Page 75 of Defended By Love

“Exactly.” He’ll be clean if my cover gets blown on the inside. Whatever I decide to do won’t get traced back to him. Except, you know, if they decide to check the surveillance footage of the shore to see how I got on the island, which they most definitely will.

I decide not to add that part. He looks sad enough as it is.

“I’ll do whatever you want, Hailey. It’s all for you.” His words are light, but his voice stills brims with sadness.

I just nod. I love that he’s willing to go inside for me, but I won’t make him.

“You can stay,” I say gently.

Grant closes his eyes against the ocean air. He holds them closed as he draws in a deep breath. When he opens them back up, he shoots me an easy grin that doesn’t quite reach his eyes.

“I’ll be out here if you need me.” He looks serious, like he’s vowing an oath instead of making a throwaway comment.

I kind of like serious Grant.

Or, if I’m telling the whole truth, I just like Grant.

“You’ll come running if I call?” I tease.

Without warning, he grabs me and kisses me. There, among the dumpsters and the sea, Grant kisses me so thoroughly that I don’t even realize we’re beginning to float. It isn’t until my toes curl with anticipation that I notice we’ve left the ground. He kisses me until my pulse pounds with a passion that threatens to overtake my reason.

I moan into his mouth—a wordless promise of all that I can’t yet say. Instead, I let my body say that I trust him as I kiss him back with everything I have. I let my heartbeat tell him that I’m falling for him as it beats in time with his own.

When Grant pulls away, there’s still a faint sadness swirling among the lust in his eyes.

“I’ll be waiting,” he promises.

I want to say something back, but the words just won’t come.

Instead, I kiss him again.

Then, using his keycard, I unlock the door and slip into the building.

Chapter 33

Inside the giant skull—the epitomal monument to instilling fear in the world beyond, aka Dennis—is a perfectly ordinary workplace. It could be any office. It could be my office, were it not currently a giant pile of rubble.

Now that I’ve entered the building via the janitorial entrance, it’s like I’ve entered a new world. I’m not sure what I expected, lasers – matching uniforms with skulls, armed guards patrolling about…cobwebs at the very least. Instead, canned corporate greets me everywhere I go. Generic artwork that is as unevocative as it is beige, line the walls. Complicated rubbish disposal bins with clear labeling that have blatantly been ignored are tucked into corners. People walk around in business-y outfits (normal business level, not leather pantsuits with embroidered flames). They carry around folders, make small talk, and give awkward nods to co-workers whose names they clearly don’t know.

In other words: I’m in my element.

I adopt my best expression that says: ‘I’m busy, but not rushed because that would mean I dropped a ball somewhere’ and begin to peruse. According to my blueprints and confirmed by Grant, the entire first floor is filled with the more generic occupations. Security offices, janitorial storage, meeting rooms, and transport break rooms are all on this floor. In other words, not what I’m looking for.

The second, third, and fourth floors are where most of the bustle is. Because of the weird shape of the cliffside (go figure it’s sub-optimal for office real estate), each floor has less area to work with. Everything that’s on the second, third, and fourth floors—the marketing, accounting, and architectural departments—could all be combined to fit onto the sprawling first floor.

The fifth floor is dedicated to staff amenities. It has the breakroom, a gym, and several sleeping dormitories for those who prefer to not to ferry onto the island every day.

After this, the blueprints show that each floor is scarcely a floor at all. The sixth floor is dedicated to research and development. It encompasses many different ventures of all forking branches of Hart Link Incorporated, from space, to telecommunications, to apps. Really, when you look at the list of subsidiaries and joint projects, there’s almost no part of the public’s life that Hart Link doesn’t have a hand in.

And Grant doesn’t think they’re evil.

Please.

The seventh and eighth floors are interesting. Not only are they located several stories above the previous floors, but they’re also technically on the same level. Way up in the eye sockets of the skull are the lawyer headquarters in the left eye and Zagreus Hart’s office in the right.

The man houses his office in the right eye of a giant skull that looms over the ocean like a warning against the audacity to hope, and Grant doesn’t think he’s evil? He insists that the builders just built into the rock wall as it was, and it just so happens to bear a passing resemblance to a face.

Then again, this is the man who willingly ate Brady the DM’s bone marrow ice cream because he thought there was a chance it’d be good. He really does just see the best in people.

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