“Sounds fabulous! Oh, Phoebe, I do wish you were back here. Your father has decided to give a dinner for those stuffy old colleagues of his and . . .” Her mother wittered on, relaying the usual catalogue of complaints and slights that had been the soundtrack to Phoebe’s life for years. She didn’t ask about Phoebe’s new job, not one single question, which was pretty much what Phoebe expected since her mother was only interested in one thing—herself.
“That sounds dreadful, mum,” Phoebe said, only half-listening, her brain already going over whether the items she requested from her apartment were the right ones and what she’d do if she’d forgotten something. All her mother required was soothing anyway, not actual input.
Another five minutes and more soothing noises later, along with the usual gentle “No, I’m not coming home quite yet” statements, Phoebe disconnected the call and sat on the bed, fighting the feelings of vague frustration that always filled her after a phone call with her mother.
Then, just as she’d begun the laborious process of pinning her hair back into place, her phone buzzed again with a text message that looked to be a long list of instructions. It was from Nero.
Phoebe slid the last pin into place, smoothed down her skirt, and picked up her phone.
Okay, Nero de Santis. Bring it on.
She was ready.
Chapter 3
Nero hit Phoebe’s name on his contact list and she answered on the second ring, which pleased him since he hated to be kept waiting. In fact, she’d proved to be incredibly responsive over the past three days, no matter what time of the day or night he’d demanded her presence, which also pleased him.
Especially as he’d been working her hard. The first day he’d kept her up till midnight in his office, taking notes at a video conference with some of his Silicon Valley team. She hadn’t murmured a word of complaint, not even when he’d kept her up for another hour after the meeting had finished. Then he’d woken her at 6 A.M. the next morning to go get his morning coffee. There hadn’t been any complaints then either, nor when he’d sent her to a DS Corp, meeting at DS Tower downtown in his stead. Or when he’d sent her to an art auction afterward to purchase a rare Van Gogh landscape that had unexpectedly come up for sale.
Or that second night, at 3 A.M., when he’d gone for a run on his treadmill and then discovered afterward that he was out of his favorite soda, which had necessitated Phoebe making a run to the nearest 7/11.
Yes, at 3 A.M., she’d answered on the second ring, which even his best assistant hadn’t managed.
It was impressive, he had to admit.
“Mr. de Santis?” she enquired in her cool, calm way.
“I need coffee,” he said without preamble. “Espresso, two sugars. Also, get me a plain bagel with cream cheese and lox.”
“I can do that for you. When would you like these?”
“Now.” He didn’t wait for a response, disconnecting the call and tossing his phone carelessly down on his desk before going back to the email he’d been reading. Which he read a second time, just to be sure he understood what it said.
Sure enough, he had. The lead he’d been following for months now had ended up with yet another dead end.
“Fuck,” he growled, his mood darkening as he slammed a hand down on the desk, only barely missing his keyboard. He wanted to pick something up and break it, or fling something at the wall and listen to it shatter. Eyeing his phone, he considered throwing that for half a second, then decided against it. He couldn’t be bothered getting another, and there were more productive things he could be doing with his fury.
Glancing over at the file he had open on one of his other screens, Nero scowled at it. In between his own work and his half-brother Lorenzo getting in his face about investigating some sketchy behavior in one of their father’s accounts, he’d also been fiddling with this particular file. In fact, he’d been fiddling with it for a long time now, gradually accumulating names and dates and locations, trying to put together a picture of a man he’d been trying to find for years. Unfortunately, though, like the lead he’d been following up on today, every single piece of new information he’d received had led precisely nowhere. Which made finding this particular man–his stepfather-incredibly fucking difficult.
And he did want to find him.
Even before the police had discovered him, a small, emaciated teenager in a walled-up room in the back of that house in Queens, Nero had been fueled by thoughts of revenge. It had been the fire that had kept him warm at nights when he’d had nothing but a single threadbare blanket to cover himself, and it was the ice that had kept him cool when temperatures climbed to over a hundred, turning the little room that was his world into an oven.
