“The prosecutor has dragged my client into this courtroom as if he is a common criminal—” But it’s when her gaze meets mine, and her lip tips up into a smirk followed by a wink do I feel my breath leave my body.
Fuck.
There is a strength about her that is admirable. She’s a spitfire. Time passes, but it feels as if it flies by.
The next thing I know, I’m being nudged by Gideon, alerting me that it’s time to go.
The court has erupted in chatter, and Bernard’s lawyers are speaking to him. The case will not proceed to trial. Not that this is a shocker. She’s good.
The client can go because of this woman. I watch them shake hands. I watch him smile at her. Felix Bernard looks at her the way I did, the way every man in this room is.
With lust in his snake-like eyes, narrowing and imagining her beneath him.
My fist clenches at the way she smiles back at him. It’s professional and reserved. Nevertheless, the look she gives him stirs something primitive inside me.
I’ll have her. Snatch her right out from his grasp. Then, when that is said and done, parade her in front of him, all while trying to pilfer information from her on him.
Yes, that’s exactly what I’ll do. I make my decision. Now to make it happen.
“What’s going on?” Gideon watches me intently.
“Her,” I respond, inclining my chin in her direction.
“Skye Matthews?”
My curiosity is piqued. Is she the girl I think she is? She sure as fuck reminds me of her. My past batters against my brain, pushing her image into my mind.
Thrust back into the past, I see a girl. The smile she gave me. No, not a smile but a smirk, coupled with a wink . . .
It has to be her. “Details.”
“She’s with Stuarts, Finkel, and Williams.” One of the best firms in New York City. “She’s a junior associate. I’m actually surprised the senior partner is letting her take lead.”
“Interesting.” This could benefit me. Seth Williams is a weasel, a weasel who, for the right price, will sell Felix Bernard out to the highest bidder, and that bidder is me.
“What do you have in mind?”
My lips part into a smile. I want to hire her.
“With me retiring, I will need a lawyer to help me. . .” I trail off. A plan is settling in place. “I want to hire her.”
“And how do you plan on doing that? They aren’t accepting new clients.”
“Let me worry about it.”
“Seeing as I’m involved in your retirement plans, I think I deserve a better answer than that bullshit one.”
He’s right. Whatever the fallout is, he will probably have to clean up the pieces.
I incline my head and proceed to tell him my plan.
The endgame will be the same.
Skye Matthews has wandered into my path again, and this time, that’s where she will stay. No matter what happens. Or what she feels about the matter.
Her future is set.
2
Skye
As cliché as it sounds, I feel his eyes before I see him. It feels as though the room grows quiet, and a million people are staring at me, but they all become a faint hum.
There is no need for an introduction. There’s also no need for anyone to tell me who this man is. I could be a hermit who never leaves my house and still know. His reputation proceeds him.
Tobias Kosta.
Newly minted billionaire. Notorious recluse. And absolutely, positively the most handsome man I have ever seen.
The newspapers don’t do him justice. Nor do the pictures that grace the internet. Dark hair. Eyes like the scales of a fish. Pale, blue, and rough. A perfect dusting of a five o’clock shadow on his sharp jaw almost completes the look, but the final piece is his tanned skin as if he was just off vacationing on a yacht somewhere.
From what I’ve heard, his father was a Greek millionaire, and his mother . . .
Well, that’s another story.
If the rumors were true, she was from Columbia. Or, at least, someone in his family was. It’s said—and again, any information on Tobias is limited, hermit and all—that his family used to have ties to Pablo Escobar.
Now, I’m not sure that’s true. But seeing as it’s also said half the drugs circulating this country were imported by him or his family, there might be substance to these allegations. Pun intended.
It doesn’t matter. Regardless of who he is and what his truth is, I can’t seem to pull my gaze away. I must, though, because I can see that the judge is about to enter from the corner of my eye.
I inhale deeply, calming my nerves, and then I do it. I break the hold he has on me.
I’m not one to normally lose myself. Never one to clamor over a pretty face. But jeez. He’s straight out of a Greek mythology.