Page 85 of Ruthless Contract
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
ROME
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Three days.
It had been three damn days since Juliet last hacked me. Three days since the night we watched an anime together, and she’d fallen asleep during the call. Since then, there had been no attempted breaches. No taunting messages. No private video chat requests. Nothing.
She’d disappeared on me.
Again.
This shit was getting old fast.
Sitting at the private bar inside the Biloxi branch of our Cattaneo Casino and Resort, I listened to my brothers and Leo talk while pretending to give a fuck about the conversation. Cas stood behind the bar, preparing drinks and grinning like a fool as he told us what Meka cooked for dinner yesterday.
It was good to see my baby brother smiling. It was great seeing him in love. After everything he’d been through, he deserved every bit of happiness Meka brought into his life. And from the way he talked about her, I could tell he was making her happy, also.
Raz sat to my left, relaxed in a way I still wasn’t used to seeing from him. Usually, he was on edge all the time, muscles tense,expression grim. Now that Monique was in his life, he was a different man, a different brother.
Hell, he even looked different. I couldn’t pinpoint what exactly about his appearance had changed, but he seemed...healthier. Love was healing him in ways I hadn’t thought possible. I was happy for him.
On the other side of Raz sat his right-hand man, Leo. Even that ornery bastard had a grin on his face as he read a text from Toya reminding him that he had a curfew and she expected him home before midnight. That actually had him smiling.
Every word out of their mouths was something about their women, their home life, domestic shit that we never used to discuss over drinks. Now, it was all they thought about, all they talked about. They lived, breathed, and dreamedMeka, Toya, and Monique.
Or as the ladies referred to themselves,The Curvy Wives Club.
Holding in my sigh, I returned my attention to my phone, thumb slowly scrolling through the social media page forBlossoms and Vines. I’d become obsessed with this page. Their feed was full of flower arrangements and wedding displays.
There were also behind-the-scenes clips of events they’d decorated, along with pictures of smiling customers holding bouquets. Then there were the photos and videos of Blossom Brooks.
Those were the ones that held my attention. My thumb paused on a photo of her standing in front of a wall of flowers, wearing a bright smile and that same floral apron she’d worn the day I walked into her shop with Monique.
I stared at the picture longer than I should have. But damn it, there was something about her. The woman in the picture looked warm. Sweet. Honest. The kind of woman who had freshly baked cookies waiting for you when you got home from work, like the wives on television did.
My Juliet was a little cyber-criminal who taunted me while trying to get past my firewalls. She challenged me. She made me laugh. She made me hard. She made me look forward to being hacked.
Blossom Brooks looked like she’d apologize to a flower if she accidentally bent one of its petals. They couldn’t be the same woman. They were so different. Then again, I’d seen another side of Juliet when we’d watched that anime.
She loved the romance scenes. Had teared up on the sad scenes. There was more to Juliet than just the hacker I’d grown to crave. But could that little hacker who loved anime also love flowers?
My thumb swiped to the next picture. There was Blossom again. This time, she was holding a vase filled with purple and white flowers, laughing at something someone off-camera must have said.
Her head was tilted slightly, her dimples showing. The caption was about bringing someone’s wedding vision to life. Zooming in, I studied her smile, those dimples, her hairstyle.
My gaze dropped to her hands and her manicured nails. Could those be the hands of a hacker? Juliet kept her nails manicured also. But in our last video chat, she’d insisted on audio-only.
Since I hadn’t seen her in over two weeks, I couldn’t compare their nails. If only I could get one more video call from her, I’dhave the proof I needed just from her hands. I’d also be able to upload the tracker script.
I finally had a code that would allow me to access her location without alerting her. No matter how much I’d worked on it myself, I just couldn’t get it right. The more I fucked up, the more frustrated I got.
I’d had to contact one of our guys, who was on leave, to get help with the script. I’d needed fresh eyes on it. Because of my feelings for Juliet, I wasn’t truly seeing things clearly. I wasn’t able to focus properly.
My mind was all over the fucking place. So, I sent Shado the script and had him look it over. I sent it to him yesterday. This afternoon, he sent it back after tweaking the code. Now, it worked beautifully.
He’d included a message that read,“You had one line of code wrong. I’m surprised you didn’t catch it. Don’t tell me you’ve been slacking off in my absence.”
