Total pages in book: 81
Estimated words: 76846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76846 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 384(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
I don’t know why I was bothering trying to fix this.
I guess a part of me didn’t want to let the team down. At least not until I got the dirt I needed on the senator.
I’d brought that up over dinner, getting a sigh out of Elian who seemed to think the almost attack would have scared me off my mission.
But it felt even more imperative now that I get the recording. I mean, otherwise, all of this would be for nothing.
And despite what that vlogger, Nathan, claimed, the senator did still have a chance. Polls were either deadlocked, or leaning slightly in his favor just because of familiarity, the fear of the unknown that the other candidate posed.
If I walked away now, he could get reelected. He could go back to the Senate and pass laws that would make it easier for monsters like my attacker’s boss to keep getting away with their exploitation of women and girls.
I couldn’t have that hanging over my head if there was even a slight chance that I could do something about it.
I just… wouldn’t go with the senator anywhere anymore. There were plenty of senior staffers who could go with him to the interviews and feed him his lines. Maybe literally. With a damn earpiece. If he couldn’t stay on brand and topic.
I could claim I needed to be in the office to do damage control. Where I would make sure I was surrounded by as many people as possible.
Just two more days, I promised myself. If, at the end of that, I still couldn’t get it, I could give up. Walk away. Let the chips fall where they may.
Or, I don’t know, go work for the woman running against him, and make sure she won, so he had no power to change laws.
On those thoughts, I drifted off to sleep, sure I would dream of being chased through endless halls by a man who kept gaining on me.
Instead, I dreamed of rolling around in bed with Elian, making me toss and turn, twisting myself up in my sheets, so that I felt like I was being strangled as I tried to kick out of them, then took myself into the hall to take a cold shower before heading into work.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Elian
She was a lot more stubborn than I had anticipated.
I figured that after a real near-death experience that she would give up on her mission to take down her boss and start planning her next steps.
Which would include moving out of Brooklyn, I reminded myself, feeling the familiar gut-punch I got each time I thought of that. Especially as we spent more time together, as we got closer and more comfortable with each other.
She wasn’t mine to keep.
But, fuck, I was starting to want to.
And, honestly, I guess her steadfast determination to do what she felt was her moral duty to take down the senator was one of the reasons I was starting to like her so much.
You had to respect someone who would do just about anything to do what they thought was right. Even if there was a threat of danger involved.
Outside of my family, I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt that much conviction toward something. It was admirable. And I fucking hated it.
Because I couldn’t be there.
I couldn’t protect her.
I couldn’t watch the way she gathered her hair over one shoulder when she was trying to concentrate, or scrunched her nose when she heard something unpleasant, or…
“Yo. The fuck?” Serano called, pulling me out of my thoughts and back to the present.
With no one at the apartment, save for Kevin, he’d decided to hang with me in the car as I waited for Dimitri to emerge from his apartment building until it was time to go keep an eye on Elizabeth for me.
“What?” I asked, trying not to look as caught as I felt.
“Fucking smiling to yourself and shit,” he said, shaking his head at me.
That was practically a fucking speech for Serano, who seemed to struggle to string together three or four words at a time. And even then, it seemed to annoy him to have to do so.
I didn’t know much about Serano’s upbringing. His parents had divorced when he was young, and his mother had taken him out of Brooklyn and raised him in Chicago with her family. All I knew was when he came back at eighteen, he was just like this. Moody, standoffish, quiet. But you could always get a little bit of a reaction out of him if you fed him.
I’d taken him on with my crew mostly because I thought that if I didn’t, he would end his ass up in jail because he always rubbed people the wrong way.
So far, he’d been an asset. Even if he wasn’t the most pleasant company to keep.