Page 14 of The Billionaires

I back up until I’m all the way in the corner. “I’m severely allergic to cats. You must own one, and have its hair or dander on you.”

Her eyes widen, and she backs away also. Not that it will help much; we’re still less than eight feet apart.

She throws another glance at her bag. “Do you have an EpiPen with you?”

I shake my head. “I don’t know if?—”

I stop speaking because her bag produces a blood-chilling sound.

A full-blown, actual meow.

CHAPTER 8

JUNO

Atonic’s head pops out.

Okay, so the cat is out of the bag. Literally.

And Lucius is severely allergic.

He’s staring at the cat like he can’t believe his eyes. “Is that a…?”

“A cat, yes. Afraid so,” I say apologetically.

Lucius transfers his incredulous glare to me. “Is this some sort of an assassination attempt?”

My hackles rise again—a default setting when dealing with Lucius. “What are you, a king? A dictator? Kenny from South Park?”

Having said that, his death-by-cat would look very natural, as far as assassinations go. The perfect crime. What if this is an assassination attempt—just not my doing? Maybe Pearl is not a cheesemaker as she claims, but secretly the top assassin in the world, and she arranged this whole thing: her alleged vacation, her trained killer cat who pretends to sleep until the right moment, this elevator jam?—

“Meow?”

Saguaro help us. Atonic leaps out of the bag, and I can picture the whole murder scenario unfolding. She rubs herself on Lucius. He swells up like a teen’s peen after a porn video, then clutches at his throat theatrically and goes into anaphylactic shock.

Not on my fucking watch.

“Stay back!” I shout at both of them, and then I bravely put myself between man and beast.

Atonic curls her tail and wags it. Then her ears point forward threateningly, right at Lucius.

“Stay away from him,” I say to her sternly.

It’s a mistake. Atonic always wants to go exactly where I don’t want her to go—most likely a side effect of being a cat. She’ll meow next to the bathroom door until I open it, then not go in at all. Though sometimes, she’ll just lie on the threshold as if to say, “Bitch, make sure the door remains open at all times.” So, in this case, it’s clear as day that she really, really wants to rub her allergens directly on her soon-to-be murder victim.

Yep.

She leaps forward.

Luckily for Lucius, there’s a reason I was always chosen as the goalie for my high school soccer team.

I snatch the cat mid-leap as Lucius goes into a sneezing fit.

Or at least I try to. A ball of fur behaves quite differently than a soccer ball, as it turns out. The cat twists free of my grip and lands on her paws—something that balls never do… soccer ones anyway.

Before I can grab her, she goes for him again—but meets my palm, just like that ball did when my team played our biggest rival, Daughters of Chuck Norris.

“It’s like it’s trying to get me,” Lucius says in-between sneezes. He sounds awful, all congested and annoyed.