Owned By The Possessive Alpha, Bounded To My Mate novel Chapter 23

Chapter 23

Chapter 23

DENISE

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45

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Every powerful man had one. Someone they’d wanted and been denied-an old love, a missed possibility, a name they didn’t use in certain company. I wasn’t looking for leverage exactly. I was looking for the map of his vulnerabilities, because knowing someone’s vulnerabilities was different from exploiting them, and I had learned that the hard way too.

I noted it as a task. Not urgent, but necessary.

Then I put on a clean outfit-dark trousers, a simple top, my own coat, nothing gifted, nothing borrowed-picked up Kieran’s jacket from the chair where I’d draped it the night before, and

called a cab.

I had seen the Nightshade Group building once before, from the window of a car on the other side of the street.

That was as close as I’d ever gotten.

Everyone in the professional orbit of Blackwood Enterprises understood, without it being stated in any policy document, that there were spaces that were off-limits. Not by explicit rule -Dante was too careful for explicit rules about something that petty-but by the accumulated weight of a hundred small signals. The Nightshade Group and Blackwood Enterprises occupied a rivalry that was old enough to have its own architecture, its own geography. There were streets, buildings, restaurants, events where it was understood that the two companies did not overlap, and the understanding was enforced not by anyone saying so but by the way people behaved when a line was approached.

I had spent four years on Dante’s side of that line.

The building was a proper skyscraper-glass and steel rising into a grey morning sky, with the kind of presence that made the buildings around it look like they were giving it room. The plaza at its base was clean and well-maintained, with a small sculpture near the entrance that looked like it had been chosen by someone with actual taste rather than someone trying to perform it. I stood on the pavement outside and looked up at it and felt something I took a moment to identify.

Impressed.

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10:38 Wed, Sep 16

Chapter 23

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I adjusted Kieran’s jacket over my arm and went in.

45

+5 Free Coins

The lobby was high-ceilinged and modern, with a reception desk that curved across the far end like a statement. There were security barriers to the left, a set of elevators behind them, and the particular ambient noise of a building that was full of people who were somewhere to be. It smelled like cool air and subtle fragrance, the diffused kind that came from a system rather than a candle.

The receptionist was a woman in her late twenties with immaculate posture and the alert expression of someone whose job required her to make quick assessments of people who walked through the door. She looked at me when I approached with the professional evaluation that reception staff performed in the first two seconds before their face settled into its customer service configuration.

Her eyes dropped to the jacket on my arm.

They came back to my face. The evaluation took slightly longer this time.

“Good morning,” she said, in a tone that was polite and not quite warm. “Do you have an appointment?”

“I’m returning something to Alpha Nightshade,” I said. “He’s expecting me.”

She looked at the jacket again. Something moved across her expression that she did a decent job of controlling-not unfriendly exactly, but the particular recalibration of someone who had expected one thing and was now managing another. Her fingers moved to her keyboard.

“Your name?”

“Denise.”

A pause as she typed, presumably checking something. The pause was a fraction longer than necessary, which told me she was looking at something she hadn’t expected to find, and it was making her adjust her approach. She picked up the phone, murmured something too low for me to catch, and waited.

Whatever was said on the other end made her posture change by a small but visible degree.

“Of course.” She set the phone down and reached for a visitor badge. “Thirty-second floor. The elevators are through the barriers-I’ll buzz you through.”

I clipped the badge to my coat and walked through.

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10:38 Wed, Sep 16

Chapter 23

The elevator was already occupied when I stepped in.

45

+5 Free Coins

Three women, all approximately my age, all carrying the kind of substantial document folders that suggested they were on their way to deliver something to someone important. They glanced at me when I entered in the way people glanced at strangers in elevators-brief, assessing, filing. One of them pressed the button for the thirty-second floor. I said nothing, having already pressed it.

They resumed their conversation.

I understood within approximately eight seconds that I would not be able to un-hear whatever came next, and that the appropriate response was to study the elevator floor numbers and think about something else entirely.

“—the shirt today, I nearly lost it when I walked past the glass office-”

“The white one? With the buttons?” One of them made a sound that was not appropriate for a professional environment. “I had to go and fix my makeup after.”

“Claudia actually dropped a whole folder when she walked past. Like the whole thing.”

“I didn’t drop it.” Claudia, presumably, spoke from my left. “I placed it down strategically.”

“You grabbed his thigh.”

“I stumbled.”

“Into his thigh.”

“It was an accident with good outcomes.” A pause, and then Claudia’s voice dropped into a register that was part reverent and part completely unhinged. “Eleven inches. Dormant. I’m not guessing. I felt it.”

The other two erupted. One of them actually covered her face.

“Thick,” Claudia continued, apparently committed. “And veiny. I thought about it for the rest of the week. I went home and I couldn’t even-”

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