiggling my fingers in a wave at the security camera watching me from the co rner.
This place must be cleaned by house-elves—I’d never seen a cleaner come in and yet, it was damned spotless every morning. Tomorrow, I was gonna leave crushed Cocoa Pebbles on the quartz countertop to bait them—see how many little Irish sprites she’d convinced to work for her.
She was pretty convincing, my Blondie.
In my search, I’d come up with nothing—well, I’d come up with lots of things, expensive bits and bobbles and a tasty little pair of black lace panties with the arsehole cut out of them. I’d held those up to the camera before stuffing them into my pocket—but nothing I had been actually hoping to find.
The hidden door in her closet was an interesting revelation, though. Wouldn’t put it past her to house her own little torture chamber for wayward souls—or a kink dungeon to work out some of that tasty dominatrix energy.
One and the same, really.
Maybe if I was really bad, she’d drag me within its walls before dragging me through her walls.
I palmed the chub forming in my trousers and gave it a light squeeze. Between the barbarian and my Blondie, I was a horny teenager desperate for his next taste of a hot hole.
I couldn’t say this was the ideal set of circumstances, but I’d be lying if I said I was sad about it. Ma’s place had been getting old, and I’d needed to get closer to Hillary to fulfill my mission. Despite the wee tracker in my arm, this really was a goldmine of opportunity.
Ma had been thrilled to hear I’d been ‘invited to stay’ at the best billionaire lodge in town. Her nagging about my slow pace on this had been getting to me—she’d even suggested she get in on the con, to make sure I “fulfilled the assignment”—as if I was some amateur. Thankfully, my forced roomie status and new assignment as “baddie lackey” had pleased her enough to let me be, even if I knew the reprieve was temporary.
It struck me I didn’t know why Hillary was so fixated on Alvarez. What had the man ever done to her? He was a world-class git, and I knew the dark secrets he’d kept under his bonnet. But did she? Who’d hurt her?
Hillary kept her cards so close to her chest. I’d be more likely to get a blow job from a nun than have her tell me, but it didn’t really matter. We were all in the same bed, and I was happy to sleep in it if I got what I wanted.
My cards on the table? Their resources could take Alvarez down, and I cared more about his end than I did my own. And if I could work my way under my new Killers Club’s skins a bit more, they wouldn’t harm a hair on my head.
Probably.
Sure, I was a bit mental, but things often had a way of working out for me. Why question the goddess now?
I was getting closer to my goal, anyway. I was practically tethered to my billionaire buddy—her doing, not mine—and I was eliminating all areas where it wasn’t; all part of the pickpocket process.
Giving up on my quest, I flopped down on my favorite chaise in her living room and slid an arm over my head to take a quick nap before I had to go into the Devil's lair.
The git who’d hired me needed me on “special assignment,” and I was getting the details this afternoon. I was good at keeping up appearances, but the double life on all fronts these days was getting old.
Not like anyone truly knew what I did for a living. It was a lonely life, being a master “acquisition agent”—not even my best mate back home had a clue what I did outside of my “tech” hours—and sometimes a man just wanted to go home and vent to his family about the hard day he’d had trying to scam people out of their millions.
I snorted into the elbow covering my face. Might as well be smoking ayahuasca with that pipe dream.
Whe n the elevator dinged, I turned my body expectantly toward the entrance foyer off the left of the kitchen.
My expectations for Blondie were only disappointed for a fraction of a second when I saw Conan come through the alcove, his head ducking on the other side of the trim.
Unimpressed navy eyes stared back at me. “Find what you were looking for?”
“No house elves to be found, so I’ll have to try again tomorrow,” I quipped, flashing him a lazy smile, not bothering to get up from my perch. “Wait—are yeh spying on Blondie, now? Do you have access to her cameras?”
He grunted, the masculine caveman growl like sweet, cock-stiffening music to my ears. “Always have. Haven’t needed to use them in a while.”
Not until me. What a cute giant stalker he was.
He crossed beefy arms across his barrelled chest, and the black pea-coat bunched around his biceps. Even Big I stepped in after him.
