Her Titans by Genevieve Jasper
Maxton
4
“I can’t believe no one in this entire room can track down one woman,” Atlas yells at the guys sitting around the conference table in our office. We’ve already been over the fact that “Lay” is not enough of a lead to find a person, so everyone wisely stays quiet.
Atlas glares daggers around the table. “What about the address?”
“Sir, that’s not her address,” Gus bravely offers.
“What do you mean? Jeremy and I dropped her there ourselves.”
“But it’s not registered to her, so it doesn’t help,” he practically whispers.
“Whose house is it?”
“Connor Jones. It was bought in his name three years ago.”
Shit, did she have a boyfriend? Atlas’s head looked close to exploding.
“Everybody out,” he dismisses them, voice like ice.
As soon as the door shuts behind them, he grabs an abandoned glass from the table and throws it against the wall.
“Chill, man. It won’t be the first time a girl’s gone searching for some extra-curricular activities when her boyfriend’s not satisfying her,” Quince says unhelpfully.
“If she has a boyfriend, he’s dead,” Atlas spits.
“At, even we don’t kill people for dating women we’ve fucked,” I pipe up.
“I, for one, am relieved it’s just a hidden boyfriend she’s being secretive about and not something more sinister, especially since you can’t seem to fuck her with a condom on.”
“Shut the fuck up, Quinn,” Atlas rages.
“I’m just saying-”
“Quince, enough. At, there’s not a lot we can do right now, so chill.”
“I’ll chill when I’ve got her. Let the guys know that for every day they don’t find her, I’m firing one of them. They should thank their lucky fucking stars I’m not breaking bones.”
Atlas hasn’t seen her in ten days. The last time he caught her she disappeared, and we’ve had to unexpectedly speed up the refurbishment on the club since then, so it’s been shut since. It’s a big warning sign that his mood is linked to seeing this girl he doesn’t even know the name of. I don’t blame Quince for being suspicious.
Jeremy chooses that moment to knock and enter, holding an envelope.
“What?” Atlas barks.
“Stop being such an asshole,” I shoot at him. “What’s up Jeremy?” I ask my second.
“There’s suspicious activity at the Encore building site, I’m taking a few of the guys over there to check it out.”
“Alright, I’ll meet you there.”
“Me too,” Quince adds. “Anything to get away from this angry fucker.” He jerks his head at Atlas, who flips him the finger in return.
Pulling up to the site twenty minutes later, all hell has broken loose.
“What the fuck’s going on?” I ask Jeremy as he ambles over to us, calm in a storm of chaos.
“Max, Quince.” He nods his head respectfully. “The security team for the contractors contacted us when they noticed something odd with the camera feed. Turns out it had been looped. I’ve fired them all, what a simple fucking trick to let through.” I nodded, glad he’d already taken care of that. “We came down to see why anyone would’ve bothered with that on a building site and found a bomb in the primary room.” He delivers that as if he’s reciting what he had for breakfast. That explains the buzzing atmosphere around us. “It's real but was deactivated before being placed here. It was left showing one second left,” he adds nonchalantly.
Quince and I both just blink at him for a minute but Quince recovers quickest. “I’m not telling Atlas.” Fucker.
We spend a bit of time walking around with the guys, checking to see if anything else has been tampered with and looking at the bomb. It was only about the size of a carry-on, with a flashing one on the mini screen and a wire chopped at the back. Leaving the crew there to finish the building sweep and bomb disposal, we head back to the house, where we find Atlas still in the office. After updating him, we sit around discussing our theories. We’ve got a lot of great guys in the inner workings of our organisation, but we always discuss everything between us three first.
“Vipers?” Atlas offers the obvious suggestion.
“Bit subtle for them,” I answer. “They don’t tend to give second chances.”
“And why would they pick that random bar to warn us about?” Quince asks. “We’ve flipped loads of businesses since being here and none of the other openings have been threatened.”
“Another business associate? We know people aren’t happy with how many properties we’re buying up,” I admit.
“No one would dare,” Quince threatens.
“Hopefully we’ll have something soon. Jeremy’s bound to be combing the place.”
Jeremy enters as if Atlas has summoned him. Speak of the devil.
“We found this under the bomb when it was moved,” he says grimly, passing a photo over to Atlas.
“Motherfucker,” he roars, ejecting from his chair and throwing his fist into the wall behind him.
Quince pulls the photo from Atlas’s fist and whistles as he takes in the woman on the front.
“Fucking hell, At. No wonder she’s made you crazy.”
I take it from Quince and read the scrawled handwriting along the bottom. ‘Ours’.
“So back to the Vipers?” I ask.
“Told you she’s dodgy.”
“Shut the fuck up, Quincy,” Atlas and I both shout. “How can these people find her and none of our fucking useless lot can?”
“Because they already know her, duh.”
At’s jaw clenches as he holds himself back. “So they follow her to a bar and watch her with me? It doesn’t make sense,” he spits out between gritted teeth.
“If she’s a Viper, then they’d have dealt with her themselves for sleeping with the enemy, not be sending obscure threats to us,” I agree.
“So who, then?” Quince asks. “You said she was pretty popular. One of her disgruntled suitors, pissed off she put out so easily for you and not them?”
“Who knows, but whoever is daring to try and take her from me now must have a fucking death wish, and I’m going to fulfil it.” He storms out of the office, slamming the door shut behind him so hard frames fall off the wall.
