“Yeah. Fine,” I manage to say mostly normally. Not normal enough for Viper because he frowns. I quickly add, “Just a little wore out is all.”
He smirks, trailing a finger down my chest and keeping me from pulling the front of my jumpsuit all the way up.
“You usually have a lot more stamina that that. Don’t tell me you’re getting weak.”
I roll my eyes. “Not from you. Just today. You know how tiring it is to maintain that accent and pretend you don’t hate the man sitting across from you while being talked down to all day?”
“Well, you propositioning me in front of everyone didn’t help.”
I shrug. “Certainly didn’t hurt either.”
With my jumpsuit properly back on, I grab my hat and my jacket and walk out Viper’s office before he can ask me anything else. And run right into Jason Travis.
I startle at seeing him there when I didn’t expect to. Then I curse myself for it. Because I have nothing to fear from him. He can’t do anything. He’d have to get through a bunch more people to get to me if he decided he wanted to. Then he’d have to get through me. And that’s only if he recognizes me first. Which he hasn’t.
I hope he hasn’t.
No. He hasn’t. I would know.
“Miss Bianchi,” he says, looking down at me with that condescending smirk he looked at me with as a nineteen-year-old Dele Martin once and now all day during these business talks.
Except it’s worse now. For two reasons. The first being that Addy Bianchi has no doubt proven every preconceived notion that he had about her as a business woman all because she decided to have sex with a man she’d only (supposedly) known for just an afternoon. The second being that he can look at me that way, look directly in my face and not recognize me, no matter how different I might have looked back then. Not when I recognized him the moment I saw him.
I’m suddenly furious.
My heartbeat is pounding in my ears.
It’s taking all the restraint that I used to constantly remind Viper to have to not kill him where he stands in all the creative ways I thought up of every time he opened his mouth at lunch earlier.
He should be dead.
Jason Travis should be dead.
Viper killed everyone in that building that night. Iknowhe did. Because Viper is nothing if not thorough about these kinds of things. No one escaped him. He went and checked for fuck’s sake.
So how the fuck is Jason Travis standing in front of me with that cold, condescending smirk when Iknowhe was there?
There’s only one explanation.
That hewasthere. But he left before Viper rescued me and escaped his death sentence.
And now? Now he can’t be touched. Not when he’s one of Prays chief lieutenants. Not without Pray noticing. Not without risking Viper’s cover.
So I just say tersely, “Mr. Travis,” before breezing past him.