JULES
I returnedto Max’s hotel the next afternoon.
Christian’s instructions were simple, if not easy, and there was no point dragging the inevitable out.
Either the plan would work, or it wouldn’t.
I knocked on Max’s hotel door, intensely aware of the man hidden in an alcove at the end of the hall. Christian had sent one of his men to accompany me. Kage would wait out of sight until I entered Max’s room, after which he could monitor what was happening through the nifty camera disguised as a necklace pendant. Apparently, he had some sort of device that could disable the door’s key card scanner in case the situation with Max turned nasty.
“Jules.” Max gave me a genial smile, but suspicion lurked in his eyes. “I didn’t expect to see you here again. Come back to collect on your…benefits?” His gaze dipped to my chest.
My skin crawled beneath his leering scrutiny, but I forced myself to remain semi-civil so I could get inside his room. “No, but I have something important to tell you about the painting.” I glanced around the hall like I was paranoid someone would hear us. “Let’s talk about it inside.”
Max narrowed his eyes. For a second, I was afraid he’d deny my request, but after several long, agonizing beats, he opened the door wider for me to enter.
I stepped inside and scanned the room, searching for his computer. If he packed it away…
Relief settled into my bones when I spotted the open laptop on his desk. Thank God. If I didn’t see it, Kage would’ve had to distract him so I could search for it, but this made my job much easier.
“So, what do you want to tell me?” Impatience threaded Max’s voice when I remained silent.
I turned to face him while I edged backward toward his desk. “I think the painting I gave you is a fraud.” I stuffed my hands in my sweatshirt pocket as casually as possible.
My fingers closed around the tiny gadget Christian gave me, and I let out a small cough to hide the soft beep it made when I pressed the power button.
The device was a wireless hacking tool Christian had developed himself. He’d explained how it worked, but the technical terms had gone way over my head. All I knew was, it had to be within five feet of the hacking target, and it couldn’t be turned on until it was or it would attach to a different network. Or something like that.
I trusted Christian knew what he was doing, so I followed his instructions to a tee despite understanding only half of what he said.
“The one you stole from your boyfriend’s place? It’s not.” Max smiled at my jerk of surprise. “You thought I didn’t know you were fucking your little doctor boy toy? I had to case his place after I tracked the painting down. I saw you going in and out of his house at all hours of the day. Doesn’t take a genius to figure out what you two were doing.” His smile turned nasty. “Once a whore, always a whore.”
Blooms of outrage colored my cheeks. “Is that the best you can come up with? The name-calling is getting old, Max. Find a new insult or don’t use one at all, especially since I came here to help you.”
Come on, Christian.
He said it would take two minutes for the device to connect to the computer, then an additional five to ten minutes to find the video, depending on how many files Max had. In hindsight, I was lucky Max sent me screenshots to fuck with me the past few weeks—Christian could use them as a basis for his search. Otherwise, it would take his software far longer to scan every video if it didn’t know what it was looking for.
We agreed he would text me only after he found and destroyed all copies of the video. I’d personalized his alert tone, so I would know it was done without having to check my phone.
“Help me?” Max stared at me, his suspicion mounting. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I don’t want you to come back later and pin the blame on me. I want this”—I gestured between us—“to be over with as soon as possible.” I snuck a peek at the clock. Shit. It’d been less than five minutes. I needed to drag the conversation out longer. “How do you know for sure the painting’s not a fraud?”
“My friends confirmed it,” he said coldly. “Besides, everyone thinks it’s junk. No one would copy junk, Jules.” He walked toward me, his steps heavy against the paper-thin blue carpet.
I forced myself to hold my ground. Kage was right outside, but being trapped in a hotel room with Max made my heart lurch with panic.
“What’s so special about the painting anyway? It’s hideous.” I should’ve worn something other than a sweatshirt. It clung to my skin, suffocating me. The heat rose from my torso to my face, and I felt like I was burning alive in an incinerator of my own making.
“Value doesn’t always equate to beauty.” Max looked me over from head to toe, his implication clear. “The painting is one of a limited number that belonged to a famous European collector. It’s worth a lot of money in certain circles, but it was sold at an estate sale by mistake and switched from owner to owner until we tracked it down to your boyfriend’s house. Took a lot of paperwork tracing and bribes to get to that point, but we did it.” His eyes glinted with malicious amusement. “Imagine my delight when I learned about your connection to the current owner. It was like fate dropped you into my lap.”
Yeah, no kidding. Fate liked to fuck me over as a hobby.
“Did you tell him about the painting?” Max asked. “Or did you suck his cock so good he handed it over without complaint?”
“At least he knows what to do with his cock, unlike some other people I know.” My voice dripped with poisonous honey. “Sucking it is no hardship at all.”
Max’s words still poked at old insecurities, but I refused to let him shame me for enjoying sex, dammit.
Guys slept with multiple partners and were lauded for being players; girls did the same and were decried as whores. It was a double standard as old as time, and I was fucking sick of it.
Satisfaction flared in my stomach when his face turned a mottled red. One universal truth about men: nothing dented their ego and pissed them off more than questioning their manhood.
“Careful, Jules.” Icy rage flowed beneath Max’s words, but his mask was slipping. I could see it in his eye twitch and the vein pulsing in his forehead. Beneath all that fake “niceness” was a fragile little shit who was one insult away from exploding.
I swallowed a ball of trepidation. It’s fine. Kage is right outside.
“One press of the button. That’s all it’ll take before everyone knows what a whore you are. I wonder what your boyfriend will say when he sees another guy fucking you in the ass and coming all over your face. Or what Silver & Klein will say when they see what their potential employee likes to do in her spare time.” He cocked his head, his eyes glittering with malice. “Maybe I’ll upload it to a porn site. Get paid. It’s hard for prior felons to get a job these days. Gotta do what I gotta do to put food on the table.”
The metal gadget dug into my palms. Oxygen ran thin at the prospect of the video being uploaded online for the world to see. Of strange men jerking off to one of the worst moments of my life.
I shouldn’t have provoked Max so early. What if Christian couldn’t erase the video? What if he missed a copy? What if—
The soft notes of Christian’s personalized alert tone burst from my phone.