Page 10 of Damien’s Mate

But the mission was done, she realized. And there was no one to care, no one to celebrate with. Suddenly the thought of her lonely apartment and memories of her father was unbearable. A night of celebration, most of it in bed with Damien, made her almost giddy by comparison.

She pulled the timer out of the black bag, and tossed the bag to Damien. “Go for it. I’ve got what I came for.”

“The infamous ledger? And a side of bling, I see.” He nodded toward her wrist. “With all the diamonds and shit in here, that wouldn’t have been my first choice, but whatever.”

He moved into the vault and started shoving bundles of cash into the bag. The space was small, and his scent and presence were almost overwhelming. What was it about this human?

“It’s an antique,” she told him. “A family heirloom, as it happens. My family.”

He stopped loading cash, looking at her curiously. “That’s what you really came for, isn’t it?” She shrugged. He asked, “Does Rostov know?”

“No. This is for him.” She held up the ledger.

Damien shook his head, still looking at her as though trying to see inside her. “I don’t know what you see in a psycho like that.”

He was wasting time. Lila started pulling down bundles of cash and handing them off to him. “You’re one to talk,” she said. “Salzano’s no better. Although it didn’t take much to turn you.” That bothered her, for some reason. She said softly, “I would have pegged you as being more loyal than that.”

“I am more loyal than that,” Damien told her. “Except he was planning on having somebody off me tonight. Little thing like that makes a guy real disillusioned. I figured it was time to get out.”

Well, yeah. “Then why are you still here?”

He finished loading the bag, and looked straight into her eyes. “Good question.” The intensity in his gaze took her breath away. There was a moment that seemed suspended in time, and then he said, “What’s your exit strategy?”

She lifted the ledger. “I’m supposed to take this to a drop location and then go back to the party.”

“Or, you could just leave out the side entrance with me. Unless Rostov’s distraction has turned into a firefight, I figure we have about five more minutes before the security team starts returning to their posts.”

Lila picked up the timer off the shelf where she’d put it down to help load money. “More like three minutes and forty-one seconds.”

“What the hell is that?” Damien asked as they moved out.

“Mission timer,” she said. “I need to get the ledger to the storage closet before it times out.”

They were back outside the study, headed for the service hallway. “Why bother?” he said. “Why not just leave?”

She shrugged. “I made a deal with Anton, and I keep my bargains.” She added practically, “Plus, if he comes after me for the ledger, I’ll have to kill him, and that will ruin our dinner date.”

Damien gave a soft snort of laughter. “Fine. We can go by there on the way out.”

Damien followed Lila back to the storage closet, limping a little because his left knee was only partly healed, and still in a brace.

Something was off here. Damien could feel it, like an itch in the back of his brain. No one around, no security cameras.

But there was danger. He just didn’t know from which direction.

Lila took the ledger inside the closet and moved a toilet paper carton off a shelf. Above them, Damien could hear voices. Loud voices, arguing about Rostov. This storage closet was right underneath the conference room, he realized.

The itch in the back of his brain got worse.

He said, “What were your instructions again?”

She said impatiently, “Leave the bag with the ledger in the toilet paper box. Hit the timer and—”

“What timer? The one you showed me?”

She stepped back and gestured. There was another timer in the corner, counting down. As he watched, it hit 29 seconds, and the numbers turned from green to red.

Fuck.