I mimed speaking into my hand like it was a Dictaphone. “Low IQ and memory issues—subject shows shocking similarities to Moose Mason.”
An eye twitch and a flex of the hand and… was that a lip twitch? Did this man actually have a sense of humor beneath all those muscles?
Still no response, though—so he was probably warding off a minor stroke instead. The man was a feckin’ stone.
He “escorted” me—a snug grasp of my upper arm—out to his blue Jeep, the same one where he’d taken my microchip-virginity. He nodded to me to sit up front, but kept up the silent treatment for another few minutes down the road before finally breaking.
“I trust you as much as I trust Marco Alvarez.”
Well, duh. Mafia machines like Kellan trusted no one. I wasn’t after the man’s trust; that was a fool’s errand. I needed him to like me.
Blackmail was only one way to get someone to do what you wanted. Get them to like you, and the world became a giant oyster farm.
Kellan didn’t like cocky assholes—well, he didn’t like dominant cocky assholes. But bratty subbies who could dish it as well as take it? I could win an Oscar for that act—mostly because it wasn’t an act at all.
“For a second, I thought you forgot how to talk there.” I flashed my cheekiest smile and turned to face him, leaning my back against the passenger window glass. “So, you don’t trust my motives, but you trust me not to have syphilis? That’s twice now you’ve taken my virgin hole, Conan.”
Shaking my head, I tutted my fake disapproval. “Taking lots of risks for a big, scary brute, aren’t yeh? Let me guess”—I mimed air quotes and bobbled my head—“You don’t ‘c ondom’.”
Eyes narrowing into a glare, he rubbed a heavy palm over his face. The word “hope” stared back at me. It was an odd tattoo for a scary cartel baddie, but the “hell” on his other hand balanced the scales a bit.
“I’ve been tested both times,” he muttered, tone almost apologetic. “No syphilis.”
“Me, too!” I singsonged cheerfully. “See, big guy? Trust .”
I turned back in my seat to face forward, waiting out his next bout of stoic silence. Good thing con men were patient fucks, or this one-sided conversation would be one hell of a party.
Two minutes… three minutes… four—
“I find you fuckable. End of story.”
Bingo .
“Obvious one there, mate. Does that mean you’re going to dig for another pot of gold at the end of my rainbow, or have you given up on the luck of the Irish now that Blondie might give you a taste?”
Pulling into the parking lot of Alvarez’s building, my special friend’s gargantuan body shifted and he faced me, eyes darkened to dangerous, murderous slits. Fucking beautiful.
“You will not talk about her that way. Keep saying shit like that, and I’ll remove your fingers the next time we have a chat.”
Soooooooo in love. Kinda cute—Barbarian falling for Barbie. Stuff of movies, that.
My hands rose in mock surrender. “Aye, mate. Lips are sealed.”
Opening the car door, I stepped out onto a slippery patch of ice and almost kissed it with my tongue before catching my balance.
Dublin was temperate for the most part—barely cold enough to get snow throughout the winter, let alone parkin g lot skating rinks. America—this part of America, at least—was a frigid wasteland in December modern man shouldn’t touch. Miserable.
“Will you be waiting for me, Jeeves?”
Another sexy grunt that I interpreted in Neanderthal to mean “yes.”
I delicately traipsed across the parking lot, fighting for my life on the makeshift ice rink in my Tom Fords, to deal with the next Neanderthal on my list.
Gertie greeted me when I walked into the office. Her warm smile and sunny disposition were an instant balm to my chapped face.
“Hey Gert!” I pulled her in for a hug, a definite HR faux pas. But given Marco’s private dealings with women, he could fuck right off. It was purely platonic, anyway. Gertie had quickly become my lesbian little sister, even if she was at least five years older.
Her smile waned as she pulled away from me, dainty eyebrows knitted into a worried frown. “He’s very crabby today, Lauchlan. Tread carefully in there.” She gestured toward the open doorway where loud, terse voices emptied into the hall.
