Page 63 of Guarding Bristol

Chapter Twenty-Two

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Turning the woman inhis arms around to shield her from the rotor wash of the helo idling behind them on the rooftop of the luxury hotel in San Francisco, Jordan drew a fingertip down her cheek.This was their third time together, and he already wanted more.“Miss me.”

“I will.”Jana twined her arms around his neck and plastered her body—perfected by the best plastic surgeons money could buy—against him, a seductive smile on her shiny red lips.“When can I see you again?”

“Soon.”Just as soon as they could figure out how to make it work without raising suspicion.The level of planning needed to pull off the sneaking around made the affair almost as hot as the sex.“Be good.”

She smirked.“Never.”

Chuckling, he put his arm around her and led her across the helipad.He opened the rear door of the helicopter and helped her inside, enjoying the view when the long slit in the two-thousand-dollar red silk dress he’d bought her parted to reveal the entire length of her leg.High enough to give him a flash of the smooth skin between her legs.

He looked up to find her smiling at him in satisfaction, that familiar, hot gleam in her eyes, her nipples hard points against the thin fabric of her bodice.She never wore a bra or underwear when she was with him.To torment him as much as for easy access.

“I’m almost tempted to roll the dice and stay another night,” she said over the roar of the engine.

“Too risky.”

“I know.And you love it as much as I do.”

Grinning, he shut the door and walked across the rooftop to the steel access door where a bodyguard waited.Jana was stunning and an incredible fuck, but that’s not why he kept seeing her.

Fucking a rival’s young trophy wife right under the asshole’s arrogant nose got him off in a way sex never could.

His bodyguard escorted him down the freight elevator to the private vehicle waiting in the underground parking garage.Twenty-five minutes later, he was climbing the short set of steps into his private jet.A little more than two hours after that, he disembarked at a private airfield outside of Portland and got into another waiting vehicle for the drive to his estate, answering messages on the way.

But once he was finally seated at his desk in his locked office to do some work, his good mood evaporated when he saw the message waiting on the encrypted chat program.

Call me.Urgent.

“Goddammit,” he muttered.It meant the intel leak was even worse than he’d feared, and closer than he’d ever realized.No matter how much he wanted to deny the possibility after all the money he’d poured into making his part of the organization secure, it was now glaringly obvious that someone close to him had betrayed him.

Time to cull his inner circle.

Fuming, he called the IT guy back using an encrypted phone.“What’ve you found?”he demanded.It better be good.He was sick of not having answers, and throwing more money at the problem hadn’t gotten him any closer to a name.For all the good it’d done him, he might as well have put the money in a pile outside and set it on fire.

“The files in question were definitely copied.I’m still trying to figure out whether it was done remotely or not.”

Jesus Christ.A wave of cold swept through him.“How could someone have accessed my system?How?I pay you an ungodly amount of money to make sure no one can.”

“I know, I’m not sure how this happened.I—”

“Find out.Find out now, and fix this.If you can tell me who it was, you’ll get a substantial reward.If not, we’re done.”And Jordan would be forced to have him killed because of what he knew.

“But—”

“You’ve got six hours.Not a minute more.”He ended the call and tossed his phone onto his desk in disgust.“Fuck.”

His IT guy was the best money could buy.Some young prodigy only a handful of people in the world could afford, and Jordan kept him on personal retainer.The system shouldn’t have been hackable, let alone his most sensitive personal files.If anything in there was leaked, he was as good as dead.

Someone knocked on the door.“Go away,” he snarled, trying to think.

“It’s me—”

“Goddammit, I said go away!”He dismissed Jon, accessed the program he wanted on his computer and changed the passwords.Probably an exercise in futility at this point, but he was desperate to stop anyone else from getting the information he had.Including the most recent video of him and Jana, taken last month.

As soon as he was done, Jordan sat back and eyed the rug on the other side of the room that hid the access point to one of his safes.The one where he kept all the hard copies of his ammunition in the form of leverage.It was so damn ironic it would have been funny if it wasn’t so fucking scary.

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