Brutally His – Gilded Decadence Read Online Zoe Blake, Alta Hensley

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Billionaire, Contemporary, Dark, Mafia, Suspense Tags Authors: ,
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Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 98398 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 492(@200wpm)___ 394(@250wpm)___ 328(@300wpm)
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They talked for another moment, then Mr. Astrid told them he would meet them at the car, and they headed down. I didn’t look up until the air cleared of heavy-handed perfumes.

Mr. Astrid was standing by Cynthia’s desk, leaning down, one hand flat on the desktop while the other was hitting buttons on her desk phone.

“I am heading out to lunch. I will be gone for an hour, maybe two. Are you available to work late again tonight?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered.

“Good. Take this.” He handed me a black credit card. “This is the office card. I want you to order yourself lunch and take a break while you can. The next few days are going to be brutal.”

“Okay…” I took the card, not liking the idea of a handout. Dinner while we were working late together was one thing, but using his black Amex when it wasn’t a working lunch felt like charity.

No, worse. It felt like he was buying my silence for what happened in the bathroom.

I watched him walk away, and felt sick.

I was disappointed he was taken, insulted he’d tried to buy my silence so cheaply, and mad at myself for being so affected by the actions of a man so far out of my league that it was practically a different sport.

If I told Sabrina about this, which I never would, she would tell me the best way to get over a crush was to find a new one, but not before abusing the card by ordering a lunch of rich people’s food.

Despite what he’d said, publicly funded law offices didn’t have black Amex cards. I looked at it. This was his.

I considered buying lunch for the whole office but didn’t think I could get away with it. It would have been fun, though.

I tucked the black card into the top drawer of the small filing cabinet under my desk. Then, I put the rest of the files in the larger bottom drawer, locking it.

There was no way I was using that card, but I could, at the very least, find someone else to occupy my thoughts and some of my free time.

I downloaded Tinder and headed to lunch. There were always a few food trucks parked outside the offices around this time, and a few greasy tacos sounded like the perfect lunch to have while swiping right.

CHAPTER 13

HARRISON

Dammit.

The last fucking thing I needed was a social call from Mary Quinn Astrid.

I had enough on my plate keeping my mind on work and not on the curve of my new paralegal’s ass in the skirt she was wearing.

It had taken every measure of willpower I possessed to walk away from her last week when every bone in my body was raging to pick her up, toss her over my shoulder, and carry her back to my place where I knew she’d be safe.

Safe, at any rate, from New York’s criminal element. Not safe from me.

At least by giving Captain Raydar those tips I’d been able to secure protection for her until I figured out how to move her into one of my investment properties in a way that no one from the office gossip pool would learn about.

But that was a problem for later. For now, I had to deal with my mother.

Cynthia had managed to block my mother’s numbers, all of them, from reaching my desk and my cell phone in her absence. It was brilliant, or it would have been if Mary hadn’t just shown up with the woman she intended for me to marry.

Then insist I interrupt working on what would quite possibly be the most important case of my career to have lunch at Le Bernardin. The food was good, and I didn’t give a fuck about the cost of the bill.

What I cared about was the cost of this distraction to the case and how it took me away from my new favorite form of torture—watching Eddie work.

Fuck, if that woman knew the things that went through my mind every time she placed the top end of a pen in her mouth while lost in thought, or ran her hand through her hair as she leaned over a book checking a source...

But no, I was here, meeting my supposed fiancée.

Catherine Montague, daughter of Alaster and Courtney. Her father worked in the Financial District, and her uncle was a lord or duke or something or other. This meant that Catherine had the right breeding to help me regain the votes I had lost in my family’s social circles, and she was heavily involved in some philanthropic causes, which meant she would soften how I appeared to everyone else.

Standing next to this beautiful woman who projected an air of constant sunshine and graceful generosity would wipe away the scandal that was my parentage, making me more palatable to the voters to whom it mattered.


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