“Aye, thanks for the warnin’.” Winking reassuringly, I waited for her to announce my arrival. I was in no mood to waltz right into a madhouse of pissed off gangbangers posing as upstanding businessmen.
There were to be no secrets between us according to Hillary—bollocks, because there were definitely plenty of secrets between us—but Kellan had let Hillary know, who let Aaron and I know about the raid Antonio had ordered on the Alvarez clubhouse. Right bloodbath with mass casualties apparently, but mostly on Alvarez’s end.
Couldn’t say I knew much about running a billion-dollar criminal empire, but I imagined Marky Marco had quite the gory mess on his hands. I looked forward to serving him the tech equivalent on a platter. I was so clo se .
Gertie pressed the button on her center console and muttered into the receiver. “Lauchlan is here, sir.”
The indiscernible voices stopped abruptly. Drawing in a cleansing breath of bullshit-scented air, I sauntered into the room.
Three oversized gits stared back at me, with Marco, the king git, at the center of the lot, his watery shark eyes roving over me like I was the next meal.
“Welcome, Lauchlan. Please, take a seat.”
Unbuttoning my suit jacket, I sat in the uncomfortable glass chair facing the ‘roided-out penguin crew; there was an obvious leader—the slimmest of the three men looked to be about sixty, with silver hair and wrinkly skin with a sallow sheen like he smoked three packs an hour. The other two were poorly disguised bodyguards and looked so out of place they might as well’ve been strippers.
Marco dipped his head to the men in introduction
“Lauchlan, this is Xander Analo, one of our top clients.”
“Pleasure to meet you, sir.” I stuck out a hand in offering. Top Client sniffed in the way that only Daddy Warbucks people could, raising his eyebrows in disgust as if I’d shit on it; I hastily brought it back to my thigh and turned my attention back to Marco. “What is this about, sir?”
“I was singing your praises to Xander at a recent event—we’re considerably impressed with your team’s progress on several projects, and it’s quite clear you have other skills we can better use. I’ve offered to lend you to Mr. Analo for a specialized project for the remainder of the year.”
Fuck. The next three weeks was shitty timing. It’d be suspicious—if I actually thought Marco had any inkling what I was doing. If he did, though, I’d already be dead.
Nope, this was a demonstration of that fun little clause he’d snuck in when he hired me. “Special duties as needed.” What a crock of —
“You will come to my facility starting tomorrow.” Top Client’s voice sounded freakishly like Voldemort’s —all wheezy and high pitched, like he was choking on a lozenge. “Security is very high—you may not take in your phone or computer. One will be provided for you while on site.”
He cleared his throat and continued. “We will require your expertise on penetration testing—specifically of the security measures we’ve designed for a new application.”
So, they were hiring me to hack them. Interesting.
So much for my freedom and flexibility. Tethered to creepy Top Client by the day, and the scary squad by night. I wasn’t a man who liked to be tied down, unless I was actually being tied down.
By the look on Alvarez’s face, there was absolutely no way I was saying no, though. Fucking HR clauses.
“Alright, then.” Forcing a practiced, charming smile, I dipped my head in acceptance. “Looking forward to working with yeh, Mr. Manalo.”
His mouth puckered like he’d just sucked a pint full of salt. “You can call me ‘sir’.”
Oh boy .
“Yes, sir.” I repeated, rolling my internal eyes a thousand times. Just what I needed; another narcissist calling the shots.
Marco excused me from the farce of the meeting, and Gertie wasn’t at her desk when I left his office. I made a beeline for the front entrance, needing to think through this recent development in peace.
I was getting closer to my goal—months of slow movement into his system had allowed me to penetrate his firewalls and create the necessary backdoors to get out. It was painstaking work, but the only way to get by undetected. The next three weeks weren’t mine anymore, so I’d have to come up with another way to continue my progress… and figure out how to shake my new beefy bodyguard.
As much as I liked him around to fuck, I worked alone. And speaking of alone, my arsehole escort wasn’t waiting for me when I walked out into the parking lot.
Calling an Uber, I vowed to get the Barbarian back as soon as I found the time. Maybe with a litt le torture session of my own.