Page 22 of Shattered Veil
I didn’t even trust myself to pay her. I made Trace do it. A dick move, but she’s an escort. She didn’t care as long as she got her money.
Only, something felt really off with that woman. Maybe it was the long flight and changing time zones. She seemed so fucking into me and my dick, it confused the hell out of me.
Tempting my fate, I left a note with my burner phone number on the last hundred-dollar bill in the envelope of cash.
Christ, that butterfly was the hottest sex I’ve ever had. Deep down, I paid her all that extra money so she wouldn’t have to immediately sleep with someone else.
The idea ofanyoneelse’s face in that sweet pussy clenches my jaw so tight, it could break. My blood pressure roars in my ears and the compulsion to commit murder floods my veins thinking of someone else touching her.
The murderous visuals in my head of some otherJohn, dead on a hotel floor, his dick out, are way too real for comfort.
I never even got her name. By choice. I could have hacked into the airline’s manifest, but the mystery is that itch I’m dying to scratch.
I’ve used only my hand and the memory of her to satisfy me.
Fuck me, I don’t know why.
I glance around the room and my spine stiffens. Is falling in love contagious?
No, thank you.
Especially not with an escort. Not when my brothers moon over their pure wives and how it drove them fucking nuts seeing virginal blood on their cocks. I’m pretty sure it’s what made them feral.
Not me. I prefer to be in control of myself.
A text message pulls me out of my thoughts.
Corvin: Are we still meeting for dinner this Saturday, Mr. O’Rourke?
Me: Aye, I made reservations. I’ll drop you a pin.
Getting a table anywhere on a Saturday night requires hacking skills these days, but I made a call and got a table at my favorite Italian restaurant.
Corvin: Excellent. I asked my daughter to join us for dinner so you can meet her in a casual setting.
Fuck, the assistant I don’t want.
I’ll do anything to trap Corvin Snow in my web. The ransomware code he developed allows someone to hack into any server with no trace. Snow is a walking financial weapon of mass destruction.
Despite making three million a year, Snow confessed over a few too many whiskeys in a Sydney bar that WTB had terminated his contract. The bad blood with such a prestigious bank wrecked him. There he was, drunk and threatening to drain his former employer of a cool billion before fleeing to Bora Bora.
I talked him off the ledge and offered him a job for fivemillion. No way would I let him disappear into the shadows.
I even used his daughter as a selling point. And a guilt trip.
How would she feel if you disappeared?
He kept details about her close to his chest. Just that her mother died when she was young. He stroked a silvery-white beard, telling me how he raised his daughter himself. And that she’d dropped by the conference a few times.
For all my spying on Snow, I hadn’t seen a young woman with him. I must have kept missing her.
Me: Look forward to meeting your daughter.
Not really...
CHAPTER NINE
Ella