Page 16 of The Game

“Seems like it.”

“Who are these assholes? Find out from Anna who’s screwed her over and I’ll hack into some systems for her and give her enough dirt on them to last her a lifetime.”

I start to laugh. I know he’s done the odd bit of work for celebrities in the past. “I could suggest you as another nonpredatory companion … Looking like you do, I’m sure you’d get a lot of takers.”

“Yeah. I’m sure Kate would love that.” He chuckles. “Imagine the headline: ‘Famous hacker Fabian Adramovich wanted by the Russians and several other Eastern European states …’”

Fuck. “Wanted by the Russians?”

He clicks his tongue. “Not seriously.”

What the hell does that mean? There are serious and nonserious levels of being on someone’s watchlist? Actually, that doesn’t sound so unlikely. But still …

“Chill. They don’t know who or where I am.”

I’m never going to relax about Fabian and the crazy stuff he does.

“How are you doing?” My constant worry with Fabian is his lifestyle, the drug experimentation, the dangerous sports, the hacking. Safe to say he lives averydifferent life from mine.

I glance out the glass partition in the office at Susie waving her hands as she talks on the phone. Perhaps mine’s about to become crazy in a different way. Not sure I can deal with that.

“I’m good,” Fabian says in my ear. “Kate’s keeping an eye on me.”

“You eating enough?”

Why did I ask that? Am I his mom? And he just survived an attempt on his life. I should be asking him about that. “You all healed from that stabbing now?”

He chuckles. “I’m good. Cool your heels. Coming back to the food question, you offering to take me out and feed me?”

Is he changing the subject? Yes. Gah, I can check him out if we meet up. “I will, if you’ll let me pay.”

“You’re on.”

Shit. It’ll have to be somewhere super cheap.

Four hours later, Susie sticks her head around the door.

“These pictures and the video you took are terrific, boss.”

I raise my head from the board I’m designing. “Yeah?”

She brings my phone in and clicks on the reel she’s put together, and my jaw drops. It starts with a picture of Serge fixing my hair, followed by Pepper bringing me her rabbit, then a red swish of a dress and shoes in front of me moving across the sidewalk, a pan across the inside of the venue, and finally a selfie I took of Anna and me smiling at the end.

“Her team has cleared it. I’m going to post that with something like ‘I had a great night’ and tag Anna.”

I watch the video again. It feels so foreign to put stuff out on social media about a night out when I’m running a serious electronics company.

Susie pats my arm. “It can’t hurt to be better known, Adam.”

So, I give her a thumbs-up.

7

ANNA

Damian whirls into my apartment at 10 a.m. with a bag over his shoulder and two coffees in a cardboard tray in one hand, and a plastic box in the other. He leans in to plant a kiss on each cheek.

“June’s fighting fires, so I’m doing the update today.”

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