Page 8 of A Love So Deadly
I shake my head. “You need to get some control. You ate our intern.”
“An accident,” she says with a laugh and a flick of her hair.
Not even a lick of remorse. I’d probably fall over if she ever showed such a thing, let alone felt it.
Outside the horrible club in Downtown Tenebris, we get into our waiting car. The blood pumps hard through me, and I want to go on a frenzy. I want to rip out throats and drink the city dry.
I’m not about to. I’ve worked hard at this balance between crime and the dark ways and letting people live. We control so much of the humans, and I’m old enough I don’t need to go on frenzies.
Vittoria…
She’s old enough, too.
But she’s a wild card.
If she ruled, I’d fear for humanity.
They’d be here, but not like this. Not free. However, she’s content, and I give her enough leeway to keep her teeth sharp, her lusts fed. Mine… They were controlled before her over a hundred years ago.
I pull out my phone as we head back in the early hours of the night to VMR HQ. Twelve emails pop up.
From the same person.
One Elliot Montague.
My interest piques.
This is exactly what I want as my dogsbody. A man who doesn’t begin to tempt me, a man who’s smart enough to have found my job postings. And pay a man enough that he won’t dig.
I arrange for an interview tomorrow.
The next evening my exiting receptionist/PA Emily knocks, her pregnant belly in the way.
I smile at her. Emily’s sweet, and someone I handpicked. I just never thought of her as being of childbearing age. It isn’t onmy list of things. But now it needs to be. Now I need to be smart and hire males.
Because that pregnant belly, her enriched blood and the child inside her, are exactly why I need to hire a guy as her replacement.
She isn’t ready for maternity leave, she’s said, but I don’t care. Emily needs to go and fast. I’m kind to her, though. I keep her protected, make sure it’s known anyone touches her, but temptation’s temptation and it’s the reason she has to leave.
I’m paying her beyond well, an extended maternity leave starting tomorrow followed by, when it comes time to return to work, offers from other subsidiaries of ours. Human run. Better pay.
She doesn’t know that yet. But I can’t have someone close to birth with vampires around. And after she gives birth? Even worse. All that blood pumping, producing nutrients her body makes into milk is like a vampire treat.
The blood. Not the milk.
Emily hovers. “Are you sure, Sir? I can stay I want to. I love this job.”
“And we love you being here,” I say, using my mesmerizing voice, just a touch, “but we need to take care of you and the baby. When you come back, your job will be waiting. Of course, that’s if you don’t get another offer. But you might and then you should take it.”
I lay the groundwork. I’ll really put it in when I visit her after she has the baby. The extra extension of her leave, the better job. It’s tricky work this kind of mesmerization, but it works. Emily will leave with lovely stories of working here, and that’s going to help with some of the more unsavory rumors.
“I won’t.”
I don’t go further; the seeds are there. “Did you need something, Emily?”
She beams, rubbing her tummy and my hungers stir. “Sir, your five o’clock’s here. Elliot Montague.”
“Send him in.”
