Con could barely remember getting into bed.He could barely remember getting out of the car even. It seemed the events of the night had him feeling so downcast that he was as physically exhausted as he was mentally.It hadn't been an easy night and the stress had taken its toll on Con's mind.The feeling of sunlight sending warmth through the room woke him up slightly, well that and the soft taps he was receiving on his shoulder.Con mumbled incoherently and put his head back on the soft pillow he had been resting it on all through the night. Even if he could barely remember anything relating to how he had gotten into bed last night, he still loved this pillow."Con?"He could still remember that he had made it into his bed at least."Con wake up."And he had also found this soft pillow in his bed. The same pillow that was making him feel so fuzzy and happy as he gently caressed it.The sound of a soft barely held back moan cut through the air and Con's eyes flew open. He immediately
Con wasn't mad at the whole thing.Just a bit annoyed that all this had happened while he was asleep and he was barely aware of it the whole time. They could have done so much more if he was awake. He could have taken her to the pinnacles of pleasure and shown her the way back too, but he had been asleep and he had let such a golden opportunity pass him by.Con sighed and looked around his room.Aubrey was right. The place was indeed filthy.Cleaning up wasn't an option this morning because he still had to go to work.Today was a Thursday and he didn't have a day off. Jane would want to see him and so would Adeline.With any luck, everyone at Nurain would want to see him and then they would laugh at him, for being so thoroughly humiliated and disgraced.No doubt some people would want to taunt him too, so he had to get to work and face all of this fast so he could come back home and start plotting.His enemy list had just increased with two more names. Jake Caswell and whatever th
Con got to work late again but this time it was for a good reason.He was surprised.Even John didn't reprimand him too much for coming late when he saw the puzzled look on Con's face.None of his co workers could think of a reason why he looked like he was in deep thought, but anyone looking at Con could tell he was heavily thinking at the moment.Con sighed.So it wasn't his fault after all.He had only gone to the wrong lady because he had been shown the wrong lady, and he had sincerely thought she was the person he came to the party for.He really didn't know how to digest this new piece of information. On one hand it made him happy to know that his memory was still as good as ever, even if that was the only thing he had going for him, at least he had that, but on the other had he felt a bit annoyed at both Aubrey and Lana.His landlady had unintentionally misled him and shown him the wrong picture, and Mrs Caswell hadn't been really forthcoming with the truth of her identity eit
Con arrived at Adeline's office to see he wasn't being tricked or trapped.Well he wasn't being trapped. Tricked though? Maybe a little.Adeline had done something to her office and it had changed since the last time he had been in here.To begin with, her table was cleared, there wasn't a single file on it and apart from that, there was a bucket of champagne.Right in the middle of the table.Adeline was dressed in the most alluring dress he had ever seen her in, a lot of skin was on show but there was also some layer of added modesty to it.She always looked prim and perfect, but her small face and luscious lips looked extra tempting today and the way she looked at him with so much innocence made him want to smirk at her and pull her into his laps.Adeline smiled at him and took her seat while Con killed that thought in his mind.Of course he couldn't do anything like that.If last night had taught him anything, then it was that he was at the very bottom of the food chain, and when
Con noticed something like a flash of disgust pass by on Adeline's face but it disappeared as fast as it had appeared.Adeline simply smiled and nodded her head at him."In a way, I guess."Con grabbed his glass and drank from it.Adeline was acting weird. His time as a mercenary soldier had taught him not to overlook any sudden emotions that his men exhibited.Hidden emotions could be dangerous especially when your survival as a team literally depended on your level of teamwork. That was one of the things Con had made sure to make very clear to his men.Any issues had to be thrashed out before they went into the field, and he sometimes had to step in to intervene in settling those issues, and ultimately his men were always transparent with each other.They could argue and have disagreements but they weren't allowed to hold grudges. That was a major rule.The way Adeline was acting didn't make Con feel too safe. Truthfully It didn't make him feel safe at all."Are you scared Con?"
