Her eyes snapped sharply back up to lock onto his. “Don’t I? I had an interview a while ago with Geladu-tiv, the head of the company Poutukaa. Your financial go-between. Think he doesn’t know where the Hata he regularly pays off is residing?” She tried not to hold her breath, to remain calm, to give away nothing. Which, she knew, was what she had.
From the moment she’d first met him, she’d thought of Sethwyn Case as indestructible, unyielding. A fit individual to challenge the lethal Viisiiviisii single-handedly. Tough, courageous, charming, knowledgeable, able to look Death in the face with one eye and stare it down even as he was enchanting someone like herself with the other. As the silence continued, she became convinced that there was no way this was going to work, no chance that she would gain the final piece of the rank, unfinished puzzle. He was going to turn and walk out of her office and she was not going to be able to do a damn thing about it.
As she was contemplating the maddening failure that lay spread out before her in all its malign grandeur, he cracked.
Though still outwardly defiant, he seemed to shrink before her. How she had ever thought this miserable narcissistic sorry slab of ambulating testosterone worthy of contemplated infidelity she now could not understand. The press of too much work was the only excuse she could come up with. She had been blinded by perspiration as much as by flattery. Given time, perhaps she could do better.
She consoled herself with the knowledge that she was not the first woman in history who occupied a position of importance to have been so deceived.