Total pages in book: 21
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 19922 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 100(@200wpm)___ 80(@250wpm)___ 66(@300wpm)
"I...yes."
"Our deepest apologies for the lapse in security," Officer Anson said gravely.
Maika quickly shook her head. "It's not your fault—"
"We've already filed a report regarding yesterday's visit. It won't happen again. May we invite you to the security office to confirm certain details?"
Maika nodded in quick agreement. "Yes, of course."
And that was how she ended up in this small bare room, and they even offered her coffee and pastries, which she was quite grateful for, but at the same time it also made her question her priorities in life. She couldn't even remember the last time she had been able to buy herself any kind of pastries. Her whole life, she had just been so busy making ends meet and keeping up with the requirements of her scholarship—
The door opened, and Maika straightened, expecting the kind Officer Anson to return, but instead it was someone else. An older man in a suit, with a smile she initially thought as kind, until he stepped to the side to hold the door open—
Oh no.
When Maika was old enough to understand how the Internet worked, the first thing she had done was to search anything she could find about her father, and it was how she eventually learned that her mother had lied to her.
Her father Homer was not a good man. But he was loyal to the person he worked for, Diogenes, who at his peak had been the head of the most powerful Greek-American mafia family. Homer's refusal to cooperate was why he had ended up serving a life sentence...and his daughter fatherless.
Maika had asked her mother if she could contact Homer, but her mother had said 'no.'
This is the only good thing your father has done for us. For as long as there's no contact between him and us, we stay alive. Don't let his sacrifice be in vain.
And that was that.
Maika was a girl who always kept her promises. She never tried to contact Homer, but she had kept herself in the loop (secretly). She had made herself familiar with the people connected to his past, just in case any of them went after her. She just felt that was important, having watched Narcos and all, and well...
It actually paid off.
Because all that sleuthing was the only reason why she recognized who the man was that was now seated at the head of the table like he was the one calling shots.
Mykos Ravensworth.
Dark-haired, devastatingly handsome, and possibly the deadliest man she was ever likely to meet. The world knew him as a self-made billionaire...and the only son of her father's former boss. He was also the first man to make her heart race in sheer terror and shameful desire at the same time.
Oh, Maika, you idiot!
She slowly tried to stand up, thinking that she should at least be on her feet in case either of them wanted to kill her or anything—
"Please stay seated, despoinís."
But you know what? Sitting down was a good idea, too. She was currently outnumbered 2:1, and so another good idea was not to argue with a man who wielded so much power he and his bodyguard had easily commandeered a room right inside the campus security office like they owned the entire university.
Maika's hands curled around the armrests as the man she formerly thought was kind closed the door behind him. Then he turned back to her and smiled again, but nope, she wasn't buying it this time. It was like a gentle old shark smiling at her. A shark was still a shark, regardless of their age.
"Good afternoon, Ms. Nolan."
Why wasn't she surprised that they knew her name? Had they been surveilling her all this time?
"My name is Orion."
As in the constellation? That had to be a fake name. Right?
"We'd like to ask you a few questions regarding an unauthorized visit that took place yesterday."
Maika's attention was torn between Orion's words and the fact that Mykos Ravensworth's golden gaze was slowly traveling over her from head to toe even as the chiseled features of his handsome face remained coldly impassive.
She tried to put herself in his shoes, but her imagination simply wasn't up to the challenge. She knew what he was seeing when he looked at her: a girl with shoulder-length blond hair and green eyes, dressed in a sweater that had seen better days, and ripped jeans that actually weren't ripped when she first bought them.
But what he thought about Maika while looking at her, though...
Though she be but little, she is fierce.
The line came to her unbidden, because that was what Maika did when she was scared. She quoted Shakespeare. She had first fallen in love with him when she read A Midsummer Night's Dream in middle school, and since then, it had somehow become her coping mechanism. When one was afraid, one must quote Shakespeare, and—