We’ve commandeered two of the new booths in Encore. I haven’t seen the place since the bomb hoax, it now looks incredible. The primary room has two curved sides, one holding a row of booths and the opposite one holding the DJ stand on a stage. The dance floor sits in the middle with the entrance and cloakrooms off to one side. The bar is now nearly the full length of the wall opposite the dance floor, with a corridor that leads to the bathrooms and store rooms. A mirror covering the entire back of the bar holds shelves containing every drink imaginable, with ‘Encore’ in warm neon settled in the middle.
Atlas has circulated her picture to the guys and everyone has an eye out, but so far it doesn’t look like she’s here. His jaw clenches a bit more with each passing hour. We’re not expecting anything to happen here tonight, not when the bomber gave us a very clear warning to stay away from her. But Atlas wasn’t able to track her down, so he’s desperate to see her.
Quince is off chatting with the manager and I can’t take the tense atmosphere at the table much longer. Politely declining our server’s offer, I decide to go to the bar to get a drink and detour via the bathroom. As I exit, I’m completely lost in thought and bump into the person walking in.
“Oh shit, sorry!” she exclaims. It’s her, and she’s phenomenal.
“No, my fault,” I say automatically. I can’t help but stare at her.
She gives a confused look, almost certainly noticing the recognition in my eyes. “Well, yeah, actually it was. I take it back. Why are you coming out of the ladies?”
“I’m not.” I step back, revealing the men’s sign.
“Ah, the ladies used to come first. I should’ve remembered they’d changed.”
“So it is you who deserves the blame. How about I buy you a drink to soften that blow?”
“Sure,” she says, amused. “I’ll have a pretty Instagram-able cocktail, please.”
I head to the bar and order a rainbow layered daiquiri, sadly desperate to impress her. She finds me just as it’s put in front of me and takes it as I hand it over.
“I’m Maxton, by the way.”
“Thanks, Maxton,” she says, smiling as she slips back onto the dancefloor and gets swallowed by the crowd. Having been thoroughly dismissed, I head back to the table. Quince is still MIA and Atlas visibly relaxes when I let him know she’s here. We stand at the railing, watching her dance with her friend for a while. She's wearing a t-shirt style dress that seems see-through but when you look beneath it, it blurs what's underneath. As she moves under the lights it shows an hourglass body in a skintight black cami dress. Her friend locks eyes with Atlas and whispers in her ear, pointing up to us. She heads up the stairs to our booth and I try not to stare at her incredible legs in those sky-high heels. Eyeing me warily, she approaches us both.
“Of course you two know each other. How did you know who I was?” she directs at me.
“I didn’t,” I lie unconvincingly. I'm not even sure why, she's clearly observant enough to know I recognised her. Cool, calm, and collected Max has officially left the building. This Max is horny and dense.
Her eyes narrow at us and she turns to leave, but Atlas catches her before she can flee. “I need to talk to you.”
“What you need is to get your hands off me,” she retorts.
“What’s got you so pissy?” he asks, dropping his grip on her arm.
“I think one of you as a stalker is enough, can you not enlist your friends to be my keepers?” she says, looking at me. “Wouldn’t want to double your security bill.”
“I’m sure you’re worth it,” I tell her truthfully.
“Oh, I definitely am.”
“I’m serious. I’ll give you a lift home later,” Atlas interjects.
She eyes him warily. “This better not be your ‘I’ve given you an STD’ talk,” she says, earning chuckles from the guys behind.
He sighs at her, keeping quiet.
“Do you ever think you might get what you want more if you bothered to ask, rather than order?” she asks primly.
“Seems to be working out okay for me so far,” he replies with an arch of his brow.
She crosses her arms, but the sexual tension rolling off them could turn a nun into a nympho.
“Come on,” he insists. “It’s important.”
“Okay, fine, I’ll find you later.”
“Or you could stay here,” he says, winding an arm around her waist.
“With you and Tweedle Dee? No thanks.”
She wriggles out of his hold and returns to the dancefloor while I chuckle. “That makes you Tweedle Dumb.”
“Fuck off, Max,” he laughs, his mood improved infinitely.
The guys chat between themselves, but Atlas and I spend the rest of the evening staring at her, transfixed. I know someone has warned us to stay away, but I don’t know how that’s going to be possible. She’s like a magnet wandering around the room, attracting people into her aura. She can barely move without another guy approaching her, which I don’t blame them for, but At looks like a tiger ready to pounce. I’m sure the only thing keeping him in his seat is the fact he doesn’t want to jeopardise her leaving with us.
Quince finally comes back a little while later. “Any luck?”
“Yeah, I’m giving her a lift home.”
“You mean I am?”
Atlas ignores that, knowing full well that Quince is our designated driver. Jeremy’s off tonight, and we don’t trust anyone else to drive us.
“Why are you even getting involved with her? The bomb shows she’s bad news,” he continues.
“No, the bomb shows someone else wants her, and I’m not surprised. But we’ve never let anyone threaten us before, and we’re sure as fuck not going to start now,” Atlas rants.
Quince gives up on going over this argument again. “I’m going to get a drink.”
“It’s table service,” I remind him.
“Yeah, but Atlas isn’t over there,” he replies childishly.
We both roll our eyes at him as he wanders away from us.