Page 22 of Daddies Dark Desires (Forbidden Fantasies)
After another few minutes and another sigh, I get a hold of my focus and point myself back at the file in my hand. Time to learn everything I can from this file. I dig through every line, and it’s obvious that I shouldn’t have this in my stack.
It’s not going to stop me.
But now that I’m looking, there’s so little in here. Like incoherently little. At least half of the file is redacted, and they’re photocopies, so there’s not much I can do to get ahold of what’s been blacked out with what I have in my hands.
However, I can glean a few things. Like that this marked out person and his organization is part of what got my father killed.
Connected to the cartel listed among the scrawling blanks. The same cartel I swear I remember hearing somewhere around the same time Dad died. Where did I hear the name though? The news? Mom? His friends—my new bosses—at the funeral?
Fuck, I can’t remember that. And it’s important.
I close my eyes and slow my breaths, counting them. One, two, three, four. In. One, two, three, four. Out.
My body calms, and so does my mind. But when I go digging for memories from that time, for those few months after burying my father.
Fuck, it’s still a blur. No matter how I pick and prod for the exact moment I heard of that fucking cartel, it doesn’t come.
It’s too washed with grief and heartache and anger.
Everything’s distorted.
Remnants of those emotions are left behind when I open my eyes again. I latch onto the anger. It’s the easiest of them all to deal with. To channel into figuring things out.
To find who killed my dad and a way to make them pay for it.
I stand and stretch, taking a cursory look around the office. The move earns a few looks, but I brush it off as I normally would, throwing winks.
The exasperation on Mile’s face has me smiling my simpering bratty smile, and I earn the faintest pink on his cheeks.
When I sit, I give it to the count of fifteen before I use my phone to snap some pictures of the redacted papers for reference. I’ll go snooping for the original copies on my own.
When people aren’t watching me.
Lunch is an easy distraction. Sunny is entertaining as always, and the other interns have made a habit of crowding around. Usually, I eat it up.
Because let’s be honest, I love an audience. Most of the time.
But this time I give excuses, and they hold back comments as they return their focus to Sunny.
Returning to our floor and my cramped, little desk, I dive back into my work, determined to finish my work early to steal a chance at snooping around. I have a new fire under my ass. More than the excitement of finally being able todosomething.
With forty-five minutes to spare, I slip out. Passing everyone is easy. One, they know I have the tendency to move around when I feel too cooped up. Which is often. And two, I’m not looking around to see if anyone is watching me. No giving off red flags that I’m doing anything wrong.
Complete confidence.
It works every time. People don’t question someone who’s on a mission.
It doesn’t take me long to find the file room and even less time to find my way inside. Yeah, I’m not supposed to be here, but you know what? I have a good enough excuse. New to the job. Ignorant.
And I’m on a mission. No one has to know what that is exactly. I’ll just look like an independent overachiever. No one here would deny my intense drive to do shit myself. Even if it breaks rules that are silly.
I leaf through twelve boxes around where I suspect my stack came from, but I don’t have much luck.
Everything goes back exactly as I found it because I’m not sloppy. In anything I do.
Well…almost anything. Some things are meant to be sloppy.
“What are you in here looking for?” Grant’s low, deep tenor vibrates inside of me. Everything flips on as he looms behind my back, and his proximity drenches me with heat.
