Shayna's eyes followed as the man stepped into her range of view.
He was tall, with a bronze complexion; his golden eyes squinted under Shayna's X-raying stare. His muscular chest was slightly visible under the three open buttons on his shirt, and a serpent tattoo made its way from the base of his neck to somewhere inside the shirt.
Definitely did not hold a candle to Lucas or Theodore, but still decent.
"Dmitri sent me," he said, under her scrutinizing gaze, " If that's what you're thinking."
That wasn't what I was thinking.
"Okay," Shayna muttered slowly, though slightly furious that Dmitri already knew that she wouldn't stay thirty minutes without his protection.
And that idiot turned out to be right.
"You didn't have to lock the door, though." Shayna pointed towards his back.
"Yeah?" he smirked annoyingly. "You're worried that your sexy-ass boyfriend will misunderstand something?"
This bitch.
Shayna briefly considered cutting off her hands ( which were already feeling like someone had run them over with a fucking truck ) just so that she could throw them at his gaping mouth.
"He's not my boyfriend," Shayna replied through clenched teeth, her voice coming out higher than she had meant.
"He fucking snatched you off my lap when you were passed out in the damn restaurant," he replied. "I had to make sure that your head didn't come off."
Seriously?
No, he was definitely exaggerating.
"We're just colleagues."
"Whatever you say." He rolled his eyes. "I have more important stuff to talk about."
His face stiffened slightly.
"Did you hire Rocco?" he asked in the calmest possible way.
Huh?
"Did you get a bullet in your head too? Possibly the cerebral cortex ?"
"Stop joking around."
"Yeah, I definitely hired him," she muttered sarcastically. "To kill me in the middle of a coffee shop in public."
"I'm serious."
"So am I," Shayna replied. "Why the fuck would I hire him?"
"To kill the man you were supposed to be meeting," the man replied in a matter-of-fact tone.
"Huh?" Shayna asked and then suddenly realised.
"YOU PIECE OF ABSOLUTE SHIT?! DID YOU FUCKING WIRE ME IN THE COFFEE SHOP?"
The boy immediately took a step back as Shayna threw her hands out, attempting to grasp any piece of his skin.
"WHILE I WAS FUCKING BLEEDING OUT, YOUR CONCERN WAS TO PUT A STUPID TRACKER ON ME?" Shayna screamed, her hands flailing in a desperate attempt to strangle the man in front of her, who just stared at her, amused.
"YOU JUST WAIT. I'M GONNA KILL THAT STUPID DMITRI BEFORE THE WEDDING."
"You done?" he replied, motioning her to be quiet. "I only put the tracker on you so that your 'boyfriend' doesn't take you anywhere else."
Shayna slowed down, her heart racing.
Trackers were something which Shayna had always struggled with. As a top-ranked black hat herself, she hated it when somebody managed to surpass her defences using her expertise.
And that too, by someone who looked like a stupid surfer in those movie commercials.
"Here."
He extended something rectangular from his pocket, which was wrapped in a white handkerchief, soaking in wet mud.
Shayna took it, confused, before letting out a squeal of delight.
My phone!
The man looked incredulous as Shayna inspected her phone in front of him.
She went from Godzilla to Goldilocks in about twenty seconds.
"Thanks," Shayna muttered.
"It's okay," he replied. "Just try not to blast my eardrums again, and we'll call it even."
"So, you have no idea who might have sent him?"
"There are a lot of people," she replied, thinking, I have a lot of enemies.
"I've heard." He nodded grimly. "Unfortunately, he shot himself before I could get to him."
"What?!" Shayna sounded surprised. "Rocco shot himself?"
"I was shocked too," the man admitted. "Rocco is not the type to kill himself over a mission."
And when I tell you, he isn't, he really isn't.
That asshole would screw an orphan at his parents' funeral over ten dollars.
" The only explanation would be that his benefactor was someone really powerful who threatened him with something worse if he didn't get the job done."
Shayna took an annoyed gasp.
Unfortunately for her, that did not narrow down any options.
"I'm going to have to look into this mess."
"I'll go report everything to Dmitri for now." He sighed. "You take care, and if anything comes up, give me a call. I've added my number under Shawn in your phone."
How did he get my password?
"By the way, ' Darcy is fucking hot' is not a very good password," he said, smirking.
That is not my...
MY MESSAGES....
Shayna let out her entire vocabulary of Greek curses onto Shawn, who just smiled before turning on his heel.
"I'll see you in the evening," he smiled as he walked out of the door.
"Yeah, and tell your boyfriend that I'm gonna take his fucking eyeballs out if he ever dares to touch me again," he replied, his voice fading. "He got one free pass cuz he's hot."
Motherfucker.
.....
It was evening by the time Shayna finally returned to the office. She had half considered not to, but felt bad about Mei walking around in her tent-like clothes all evening.
"Miss Alonso," Mei immediately greeted her as soon as she entered her cabin.
She was sitting around a pile of paperwork and looked like a wild raccoon from the dark circles under her eyes.
Shayna immediately felt guilty. With her gone, a lot of her work had fallen on the poor, barely twenty-year-old Mei, who already had a lot of work of her own.
"You go home, Mei." She nodded. "I'll take it from here."
Mei looked down and then slightly shook her head.
"No, ma'am. I'll stay here and help you," she said, her voice lowered.
"No, you're going to be exhausted. Get some rest," Shayna ordered, feeling even guiltier than before.
"It's alright," she said, looking almost like an afraid rabbit. "You're gonna need a lot more hands tonight. Craig fired Jessica today and dumped her entire file on us."
"Jessica?" Shayna mouthed, shocked. "Why?"
"Because of...ummmmm...that matter," Mei replied, her cheeks tinging with embarrassment.
Someone had reported Jessica giving the marketing manager a blowjob in one of the third-floor bathroom cubicles the other day.
"So, they confirmed it?" She chuckled, getting to her seat.
"The person who reported her sent a recording in the group chat," Mei replied.
That's sick.
"Honestly, it shouldn't be such a big matter," Shayna shrugged. "It's not like they were fucking on the conference room table."
Mei flushed deeper this time.
Wait, really ?!
That's kinda impressive.
"There is something else I need to talk to you about, though," Mei muttered, her voice now careful.
"I don't want to tell you this, but I don't want to find out from anybody..."
"Just cut to the chase", Shayna replied, already knowing that nothing good was gonna come out of this.
"The new interns were saying a bunch of stuff about you. Like weird stuff...about...ummm..."
"Spit it out," Shayna replied impatiently.
"They were talking about your photo being there in one of the strip clubs they went to last night."
Oh shit.
"And then a lot of worse stuff...like why you're the manager at twenty-one years old and nasty stuff about you probably sleeping with the entire board of directors. I tried to tell them off when they pasted a picture of yours on the main door—"
"And they called you a kiss-ass," Shayna finished decisively.
Mei nodded while Shayna glared at the computer screen, as if it was the one that had wronged her.
The reflection on the computer screen stared back at her, almost as if it could detect exactly what was going on in Shayna's mind.
Those little pieces of shit picked the wrong night to mess with me.
"Well, at least I didn't see the picture on my way in, so the janitors must have taken it down."
"It wasn't the janitors, ma'am," Mei replied, her eyes locked on the cold office floor.
"It was that new hire ."