She shook her head, trying to clear it.
“I didn’t even get a kiss,” she said.
I wasn’t sure that she meant to say that out loud.
But she had, and that meant that now I had to kiss her.
I couldn’t not.
I leaned forward and captured her lips with my own.
Our marriage certificate was squished in between our bodies.
She gasped into my mouth in surprise, hesitating for a full ten seconds—I counted—before she returned the kiss.
When I pulled back it was to say, “I didn’t want the judge to witness that.”
She blinked owlishly at me. “I… okay.”
“I’m a very private person,” I said. “I don’t like people knowing my business.”
She licked her lips. “Okay.”
“Let’s go,” I urged. “We’re running out of time, and I have a lot to show you.”
• • •
“This is my place,” I said as I pushed open the front door.
She went to step over the threshold, but I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “Wait.”
She looked back at me with a frown.
“Tradition,” I said as I picked her up and carried her over the threshold.
She grinned at me then, patting me on the chest.
When I set her back on her feet, I could have almost sworn a look of disappointment crossed her face.
“Now,” she said, turning around and ignoring the massive space behind her. “Start talking. I want to hear everything. What’s the rush?”
I licked my lips, not wanting to tell her and ruin this moment.
But the moment would be ruined.
There was no other way around it.
“I’m a computer hacker,” I said.
She blinked in surprise.
“Okay…” She waited for me to continue.
“Two years ago, someone thought it would be funny to ruin an elderly lady’s life. One that I was very fond of. They swindled her out of her entire life savings. Three hundred and forty thousand dollars. When I investigated, I found out that it was a rather large corporation that ‘helped’ the elderly manage their money. Only, they didn’t manage her money at all. They fucked her over, time after time, and did it in a way that wasn’t exactly illegal. The lady needed access to cash for cancer treatment, and they wouldn’t give it to her. They made her jump through so many hoops that she gave up.” I pointed to the building next to mine where she’d lived. “I found her. We used to go on walks every single day. She told me everything about it the night before our usual walk. When I went up to her place because she hadn’t met me for our regular scheduled walk, I found her dead. She’d slit her wrists. The note explained it all—how she didn’t want to die in pain—so she chose her own way out.”
Wyett’s shoulders slumped. “That’s an awful story.”
“I took it as a personal attack against me,” I explained. “I hacked into their businesses and took everything that they had. I wasn’t even careful about it. I gave every single penny owed back to every single person. I even went all the way back into the nineties—that’s just how long they’d been swindling these people out of cash. Then, I sent all this information to the attorneys of the people that were filing against the company. The only problem with doing it was, I did it in a way that wasn’t safe for me, cyberly speaking. People were able to find that I’d done it. And so I confessed to it all. Now I’m spending the next ten years in prison for it.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You have to go to prison for that?”
I nodded. “I do.”
“Why?” she cried.
“Because of the way I chose to do it. I wanted to send a message. I wanted those bastards to know who’d done it to them. I wanted them to know why. I ruined them. From the foundation up. They will never again spend another dime of another human being that doesn’t willingly enter into the agreement,” I explained. “I exposed them everywhere and anywhere that I could. They’ll have a really, really hard time doing that again.”
She shook her head. “That really sucks.”
I shrugged. “I think it was worth it.”
She looked away from my intense eyes. “What now? When do you have to go?”
I looked at my watch.
“One hour and ten minutes,” I explained. “I’m to meet them at the police station.”
Her mouth fell open.
“Which is why” —I led her through the house— “I need to go over a few things.”
She nodded mutely. “Okay.”
“This is my place,” I said. “It has an alarm. The code is coded to you now. You have your own access numbers to get in.” I pointed at the alarm panel that was by my bedroom door. “That’s my room right next to the panel.”
“Where are the dogs?” she asked curiously.
I gestured for her to follow me and led them to the back of the house where my dogs usually stayed.
They were lazy bastards and didn’t get up when I got home.
Hell, they barely got up to go outside.
“This is where they stay,” I answered her.
The light system that I had installed came on automatically when I entered the room, and her breath exited her lungs in a rush. “Those are big dogs.”
They were.
“Silo, Bones, come,” I called.
Both Dobermans lazily got to their feet and came.
The woman at my side didn’t flinch, though.
No, she moved forward almost as if she knew that the two dogs wouldn’t hurt her.
They wouldn’t.
Not since I was the one to introduce them to her. Had she entered this place without me? That might’ve been a different story.
The only other person that had ever tried to enter my domain without my first introducing them had been my brother. My brother who’d immediately regretted his decision to come over and ‘hang’ without me present.
Silo and Bones had chased him out of my place so fast that he’d gotten a little wind burn.
Bones’ butt wagged as he came directly to Wyett. Silo, on the other hand, came
