Once Bitten, Twice Dead - By Bianca D'Arc Page 0,125
The male friends are peripheral, not enough for me to bother with personally. But a wife?” The grin returned, this time so full of malicious glee it wrapped ice around her gut. “To watch his face, the agony in his eyes as I fuck her and then kill her, with him powerless to stop me?” He nodded. “That is something I must do myself.”
Well, if he was going to use Olivia to do some of the dirty work, she damn well deserved to know why. “Who is this man? Why do you hate him so much?”
Eddy turned away from her. “Merr…” He broke off and shook his head. “He had everything—a loving family, wealth, power, and the poor sod couldn’t stand that he wasn’t normal.” With his heightened emotions, Eddy’s New York accent slipped a bit and took on a British flavor. He shook his head again. “It should have all been mine. If his father had just done what I’d asked—begged!—things might have been different.”
He trailed off, seeming to be lost in his thoughts. After a moment he shrugged. “Never mind. It’s not something you need to know.” He glanced over his shoulder at her, eyes hard. “All you need to know is that for your daughter to remain safe you have a job to do.”
Eyeing the distance between them, Olivia wondered if she could catch him off guard long enough to kill him. She could morph her fingers into claws now, just like he did. She might be able to do it.
It would only take one quick slash across the throat.
But then what about Zoe? There was at least one bodyguard standing outside her door, his bulk casting a shadow onto the floor of the hallway.
Olivia briefly closed her eyes. She’d never be able to do it. She couldn’t kill Eddy and go for the bodyguard before he could get to Zoe.
She had no other choice. She must finish the job she’d been given.
Thinking back over the last few days, she remembered her first impression of Rory Sullivan. Tall, dark and dangerous.
An earnest protector.
Sexy as hell. But…
He had to die.
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“You call that a clinch?”
Whatever it was it made Callie’s head explode. “Sure.”
“Tell me something.”
No way was she agreeing to that without more information. Hand this man an opening and he’d steer a submarine through it.
He kept talking anyway. Looked pretty relaxed in his slouch as his smile inched up on his lips. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
If he wanted to shock her…well, he did. “How is that relevant?”
“Call me curious.”
“Are you allowed to ask me about that?”
“You think there’s a law against it?”
“There should be.”
“So, you’re not going to answer?”
Not until she knew where this was going. “What does the state of my love life have to do with anything?”
“You know all about me. Only seems fair I get some background on you.”
“I need to know about your life in order to do my job.” At least that was the excuse she used when she ventured outside the file Mark gave her. She’d lost her clearance when she walked away from her job at the FBI, but she still had friends of the computer-hacker variety. In just a few hours she had all the paperwork that existed on Ben.
She had to admit her little search mission turned out to be a huge disappointment. His background was so clean it squeaked. If he hadn’t passed through screening committees and all sorts of interviews to get his current judicial position she would have thought someone manufactured his past. No arrests. No trouble. Great grades. Always within the law. For some reason she expected to find a smart guy with a bad boy past. That sounded good in the fantasy she created in her head but looked as if it wasn’t true.
“So, you’re not poking around in my life just because you’re nosy?” he asked.
No way could he know about her travels through his personal history. She’d been careful and cleaned up behind her. “I don’t poke.”
“Tell me what you want to know.”
She smelled a con. “Anything?”
“You get one question.”
She thought about his decision to leave the military and about the scarce information on his parents. She skipped all that and went with the issue at the front of her mind. “What’s going on between you and Emma?”
“I’ve already answered that. We’re friends.”
Callie snorted just to let him know what she thought of his fake deals. “I don’t climb