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I closed my eyes and pushed everything away until it was at arm's length, or further. The memories. The monsters. The guys. Everything.
No more crying. No more letting things get to me. The last thought I had before I dropped off to sleep was that I needed to build a frozen steel wall around my heart.
The empty feeling persisted when I woke an hour or two later. I was disoriented, but glad to be pulled from the dream I was having.
In it, was a girl of about four or five years old. She had white hair. At first, I thought she was me.
She turned to me with her big blue eyes and said, "Mummy?" Her resemblance to Jake and me knocked the breath out of my lungs.
"I'm not your mummy," I told her. "I can't be your mummy. Not ever."
She blinked slowly. More slowly than someone would in the waking world. "But why? Where is Daddy?" She looked around. We were home. Not at Crimson, but at my harbourside mansion. Me and her and Jake. And Cooper. And Ben. And Hutton. All of us, together. And this kid. This kid who couldn't exist, no matter how much I wanted to dream her into existence.
"Daddy?" she shouted. "Something is wrong with Mummy. She doesn't know who I am."
"It's…" I stammered. "I'm just pretending. Of course I know who you are."
She popped a hip and planted her fist against it in a pose must have learned from me. "Then what's my name?"
"I—"
I woke to the sound of an alarm. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. What the fuck?
The door opened and the light snapped on. Jake stepped inside wearing only boxer shorts. He had a phone to his ear.
Even half asleep and confused, I had to acknowledge how fucking hot he was. His body was a ripped tapestry of tattoos. Every bit of him was decorated muscle. I wanted to ignore the alarm, drag him down and fuck his brains out.
The sensible part of me realised it would be stupid to ignore an alarm. I pushed off the covers and grabbed a dressing gown to wind around myself.
"What is it?" I asked.
He frowned. "Apparently the building's sensors have detected a gas leak. We need to get out of here, just in case they're right." He waved at me to hurry up.
I nodded. If there was a gas leak, it would only take a match, or a cigarette butt to take the whole building and us with it.
Hard pass on that, thank you.
"Let me guess, this has Alistair Dagen written all over it." He was probably pissed that we burnt down his country house. At least I assumed it burned down. The fire was looking fierce when we drove away. Whatever. That was firmly in the ‘not my problem,’ basket. This, on the other hand…
Jake followed me out into the sitting area just as Cooper appeared from his room. He rubbed his eyes and looked even more sleepy than I did. And just as painfully sexy as Jake. How was I supposed to keep my distance from these guys when they looked like they did? There should be a law or something.
Oh yeah, there probably was and they, being criminals like me, broke it.
Men.
Hutton either slept with his clothes on, or had dressed really quickly. Either way, he had everything on but his shoes. And you guessed it, he was no less sexy than Jake or Cooper.
Neither was Ben, who was the only one who was fully dressed, including his shoes. He was also the only one who actually looked awake and alert.
"We'll have to go down the stairs," Ben said. "The elevators go off-line during an emergency like this. Just in case."
"Right," Jake agreed. "We don't want anyone getting stuck in there."
I assumed all of that was for Cooper and Hutton's benefit, because I knew all of that. Sometimes they seem to forget that I actually had a clue about what goes on in my own organisation. That was another thing I was going to have to remedy.
I lifted my chin and marched past them all to the door leading down to the stairs. At times like this being on the tenth floor sucked. I couldn't even cheer myself up with the idea that I would burn off all the pizza I ate. That was long gone.
"I should go first," Ben said. "To make sure it's safe."
