Chapter 17

HE TOOK her down another elevator that let them out in the back of the building, where a dark-windowed car was waiting, and he rushed her into it quickly.

“I don’t want to be in the news anymore today,” he apologized.

As the car drove around the front of the building, she saw where a line of reporters and cameras were still camped out. “What was with that speech?”

She hadn’t been paying attention earlier; she’d been too mad.

He glanced at their driver, and then looked back to her, subtly shaking his head. “You’re not the only one with secrets.”

Stella frowned. The butt of her gun was pressing up uncomfortably underneath her bra. It’d take her an extra two or three seconds if she needed to reach it, which pissed her off. She could feel the time she had to complete her mission ticking away, and just because Zach was a billionaire didn’t mean he had a hovercar—they were still stuck in the end-of-morning rush.

She could probably get out and run faster back to Larios’s now—even with this stupid skirt on.

Zach interrupted her anger’s natural flow. “So. How have you been?”

Stella swiveled her head to look at him, squinting. If he didn’t want to talk about his speech in front of his driver, she sure as hell didn’t want to talk about her missions.

“You know. The usual.” She made finger guns in her lap where the driver couldn’t see them via the rearview mirror and pretended to shoot them at Zach.

He looked from her hands to her face, with an expression that could best be described as charmed.

Which was the exact opposite of the feeling that she got when he was around. Oftentimes, his presence suffused her with irritation.

The way he looked at her, mostly.

Like he was looking at her right now.

“I know a back way,” the driver began.

“Take it,” Stella demanded, going back to looking out the window, scanning the rooftops of the buildings as they passed.

THE CAR WOUND up outside of town, in front of a gate, with a brick behemoth of a mansion a generous distance back.

“Tell them Damian Blackwood the Elder is here to pay his respects,” Zach told his driver, trading on the Beast’s name, and sure enough, the wrought-iron metal opened, allowing them inside.

The car parked on the crunching gravel and Stella let herself out, giving the driver a snarl to scare him away from her door. She wasn’t sure that his backway had saved any time, but she did feel better being outside—it’d felt like there hadn’t been enough room to breathe inside the car.

Zach joined her, after talking to the driver, and offered her his arm, just like he had the prior night. “Don’t worry. I promise not to make you dance,” he said, his lips curving up. Stella frowned at him but rested her hand upon it. As they reached the top of the stairs he whispered, “Let me do the talking,” and hit the button on a camera device.

The door swung open before the red light on the camera could even turn on, revealing a middle-aged man who looked remarkably like the one who’d groped her ass not twelve hours before. He was wearing a navy suit with no tie and his shirt was untucked. “Damian,” he said flatly. “You’re here to what, charm my father’s grieving girlfriend?”

Stella could hear the sounds of active mourning happening behind him —the wailing of a woman echoed through the mansion’s stone.

“No, Junior. I’m here to do business.” Zach pulled out the papers he’d tucked into his suit at the penthouse and lightly batted them against the other man’s dress shirt. “May I?”

The man glanced down, considering—and Stella realized his eyes weren’t red, and he didn’t smell of tears. He wasn’t sad his father died in the least.

“I owed your old man a favor,” Zach pressed.

Junior’s eyes narrowed. “My father didn’t do favors.”

“Nor do I accept them. And yet, here we are.” Stella watched the Beast give the man a wolfish smile. “So—did your father have an office we could speak in?”

Junior gave Zach a disgusted look and made a harrumphing sound. “You’re one of those friends, aren’t you? I guess you might as well come in.” He backed away from the door and let them enter, leading them into the mansion.

Stella kept her surprise off her face, wondering where precisely they were going. Secret sex club? A speakeasy? To a basement with piles of cocaine? Her combat boots were quiet against the marble tile, and she stopped, looking to her right at a sitting room they passed that had two taxidermized rams about to buck horns featured at the back of it.

“So your father was a hunter?” she asked, her eyes snapping to Zach to make sure he was aware, fighting the urge to rest her hand on the butt of her gun on her belly.

“A collector, more like,” Junior answered, before glaring at Zach. “But you already knew that, didn’t you?”

“Indeed,” Zach murmured, with the Beast’s imperious tone.

Junior led them into an office, outfitted much like the one in Zach’s penthouse, only it reeked of cigars and had a wall of heavy-looking law books. Zach gave her a pointed look. This was her chance to take an exit— to “go to the bathroom” and then sneak around. He would cover for her and kill time.

Because he assumed she knew what it was that she was looking for.

But that was the thing.

She didn’t.