He’d lain on the sagging bed in that room, planning what he’d do to his
stepfather, the man his mother was trying to keep him safe from. Nero had actually never seen him, but he had no doubt the guy existed, because he’d heard him shouting some nights outside Nero’s secret room. He’d been five when his mother had hidden him away—for his own safety, she’d always said—because his new stepfather was controlling and violent, and hated children. However, his mother had told Nero that she needed to stay with him because he was helping her pay off her debts and that as long as he didn’t find out Nero existed, everything would be fine. Be patient, she’d told Nero. Once her debts were paid they could both escape, perhaps even try to find Nero’s real father. But until then Nero just had to stay there and be quiet and not attract his stepfather’s attention. He had to stay out of sight and out of mind. The ghost in the walls . . .
He’d gotten out of that room and that house a long time ago and not with his mother in the end, but the need for revenge burned hotter in his blood than ever.
He wanted to destroy his stepfather, the man who’d ensured that for ten years Nero had to stay hidden in one tiny room. He wanted to destroy him utterly.
Except that prick had seemingly disappeared off the face of the earth.
It was frustrating, especially given all the resources at Nero’s fingertips. He was a goddamn computer genius who not only designed some of the world’s foremost digital defense systems, but could hack into them, too, and he could not find one stupid, lousy asshole.
His irritation deepening, Nero pushed himself out of his chair and stalked out of the control room, heading for the doorway to the gym that led off his main office. It was going to be impossible to get any other work done when he was this pissed, and the only way to burn off the frustration was to run it out on the treadmill or bury it under some good, old fashioned weightlifting.
His gym was high-spec and huge—he preferred having lots of room—and it had big, glass sliding doors that gave a view out onto the garden. He liked that, too. Sometimes he had the doors open, so that the scent of the plants and flowers drifted in, making him feel as if he were running through a field or a forest.
Sometimes he kept the doors firmly shut, his attention on the big screens displaying different news channels and various social-media accounts.
Today he kept the doors shut, stripping his clothes off and leaving them in a careless heap on the floor before going over to the shelf unit and drawers where he kept his workout gear. Changing into some workout shorts, a tank, and some running shoes, he went to fill a water bottle from the drinking fountain before going over to the top-of-the-line treadmill and programming in something ultra-tough and punishing.
He was half an hour into his run when suddenly the door opened and Phoebe came in, a takeout coffee cup in one hand, a paper bag in the other.
Nero didn’t bother stopping, merely glancing over at her briefly before directing his attention back to CNN and the news story he was currently following. “I asked for these half an hour ago,” he said flatly.
“I’m sorry,” the sound of her heels echoed on the gym’s wooden floor as she moved over to the shelving unit and placed the coffee and bagel down on it. “I got them twenty minutes ago, but it took me a little while to find you.”
The delay irritated him unreasonably. For the past three days, she’d been incredibly responsive so what was the problem now?
“You should know where to find me by now.” He didn’t bother to mask his annoyance. “The gym isn’t that far away.”
“I’m sorry,” she said repeated, apologetic. “It won’t happen again.”
Yet he caught it, the briefest of hesitations before she’d answered him.
He kept his gaze on the screen, every instinct suddenly zeroing in on her and that slight hesitation. “One coffee and a bagel shouldn’t have taken you that long.
“The café was very busy and there was also—”
“Fucking bullshit. That café knows they make my coffee first before they do anything else.” He turned his attention from the screen to stare at her, his irritation at the delay combining with the anger already seething inside him, becoming something hot, explosive. A missile seeking a target. “Give me the truth or else you’re fired.”
She stood near the door, neat as a new pin in her plain black skirt and boring white blouse. Her hair was in its customary bun, not a curl or strand out of place, and her sharp features were—as usual—completely calm, not a single emotion on them that he could read. Her gaze, too, was unreadable, meeting his without flinching.