The ornate marble walls of the museum gave off a sleek feeling to the building.In fact it gave off a sleek feeling to everything that was in here.Jake followed the guard who walked ahead of him as he was led through the personal museum of the Aliyev family.Gabe and the other two members of the Black Clouds had advised him to come seek help from them.Jake had actually thought they would help him after they had humiliated him. After he had slapped Lana in the hall and Gabe had helped him disgrace the man that had been dancing with her, Jeremy and Clark had led him to a car parked just outside the grand double doors of the hotel.Melissa and his secretary, Hailey, had been waiting in the car for them.It was a four seat jeep, one that Jake had been eyeing for a while now but he couldn't afford if he wanted to see through with his plan of making Adeline hand over her company to him.He had been ushered into the car by his friends and the driver drove them to a hotel.Jake had followe
The men that drove the car spoke as they drove and it was the sound of their voices that woke Con up.His head had a dull ache to it and he still felt slightly drowsy.Adeline had drugged him. That part was clear enough.Even with the drug still in his system, Con could still see the look that had been in Adeline's eyes as he passed out.He should have listened to that gut feeling and been more conscious of his surroundings.But he had been watchful hadn't he? He could naturally smell a number of things normal people couldn't. In a dire moment he had even managed to sniff out a bomb once, but that had been in a dire moment and that moment in Adeline's office had been anything but dire.Adeline had put his heart at rest. She had made him feel calm and foolish and fuzzy inside, so much so that he had let his guard down and gotten himself drugged, and now he was being carted away in a car to heaven knows where.Con groaned as the persistent headache lashed through his brain and the me
Con woke up in another car and he glared at the man sitting on his left."Did you really have to knock me out? You could have just untied me so I could walk.The seats in this car were covered with deep blue leather, not the black of the other one.The man on Con's left simply gave him a knowing look.As if to say 'we put you in those ropes for a reason'.Con scoffed as he saw the look on the man's face and relaxed back into the seat.The seat was wide enough and long enough that he could lie on it comfortably, but his neck still hurt and his legs were slightly curled.Con groaned as that annoying headache came back again and he struggled against the ropes.The feeling of being bound irritated him, as well as the general feeling of these ropes on his skin. Everything just made him angry and annoyed now and he didn't care if the ropes would strangle him to death, he had to get out of them and get a fucking explanation to what was happening.Where was he being taken to and who was he be
Xavier stared at the files in his hands and tried not to get too scared by them. There was information on them, more information than he would have felt comfortable ever knowing but he could see what Con was so scared of now. He might even be sure that he had managed to see the things Con had not. To begin with, this world was not what they thought it was.At least it was not all they thought it was. It was much more than they imagined and the fact that Con had somehow managed to stumble on this clearly meant the cosmos was seeking their help, or rather Con's help. Somehow somewhere there was someone or something pushing Con towards making these decisions and he could feel it now. He was sure if he told Jane and Aubrey that they would plan to eat him up alive. Both him and that thing he felt was guiding Con into making the decisions he was making. Their world was under threat, and he would be damned if he just sat back and watched it all crumble.Xavier reached for his phone and tap
Con watched the hackers he had hired work and he came to the conclusion that he had undoubtedly made a very huge mistake.There was little he could do in terms of making them more coperative and oddly he got the feeling that they wanted to make him frustrated. One of them full on refused to listen to his commands and Con felt the urge to give the man a sound slap at the back of his mind. He had to resist it because the others were already working and from what he could see, they were doing what he wanted them to do. That was enough for him, but what he truly wanted was their total cooperation.From the way they had abandoned their jobs to go chase after money, he knew that he couldn't use them for any of the jobs he would have wished to. Since they had the basic knowledge he would need in the people he wanted to recruit, it would have been better if they had behaved and not messed up that way. It was not like he was that desperate that he would hire them despite whatever they did, but
Jake looked out his window and tried to assess his surroundings. He could tell people were trying to hack into the cyber security of the the hotel. The alarms had gone off the moment the breach was noticed and he had spent the past one hour trying to calm himself down and not fly into a rage. The fact that whoever this was thought he could mess with him and get away with it felt funny to him.The only problem right now was the issue of intention. The hackers seemed to be aiming for the security controls to switch them off. That was what they had been trying to do in the first place and he felt they might have done it sucesfully if they hadn't diverted to start hacking away at money. If they were petty thieves then he would make them pay. He would make them pay badly for having him all worked up for nothing, but if they posed a greater problem than than that then he would have to solve that problem, probably with the aid of some thugs and torture. He just bought this hotel. It was on
