Page 27 of Bad Girl
“You look great too,” I said, sitting back down.“I never knew you had tits like that.”
It was true, she usually wore loose tops or sweaters. It was the first time I’d seen her waist.
She snort-laughed so hard she had to grab the doorframe.
“This is my only chance,” she said, composing herself and taking the seat beside me.“Less is more, apparently.”
I grinned. She thought this was about impressing him. She wasn’t entirely wrong, just not for the same reasons. I was here for a pay rise, a better title, or at minimum an acknowledgement that I existed above testing grade. I’d dressed accordingly.
She pushed her curls back and reached for the presentation copy I’d sent her.
“Thanks for this by the way. I didn’t understand all of it,” she said cheerfully,“but it was very interesting.”
Just kill them both, the voice said pleasantly.
My hands trembled slightly against the keyboard.
Knock it off, I said firmly.This is important.
Francis kept talking. I kept nodding. And somewhere in the building, getting closer I could hear voices.
The voice went very, very still.
My stomach felt as if it were full of lead.
It was just nerves, I told myself.
The glass door opened.
Chapter 15
Conrí
Nothing.
No exiles. No strays. Not even the fox shifters, who were an imported Asian breed that had arrived through the English ports sometime in the sixties and had been quietly integrating ever since. I’d checked every contact, every enforcer report, every run logged in the past seventy-two hours.
Nothing that should be making Kael behave like this.
We were spread throughout the country and blended well—that had always been the priority. Numbers limited, presence managed, nothing that drew the kind of attention that couldn’t be walked back. I needed to ensure that stayed true. Whatever Kael was picking up on, I needed to understand it before it became something I couldn’t contain.
Something was brewing.
Something I couldn’t name yet.
Nora appeared at my door, punctual as always.
“Your ten thirty is in the conference room.”
I nodded and stood. But even as I moved out of the office my mind stayed fixed on Kael—on the low, persistent hum of his alertness, the way he’d been holding himself since yesterday. Since the car. Since before that, if I was honest.
“Keep my afternoon free, Nora.”
“What about the HR meeting with Hannah?”
“Reschedule,” I said, already facing forward.
The unsettled feeling didn’t ease as I walked the corridor. If anything it gathered—slow and pressurised, like the air before a storm that hadn’t decided where to break yet. I kept my pace measured. Nothing in my expression. Nothing that would read on cameras or to the staff who moved past me with their lanyards and their laptops and their complete ignorance of what walked among them.
