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Another name to scratch onto my People I Hate list.
“He did,” Zane confirmed. “He had his reasons for keeping that secret. Reasons I’ll let him explain. I can’t say he made the right call but he had his reasons, and Nebraska, those reasons were to protect you.”
No they weren’t.
They were to control me.
“Whatever,” I snarled. “I have no interest in listening to more bullshit lies. I’m done. Out. No more. Dutch can take his reasons and shove them up his—”
“I’m not positive, I’ve never asked, but Dutch doesn’t strike me as the kind of man who enjoys things forcefully shoved up his ass.”
Even though Zane was over six-thousand miles away and couldn’t see me my eyes still narrowed.
“You think this is funny?”
“No, Nebraska, there’s not a damn thing funny about the way you’ve been treated. There’s not one fucking thing funny about those who were supposed to protect and love you betraying you the way they have. I’ve met your mother. She’s wicked smart, cunning, calculating, a master of her craft. She fucked me and Dutch, fucked our op, and landed us in jail. Yet I still cannot believe she has it in her to leave you unless she had no choice. Why no one told you when you were old enough to process and keep the secret, I don’t get. Especially because you’re in the life, you do the work you do and Pidge does what she does. How you haven’t found out before now is a miracle. I’m not happy Dutch kept you from me, but I understand why he did. I would’ve cut you loose. No way in fuck would I have allowed Agency ties, even loose ones, to infiltrate Black.”
He abruptly stopped speaking so I took my opportunity to remind him.
“No need to worry about those ties anymore. I’m gone.”
“I don’t accept your resignation.”
Was he nuts?
“You fired me,” I spat.
I heard an exasperated grunt come from beside me. When I glanced over, I saw Easton was much closer than I thought he was.
Damn, he was a good-looking man.
But furious… he was hot.
Another reason to hate Charlie.
He’d taken away my choices. He’d forced me to live in a world where Easton Spears wasn’t an option.
Easton verbalized his grunted annoyance by growling, “What the fuck?”
Oops.
Shit.
“I can’t deal with you right now, Easton Spears.” I underlined this by putting my hand up in his direction. “Take your growly hotness somewhere else.”
Two things happened at once. No, correction, three: Smith busted out laughing, Easton blinked—rapidly—but most confusing and frankly scary, Zane grunted.
“Not this again. Tell Easton since I sign your paychecks, I’m the boss of you.”
The boss of me.
No one ever again would be the boss of me.
“I’m not telling him that and you don’t sign my paychecks, your accountant wires me money. And you fired me. So really, after my separation package—which I expect to have a big, fat, hefty pain and suffering bonus included—you won’t be paying me at all. And just to point out, you’ve never been my boss.”
“I’m everyone’s boss,” he returned, sounding like he believed he was on the top of the pyramidal hierarchy of the world. I was proven correct when he finished with, “Think of me as the Big Boss.”
I didn’t get a chance to reiterate to the egomaniac he was not my boss, technically Dutch was, but he wasn’t that anymore since I’d quit-fired. I quit while at the same time Zane fired me hence the quit-fired. Though, I was taking the termination and the separation package and I was moving to some small Greek island where there was no phone service or internet and living out the rest of my days in peace. That was if some unconnected island existed in this day and age. If it didn’t, I would find myself a small seaside cottage and wouldn’t connect either service. Neither would I purchase a car. I would buy a bicycle with a white basket on the handlebars and purple tassels hanging from the grips and pedal everywhere.
