Page 101 of Double Down
Atticus
This fucking ghost.He’s got us over a digital barrel, and he knows it.
Biting a low curse through my teeth as I hit yet another wall, I rip off my headset, sick of the ADHD tones I’ve been listening to all day, and pitch it across the room.
It's the only reason I hear my phone buzz with a text.
Conrad
Office. Now. Get eyes on Phoenix; make sure she stays upstairs. I want her locked in the penthouse with Zeus.
What the hell is it now? I don’t have time for a fucking meeting of the minds every time I turn around.
I shove back from my desk hard enough that the chair skitters and squeals across the floor, yanking my glasses off my face and rubbing at my eye sockets with the heels of my hands.
It’s still early—only eleven or so—but I’ve been awake since…well, I don’t think I actually went to bed. This day should havebeen over long ago. My eyes burn, and the coffee beside my keyboard went cold hours ago.
I’m fucking tapped. I’ve been scrubbing CCTV timelines until the pixels swim—elevators, stairwells, back-of-house corridors—looking not only at footage but at miles of code, trying to hunt down the ghost in my systems.
My body aches from sitting in that chair, and my wrists and fingers ache from the keyboard work. I shake my hands out now as I walk down to the office, choosing the stairwells over the elevator to get a few steps in. I don’t bother answering the text. There’s no need.
The resort hums with life as I walk out onto the floor Con’s office is located on—people chatting on the way to their rooms, a housekeeping cart with a squeaky wheel being pushed to the next room.
I clip past it all, jaw clenched, shirt half-buttoned, sleeves shoved to my forearms because I can’t be bothered to look like the calm, in control one today.
Conrad’s office door is open. That detail irritates me more than it should.
“I’m going to say this once,” I tell the room as I cross the threshold, “if this isn’t life-or-death, I’m walking back out. I can’t find where the drugs are coming from if I’m in a meeting every five minutes. Unless one of you figured out how to code in the last twenty minutes?—”
Then I actually look at the other Titans, and I can see it painted all over them.
Maverick’s pacing a tight line by the windows like a caged lion, his hands running through his hair and making it look more like a mane.
Storm’s wedged against a bookcase, arms folded, expression carved from stone. He’s on the edge. He’s kind of always on the fucking edge, but whatever’s happening right now is bad enough that Conrad is keeping Phoenix in the suite instead of helping Storm stay present.
Conrad is leaning against the front edge of his father’s desk, his palms planted, that CEO mask welded to his face. The one that shows no emotion, the one he never wears when it’s just us.
Whatever is going on, it’s worse than life or death. Somewhere behind my sternum, something tightens.
“Sit,” Conrad says.
“No.” I shut the door with my heel. “Standing is faster. The second we’re done, I’m going back to the feeds. Somebody is moving product inside our walls, which, by the way, the Blackvine Syndicate apparently thinks we stole from them, so unless this is that, save it.”
That name buys me three seconds of silence. I spend the time wiping a smudge off my lenses and reminding myself not to throw something.
“How do you know that?” Con asks.
“Because they sent me an e-mail saying they would be in touch soon, and giving me a list of what they expect returned along with the cash expected for the inconvenience. Apparently, they are under the impression I handle the books.”
“Fuck me,” Maverick starts. “Could they be behind all of this?”
“Maybe,” I say. “They have the resources. But would they really give us a heads up that they’re going to start a war?”
“It’s not them,” Conrad says. “They called. Whoever stole from them is working very hard to make Calhoun think we are at fault.”
Son of a bitch.
“Blackvine Syndicate isn’t a street crew. They’re inter-state, arguably international when they want to be, built on old money that found newer markets. They don’t tag walls, they buy them, just as quickly as they buy politicians and cops,” Conrad says, pacing.