Xavier watched as Lisa and Clay kept their eyes on him like he was performing some kind of magic trick just sitting down there and doing nothing. He could already tell that it would be a long time before they left him alone and honestly, now he was up to the challenge. There was no way he was going to let them keep him in when he already had something he wanted to do.Lisa could be dealt with. He could persuade her with treats and make her feel he should be let loose to do what he wanted because he was her father and even he would have to admit that he let her loose to do what she wanted too sometimes.Lisa would let him do what he wanted to do because he also let her do what she wanted to do at times. It was an agreement they had both reached and he was sure she would honor her part of their agreement. The one was really worried about was Clay. The fact that the younger male just stood there watching him gave Xavier a funny feeling in his stomach. He and Lisa should have done off t
Con could swear that he had thought there was a chance of Xavier calling him on the phone and offering his help.He had been expecting that for a day plus now but yet nothing had happened and he was getting skeptical. Was he wrong to expect that his comrade in arms would come to him at this moment? And was he sure that he could pull off this operation with Xavier?Con stared at the building in front of him and turned to look at the others in the car. Two of the maids had revealed themselves to be hackers specially trained by the Black family. It seemed his uncle had also believed that one day he would need the help of such people so he had gathered them, from all walks of life, which to him probably meant the prisons. The man was a cheapskate. He couldn't hire professsionals who would get his job done for him, so instead he went to the prisons and got men and women who had been arrested and convicted of various internet crimes .He had bailed them out, paid the men behind the desk eno
Lisa stared at her father and tried to assess the level of damage she had done.She had one hand over her mouth and the other helping her prop that arm up.'"When the heck did my father become ebony haired?""Language Lisa.Lisa rolled her eyes and walked over to go stand near Clay."We did this didn't we?"Clay couldn't help the chuckle that escaped his throat. Somehow he had imagined that Lisa would have more information than he would on what was happening to her father. She had asked him to promise that they would both take the fall for whatever happened and when this happened, he suspected she knew about it. No just knew about it but expected it. He would not have been surprised if Lisa expected this to happen, but it seems she had not. She was just as surprised as he was, or she was now a great actress and she was faking all this, but he could tell there was no talent for acting in Lisa so he was sure it was the first one.Lisa was shocked, the same way he had been and it was fu
"What exactly did Lisa put in to make your hair this color?"Xavier could see Jane was getting distracted already. Her eyes were gleaming as she fingered his lock of hair and he could already see the longing in her.Jane wanted to cut his hair and take it in to be studied. He could proudly say that he had taught Jane as much as he could in the art of detectiving in a science lab. He had taught her how to determine how long a piece of fabric would retain its color if dyed, what mixture of dyes to use and what colors seemed to have an affinity for each other. In part he was a fundamental aspect to the success of Jane's clothing brand and he had felt a bit disappointed when she had abandoned their lab meetings to focus on leading her company, but now he could see that the spark wasn't totally dead yet.She looked at his hair with a clinical eye, from a scientific point of view. Lisa was asleep and he had asked Clay to leave her so she could take the rest she needed. Lisa rarely slept
Clay left Lisa in the room and descended to the lab beneath her to check for himself how her father was doing. Maybe it was because he had been there when the man collapsed or maybe because he had been just as scared when it had all happened, but he had a deep feeling of worry for Mr Frost. There wasn't much for him to do concerning the cure Lisa had administered to her father. She seemed sure of it and it seemed the cure had worked the way she said it would.The ice core had been repaired. By a bunch of black petals. It still surprised him as to how that happened but as long as Lisa's father was out of the danger zone then he would be happy. They were in enough confusion as things stood already and more confusion was not something he wanted for any of them. What he wanted at the moment was to confirm that Lisa's father was okay, and if he was then maybe he could ask if they could run a brain scan on Lisa. She had lapsed off into thought again and it was making him feel a bit scared.
Lisa could feel her heart slam into her chest the moment she heard the question. Her face turned red and she looked away, not because she was ashamed but because she was embarrassed."How the hell can you pop that kind of question on me so casually? Do I look like I have someone on my mind?""You look like you've been hella distracted and when girls are at your age they tend to think of boys twenty four seven. Can you see the reason for my curiosity now?"Lisa rolled her eyes and noticed how close she and Clay were. Closeness between the both of them had never bothered her, Clay was like a brother to her and she was like a sister to him, but he had grown these past few months and she wouldn't say she had failed to notice the changes in herself too. They had both grown a lot and somehow this kind of closeness made her extra aware of that.Everything around them was changing. Not just the climate or global warming, but mostly a lot of the other things, the more important things, the peo