Rule tossed back the drink before setting the glass carefully on the bar and staring back at Jonas with narrowed eyes.
The director stood in front of the windows again. He liked to dare the bastards if they got a chance to actually take a shot, he’d once claimed. That hadn’t changed with his mating, only his security protocols had changed.
They’d heightened.
Dressed in black slacks, a white long-sleeved shirt, sleeves rolled to his elbows, his feet encased in specially made black dress shoes that would probably outkick any combat boot, he was the epitome of sophisticated style.
Hell, he’d come out of the labs he was created in with that same bearing, that same look in his eyes.
“Have it removed,” Rule told him quietly. “Or I’ll remove it for you.”
A black brow arched imperiously. “Really?”
Rule didn’t change his stance. He didn’t tense; by God, he’d known what he was going to do the minute he’d heard the pain trembling in Gypsy’s voice.
“I took the position of division director,” he reminded Jonas. “We signed the agreement and the bylaws, and you don’t have the power to continue anything that I decide has no merit.”
Jonas’s gaze flickered. “You’d sacrifice Amber for a woman who’s not even your mate?”
“Goddammit, Jonas, she doesn’t have what you want,” Rule snarled, enraged.
It was the pain in her voice. That ragged self-loathing and bitter regret was killing him.
“She’s the contact we’re looking for and you know it.” Still, the director’s tone was quiet, without heat, without anger. As though he were simply pointing out a particular piece of information.
“Not anymore, she isn’t. If she ever was,” Rule growled.
He’d taken her out of it when he’d left her apartment the week before. He’d called her f**king contact and made his wishes clear. Gypsy was out, starting now. Hell, he should never have agreed to allow her in it to begin with.
Jonas nodded slowly. “Probably for the best.” He surprised Rule with the comment. “She wasn’t cut out for it.”
“And what makes you think that?” This time, his arms went over his chest powerfully, aggression surging through him.
She was the best damned contact the Unknown had. The only one that no one had been able to identify.
“She refuses to use her friends,” Jonas revealed with a shrug. “Both Rachel and I, as well as Ashley and Emma, have dropped several pieces of particularly useful information in an attempt to ascertain if she was indeed the contact. That information was never acted upon. Good spies understand the fact that friends are their best contacts.”
Not Gypsy, Rule thought wearily as he dropped his arms. Her friends, the few she claimed, were sacred to her. After all, she hadn’t had family since the night she had stood in the dark: cold, hurt, aching to be held only to have her parents turn to the child they had lost instead.
They’d never understood that they may have lost a son, but Gypsy had, at the very essence of her soul, lost her father.
“Let her go, Jonas,” he repeated, though the demand lacked the anger of moments before. “You know her as well as I do. If she had what you needed, you would have had it long before now. Hell, you wouldn’t have had to come here to get it. She would have contacted you.”
Silver mercury. Jonas’s eyes seemed to swirl, to storm within as he stared back at Rule.
“We’ll see,” he finally murmured. “We’ll see.”
...
The limo Gypsy rode in to the Breed ball with her parents was one of the most opulent she had ever seen. The leather was so fine, each stitch detailed, the scent of it luxurious.
It was almost, just almost enough to make up for the fact that she’d had very little time to prepare for this ball. At least she had a gown, even if it was meant for another event.
Layers of soft, delicate blue and green chiffon brought to mind emeralds and a sun-kissed sea as they shifted across each other. Each layer of the material was sewn together to blend and shift the colors as she moved, bringing attention to not just the delicacy of her figure, but also the dress itself.
Strapless, the delicate, hand-embroidered chiffon and lace cupped her br**sts perfectly within the V-shaped bodice and revealed a tantalizing amount of cle**age.
Layers upon layers of chiffon fell from beneath the bodice like a waterfall of exquisite material as the slit that ran the length of her leg to her thigh teased with hints of soft flesh and emerald-threaded silk stockings, while a sixteen-inch train followed behind her. The front hem was the perfect length to cover the tips of her pale green heels, yet not long enough to trip her should she forget and let the toe of her shoe trap it.