Page 26 of My Merciless Don

He sat up, “Really?” His eyes narrowed. “Like what?”

“Well, for one thing, his partnership with the Mexicans, which he basically wants to use to undercut the rest of you. I'm guessing your council doesn't know that.”

His eyes gleamed. “Yeah I'm guessing they don't.”

“So, you really can't do a single thing without this council's approval?”

He shrugged. “Every organization has its rules.”

“Honor among thieves and that?”

“Something like that, yeah.”

I shook my head ruefully, “You’d think that the one advantage of being an outlaw was that you didn't have to obey any rules. Go figure.”

He snorted with amusement. “You're not an outlaw. More like a chaos goblin with poor impulse control.”

I glared at him, something really cutting on the tip of my tongue.

Professional. I reminded myself swallowing it down. Poor impulse control, my ass. If I had poor impulse control he'd have a knife in his chest right now. I would be screaming bloody murder, and stabbing him continuously, the smarmy smug bastard.

“What do I have to do, to make you take me seriously?” I asked instead.

He turned towards me, his face serious, “I do take you seriously. What makes you think I don't?”

I blinked at him caught wrongfooted yet again. “You just called me a chaos goblin. What about that sounds like you're taking me seriously?”

He shrugged. “Two things can be true at the same time. You can be completely chaotic, and also dangerous. Goblins are not exactly benign beings.”

I narrowed my eyes at him, absolutely not sure if he was paying me a compliment or insulting me. He got to his feet, “Well, I'm gonna turn in now. I bid you goodnight.”

I stared up at him, still trying to figure him out. “Good night.”

I watched him walk away, no nearer to deciphering the mystery that was Marco Cassio.

The next day I paid a visit to George in his den. “Hey man, can I borrow your laptop again? I need to do some corporate espionage stuff.”

George laughed as he passed me the machine. “Sure knock yourself out.”

I took a seat across from him and opened the laptop. “Thanks.”

The first thing I did was to not log on to the network to see if that would cause any alarms to go off. Nothing happened.

So far so good.

I opened instant message and sent Kylie a ping. She responded immediately.

Hey boss. Been worried. Good to hear from you.

I smiled. It was good to hear a friendly voice, so to say. I proceeded to tell her everything that had happened, including Marco calling me Amy in bed. She gave all the suitable responses, and even asked if I wanted her to do some research on her.

Aww, that’s nice of you, but she’s dead, so I don’t think you’ll find much that can help me. Focus on Yegorov. Give me paydirt on him and we are in with these people.

Aren’t you in now? My logs tell me you’re using one of their devices.

Yeah, but there’s a limit to what I can do on here. I tried to log into their accounts but I just get error messages. Marco’s passwords aren’t working and the back door I left in his device has been closed.

It’s a good thing I love a challenge.

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