>I had been working on my ropes for a while now and they had come a bit loose but enough to pull out a hand yet. Alyssa had been crying on and off. I was never great at dealing with emotional stuff. After being taught to ‘suck it up’ for the most part of my life so far. I had no idea what to do or say when a person was crying for such a valid reason as being kidnapped by rogues.Our kidnappers had been gone for a few hours and I only needed around half an hour hopefully to get my hands free. It was going to be easy after that.But lady luck was not on my side. The boss returned with a triumphant grin on his face and I had to slow down and pretend to be crying and hopeless to stall for enough time to take him by surprise. That was the only ball in my court.“I must say I had half expected your guy to not come at all. He has always been a greedy bastard like that.” He told Alyssa and I felt a pain in my chest at the thought that John spent years with me and still left me

>The moment I placed my hand on her shoulder she collapsed. It must be the nerves taking a toll on her.I caught her before she could fall to the ground and carried her fragile body in my arms, hugging her close.Spike had been ready to come out and tear everyone in the cabin who even thought anything wrong about her. Nobody threatened our mate and lived to tell the tale.I drove home in a frenzy. I thought about driving her to her home but I knew I wouldn’t be able to sleep all night not knowing if she was fine or not.Despite the looks from the staff in the lobby of my building, I went straight to my loft and placed her on the bed. She was still wearing that boutique uniform which in other circumstances would have been great for roleplay but she needed to change.I checked her vitals and made sure she was fine, just blacked-out under stress. I removed the torn uniform from her body as gently as I could, finding it hard to focus on the task at hand when her silky ski

>Zoe was curled up in the blanket that I draped over her when I had brought her in. She was rocking back and forth while staring at the bloody uniform that I had stupidly left on the bathroom floor instead of throwing it in the laundry like every time I did with my bloody clothes.I rushed to her side and was on my knees beside her in an instant.“Zoe?”I called but she was like in a trace.I scooped her and stood up, the clothes falling back to the bathroom floor she had picked them from.That made her look at me like she was seeing me for the first time. She seemed surprised to wike me there. Like waking up from a long slumber.“Hey there.” I looked at her, curled in my arms as I walked back inside the room and lay her on the bed.She grabbed a handful of my shirt and pulled me down with her. I did not resist. It was clear that she needed me.I moved her to my lap and settled on the bed. She placed her head on my chest without a word. I wrapped my arms around her under

> I walked in and saw the same receptionist. I walked straight to the elevator without giving her a chance to stop me or ask anything. “Where are you going? You cannot just-” She called behind me but I was already inside the elevator as someone had just left and it was closing. I had been to Xavier’s office before and knew of his floor number. I pressed the button and watched with satisfaction as the elevator doors closed in her face. I was sure she was going to call security and I wanted to see her face when she would be told that I was Xavier’s paying client. I walked into the office and found Xavier sitting in his rotating chair waiting for me. “Welcome.” He said with a smirk, one foot placed on the knee of the other leg. I plopped my handbag onto a couch and spoke, hoping to convey my frustration, “I get it.”“What do you get?” He raised a brow. This man was testing my patience. “I get that this is unlike your usual high-profile cases and I’m paying in installme

>After dinner, we had smoothly transitioned back to work. Zoe proved to be a great work partner.She was just as focused and refused to lie down or rest for even an hour despite my insisting she do so. I understood how personal it was, and I admired her resilience. She was ready to go to any lengths to save her father. She had taken on Jacob’s role in his absence and it made work go on quite fast despite the fact that there was a lot of data to sort through and I preferred doing everything manually in hardware.Due to personal experiences, I had learned that big heavy files were harder to steal than a tiny USB with terabytes of classified data. Also, paper was unhackable and once burnt could never be retrieved thus, saving it from ever being recovered by the wrong people.Either she would read out some stuff and I would note down whatever I believed to be useful or I would read and dictate to her what to note down for me. We had been so busy sifting through piles of d