Page 57 of Her Wolf

“Am I too late?”

“Not at all,” Cora said, sending a gracious wave his way. “I’m glad you’re here.”

Lars almost put a crick in his neck how he swung to look at Cora.

Had he fucked his way into Oz last night? Or had he kicked the bucket mid-orgasm and this was some fucked up mirror world?

“I hope you have some good news for me,” Neo said, taking his seat at the other head of the table, opposite Cora. Sylvia trailed him, and she sat to one side while Santino took the seat beside Bailey, but he just carried on crunching through his bowl of cereal.

“We’re throwing a party.”

Neo paused with a hand halfway to a jug of orange juice. “A party,” he repeated, scanning everyone at the table as if trying to figure out if this was some kind of warped practical joke.

Why wouldn’t the bastard take off his glasses? It was impossible to get anything from him with those black squares hiding his eyes.

Lars sat forward, elbows on the table, and tried to stare a hole through Neo’s shades.

The man didn’t notice.

“It’s neutral territory,” Cora said, lifting her hands and counting off each point on a finger. “There’ll be tons of people around, and we’ll be wearing masks.”

Neo should have burst out laughing. God, hearing Cora say all of that, he almost did. But all the guy did was pour himself a glass of orange juice and — possibly — watch Cora while he drank half of it in a few big gulps.

“That sounds good,” he said.

It was incredibly fucking difficult not to laugh. Lars pressed his lips into a line, and turned to Finn. “Are you going to object anytime in the near future?”

Finn gave a single-shouldered shrug. “I would, but you took that power away from us.”

Lars’s eyes flew wide open. “What?”

Another shrug. Finn studied the lawyer opposite them as he poured himself another cup of coffee. “She makes the rules out here, remember?”

“Hey!” Lars whispered irately as he poked Milo with his finger. “I was trying to help. Things were getting all fucking naff and shit. I didn’t mean we should let her run wild with every brain dead idea that—”

“I’m sorry, Lars,” Cora cut him off. “Is there something you want to say?”

Lars turned. A thick, anticipatory hush had fallen over the table. “This is a stupid fucking idea.”

Cora laced her fingers together, resting her chin on her knuckles. “Which part?”

“All of it,” he said, sweeping a hand over the table. “You’re going to be surrounded by hundreds of people, some of them you apparently owe a massive shipment of drugs to.”

“It’s only the dealers that know about it,” she countered coolly.

“And you trust all of them? They watched you murder—” And then he cut off, because he’d become acutely aware of eyes on him.

Neo. Silent, but so obviously staring despite his sunglasses that Lars could feel the weight of his gaze like a physical touch.

“What I mean is,” he said through a sigh, “There’s no way the three of us can secure a place like that.”

“I can add ten men to the roster,” Neo said. “All highly trained and a hundred percent loyal to the cartel.”

Lars swung to look at Neo.

“To our cartel,” Neo added.

The way he put emphasis on that word made Lars’s skin crawl. He heard Finn shift in his chair beside him, and knew it had irked him too.

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