Page 60 of Bought

He put his hands on the desktop on either side of my thighs and leaned on them, his face so close to mine. He was so warm, and he smelled familiar, and even now after hours in his bed, I still wanted him desperately.

“Tell me why you’re here,” he ordered, his tone all command, his gaze reading me like a book. “It’s not just for me and it’s not just for the money, so what is it?”

Shit.

I lifted my chin, determined not to give in to my fear. “It is the money, I told you that—”

“If it was just about the money, you wouldn’t have insisted on coming back here. It’ll be in your account tomorrow, in fact.” He kept on staring at me, as if he was trying to look inside of my head. “Why did you insist? Did you have to do something here? Is that why?”

“No, I—”

“Or perhaps you don’t have the money yet, is that it? Perhaps you can’t get the money until you’ve completed whatever task you have to do here?”

Oh God, he was too smart. I had to say something or do something, put him off the scent somehow.

I leaned back on my hands and uncrossed my legs, presenting my naked body to him, but he didn’t even blink, that too smart brain of his working overtime. “Is someone holding your money?” he went on. “Is someone paying you to get inside my house? I have enemies, lots of people want to take me down, but there’s only one family who’s been moving lately.” And there it was, the realization glowing in his blue gaze. “The Hamiltons,” he murmured. “It’s them, isn’t it? You’re working for them.”

My stomach dropped and all the blood left my face. I didn’t have to answer, he could read my every thought anyway.

He knew. He knew everything.

My fingers and toes had gone numb. I knew I should try to get it together, find my hard shell again, but no matter how I tried, I couldn’t find it. It was almost as if now he’d stripped it away, it was gone for good.

“That’s not…” I started, hating how hesitant I sounded. “That’s not exactly—”

“What are you here for, Zara?” he demanded, his voice a blade of ice. “Tell me now.”

He’d worked it all out without me saying a thing and he’d probably work out what I’d been asked to search for too. All I had left was the truth and there wasn’t much point in hiding it from him any longer.

“Come on,” he said when I didn’t answer quick enough. “You might as well tell me since I’ve guessed everything else. What do they want you to get?”

I held on to my courage and met his gaze. “They want me to find evidence that you murdered Sir George Wyndham.”

22

Tennyson

There were many things I was expecting her say, but that was not one of them.

I pushed myself away from the desk, still burning with fury about the confirmation text Atlas had sent me not ten minutes ago.

I hadn’t wanted to believe that my little sub was Zara Bishop, Isabel’s friend, and coworker, but she was. My gut had been right; there had been something off about her and now I knew what it was.

Now I knew everything. She didn’t need to confirm the truth, it was written all over her pretty, pale face.

She was working for the Hamiltons, and it wasn’t insider information about my company, no, it was information about the one thing I’d hidden from the entire world.

I’d killed my mentor. He’d been going to take Isabel from me and he’d been going to hurt her. I’d been twenty and completely at his mercy, because he was rich, powerful. He’d had the money to do whatever he wanted while I was a street kid with no family and no resources. He’d told me he was going to prove me an unfit father and that he was going to adopt her, and there was nothing I could do about it. I was too old for him now, he’d said, but in a few years, Isabel would be perfect.

He was a sexual predator, a monster and there was only one thing to do with a monster. You had to put them down.

So, I had. And with Atlas’s help, we’d made sure that there was no evidence to prove that he hadn’t had heart attack. No evidence that he hadn’t died of natural causes. And the best thing was that I’d still been in that monster’s will. He’d told me if I did what he said, he’d leave it all to me when he died, and so he had.

I’d started Fox Tech with that money.

But I’d thought all the evidence had been gotten rid of, that no one knew, so how the Hamiltons had found out, I had no idea. But I didn’t like it one bit.

I didn’t like that the little sub — Zara — knew too.