Page 68 of Knights Game

“Any thoughts on scalability?” A pilot is great, but we need to consider the next level. The Albanians are smart, this may not be a unique idea for much longer.

If, in fact, it hasn’t already been done.

“We just need to think about what restaurants are worth doing, and how many we have in our network. If there are gaps in our territory, we will need to look at procuring new restaurants in those areas.”

“Or embedding our people to distribute the orders through existing restaurants.”

“That aren’t ours?”

“Exactly.” I snap my fingers. “If it’s our restaurants, it’s our premises, our liability. The paper will always be able to be traced back to us. If it’s our people, we can embed them as employees to each restaurant. Harder to track, as they have no paper ties back to us. Can we get this set up, test it?”

He nods and pulls his laptop closer, tapping on the screen and keyboard then folds the laptop on itself, so it becomes a tablet screen and lays it flat on my desk.

“Would need to check, but Martin has the Little Hub Café. He covers this core area.” He draws a circle with the pen. “If we put some of his guys in this chicken shop,” he points to the screen, “we can test the model and extend his territory where we already had a blind spot the Albanians are leveraging.”

I lean back and nod. “Set it up. We have a new shipment coming with the new product in five weeks. We need the men in position then, along with all supporting tech.”

“Got it. Do you want to see the final design?”

“No, just make it easy to use. Think ordering an Uber when you're blind drunk.”

“Cash only, right?”

“Yup.”

“Okay.” Henry stands and grins.

“You’re on point, Henry. Link up with Roman on product distribution. He’ll help work out the logistics of getting it to where it needs to be for the boys. We also have a new business venture in the works with Asher Black.”

“Really? Since when do The Covenant want to deal directly with us?”

“Really, this isn’t The Covenant though, this is Black himself.” I stand, shrugging into my jacket. My pillow beckons. “BlackLogistics happen to provide the solution to our Thames problem. I’m going to hook you into the discussions, I want you in the Black Distribution systems, I want all the information you can find, along with a list of security risks.”

“You’re asking me to hack your new business partner?”

I walk around the desk and put my arm over his shoulder. “When you say it like that it sounds terrible. I need you to search for weaknesses.”

He throws his head and chuckles. “You can polish the turd as much as you want, Luca, but when Asher finds out he’ll be pissed.”

“Meh.” I shrug, opening my office door to him. “He needs me as much as I need him, he needs to understand where his weaknesses are. Just like we need to be aware of where ours are.”

“I have multiple pen tests running daily, we have no security weaknesses.” He looks affronted.

“I’m not talking about technical weaknesses, brother.”

I lean against the doorframe to the master suite and stare at her for a minute. She’s in my bed.

The covers are pooled around her waist, she’s half hugging, half lying on the pillow with her arm thrown over it. Her lips parted as she breathes deeply in a peaceful sleep.

She’s naked.

I stare at the woman who has become my obsession. My weakness. The woman who has possibly given me a solution to push ahead of everyone.

I’m trying to work out why and how she has gotten under my skin so much and so quickly. Ever since she opened that car doorand pulled me out of the wreck, I’ve been drawn to her. The sass, the innocence, the fear.

She’s like a drug.

And I can’t wait to take another hit.

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