Page 17 of His Ruthless Match
J.
The coffee went down the wrong way, and I coughed and sputtered. “What the actual fuck?”
Leaning forward, I yanked the note off the monitor like it might bite me. My hand trembled with the force of my irritation.
“What the hell was he doing in my office?” I hissed.
Theo’s head popped around the door, his tie askew like he’d just tripped over himself. “Everything okay in here?”
“Fine,” I snapped, crumpling the sticky note in my fist. “Everything’s peachy. Close the door, please.”
His eyebrows shot up, but he closed the door without argument.
Apparently, there was no place Jareth wouldn’t invade. How was I supposed to work—how was I supposed to breathe—when that smug, infuriating ass was lurking in the shadows?
The sharp trill of my phone cut through my spiraling thoughts. I answered without looking at the screen.
“Delgado,” I said.
“Eva?” Genevieve’s voice was shaky and panicked.
“Genevieve, what’s wrong?”
“A photo just leaked. This one’s... bad, Eva. It’s me on a yacht. Topless. A man’s head between my legs. I don’t even know how they got it, or who could have been behind the photo, or why they’d be leaking it now. The captions?—”
“Genevieve, take a deep breath. Are you in immediate danger?”
“No,” she replied, her voice quivering.
“Stay inside today. Don’t go anywhere public. Don’t answer any calls from unknown numbers. I’ll figure this out.”
“Eva, they’re going to destroy me,” she whispered. The raw pain in her voice made my chest tight.
“They’re trying to,” I said, my voice steel. “But I won’t let them win. Stay safe. I’ll handle this.”
Sniffling, she thanked me, then ended the call.
I stared at the phone. I’d gone through the case files more times than I could count. I’d dissected every memo, report, and transcript. And still… nothing.
For all my obsessive color-coded tabs and hyperlinked spreadsheets, there was no smoking gun. No definitive lead I could chase. Just fragments. Vague testimonies. Contradictions buried in polished statements. It was the kind of mess that should take weeks to sort through, not days… but this case wasn’t slowing down for anyone.
Genevieve’s situation was escalating fast. I could feel it gathering like a storm in the distance, pressing at my back, demanding decisions when I didn’t have enough facts to justify a single move.
And that terrified me, because people like me didn’t guess. We calculated. We prepared. And right now, I was standing in a war room with no battle plan.
As I stepped out into the main office, I didn’t bother masking my frustration.
“What’s gotten your panties in a wad?” Theo asked, glancing up from his desk. He was already grinning like he lived for moments like this.
I fixed him with a withering glare. “The Genevieve Witt case. It’s getting worse.”
Theo’s grin widened. “Mmm. I see. I wish that cute guy who was being a creeper outside the office would come getmypanties in a wad.”
“Do you want to die?”
He raised his hands in mock surrender, his laughter trailing behind me as I stormed back into my office and slammed the door shut.
I sank into my chair and rested my forehead against the cool surface of my desk. The crumpled sticky note stared back at me.
