Page 58 of Ruthless Contract
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
BLOSSOM
––––––––
Though I didn’t want to look her way, I chanced a glance at Ivy. The look on her face was thunderous. For a second, she just stared at me from behind the register. Then she slowly cocked her head to the side.
“Please tell me you didn’t just call that motherfucker Romeo?”
I swallowed. Wait! I had told them about my Romeo and Juliet angle to get him to open up to me, hadn’t I? From the way she was looking at me, I was starting to think I hadn’t.
“Bitch, tell me you aren’t referring to our threat as Romeo,” she demanded.
“I meant to say Rome.”
“Oh, no. You meant Romeo. In your head, he really is Romeo to you, isn’t he?”
So, Ihadtold them about the Romeo angle. Good!
“No. But I’ve referred to him as that so much that it’s kind of stuck with me.”
Which wasn’t a lie... technically.
“I’ve asked you this before,” Ivy said slowly. “But I’m going to ask your ass one more time. Are you sure you didn’t fall for that man during the times you were trying to get information from his devices? I mean, you chatted with him for months while tryingto sneak around his firewalls. Please don’t tell me he slipped past your defenses and entered your heart.”
“Of course not,” I sputtered, hoping I sounded convincing.
But the truth was, that man had bulldozed his way through all my defenses. Lately, he was all I could think about. I hadn’t expected him to respond to my hacking into his devices the way he had.
I thought once he figured out someone was trying to hack him, he would shut that shit down and make sure I could never attempt it again. Instead, he talked to me, responded to me. He taunted me, pricking my pride and making me feel the need to show him what I could do.
He created roadblocks that challenged me. He made me up my game, and I’d become a better hacker now because of him. I’d come to enjoy our lunch times together. Even though his lunch time was really five a.m. for me.
But I’d happily gotten up early, prepared my coffee, then climbed back into bed with my laptop and went on a hacking date with a guy I had no business getting close to. Yet, I had gotten close to him.
So close that I’d started sex chatting with him. I told myself it was all part of my plan, but I was only lying to myself. The truth was, I’d found ways to spend more time with him because I’d wanted more of him.
I know he was a cold-blooded killer, but he made me laugh. And I know I was supposed to be monitoring his emails for intel, but I enjoyed our hacking games. And I know I was supposed to stop once I was sure he wasn’t on to us.
And I had. But I was missing him like crazy. And from the way Ivy was looking at me, I could tell it was starting to show. She wanted to know if I’d fallen for him. No. I hadn’t fallen. I’d crashed.
And now the man I loved was back in the States, hunting for the person tied to what happened to Marcel. Hunting for us. And Ivy had the right thought. He was a threat. We should put an end to him. But damn it, I didn’t want to.
“Bitch, you’re in love, aren’t you?” she whispered.
I shook my head, unable to speak at the moment.
Ivy sighed. “I should’ve killed his ass the moment we realized he could be a threat. That’s my bad. I’ll have to live with that if this goes wrong.”
“Nothing is going to go wrong. And if it does, I’ll bear the blame.”
“Blossom...”
“I’m serious, Ivy. If anything goes wrong, I’ll bear the blame. I’ll pay the price. I need you to stay out of jail and off the Cattaneos’ radar because if anything happens to me, the Petals will need you to step up and take care of things.”
“You do realize that my way of taking care of things means stabbing it to death, right?”
Oh, right.
