Agent 57 (Book 2)

Chapter 8

Thirteen's POV

I finish applying my make-up over the bruises on the side of my face before sweeping my hair up into a high ponytail. I look myself over in the mirror quickly before grabbing the messenger bag lying on my bed and slinging it over my shoulder.

I slip my feet into a pair of black pumps and exit my room, closing the door behind me and reengaging the security system.

It's hard enough for anyone to get into the house itself, but my room...that's impossible.

I walk down the hallway to the stairs, Devin's voice stopping me in my tracks.

"We need to talk, or technically I need to yell at you..." He trails off as he sees me, his eyes giving me a once over. "Whoa." He says simply. I glance down at my outfit which consists of a pair of black dress pants, a navy blue button up shirt rolled up to my elbows, and my heels.

I ditched the sling. Henri can yell at me all he wants when I get back.

I look back up at him. "You were saying?" I question when he says nothing else.

"Where are you going? And what happened? You actually look professional."

I roll my eyes at his comment. "Well as Eleanor so blatantly pointed out, I am CEO of a major company and I do have work to do when I actually happen to be home." I walk down the stairs and he follows.

"Her name is Elaine." He corrects me. I wave my hand dismissively. "And how the hell do you even have time to run a company? How the hell you even have a company?"

"I mostly run the company online, during or in between missions. I currently own seven buildings worldwide and there's an eighth one in construction. I have one person in charge of running each building efficiently and they report back to me. I give them the basics on how I want the company run and they do it." I reply simply as I make it to the door, stopping in my tracks.

"You didn't answer my other question." Devin points out.

"The company was my mother's. When she died the company was passed on to my sister." I state simply. "But she was too young to run the company at the time so my father was running it. When she disappeared the company was passed on to my brother. After he was killed it was finally passed on to me." I mutter my tone sour. "My father was running the company for me up till two years ago when I finally took over. But with me being an agent and all it's a little harder to actually be at the company, so I run most everything online."

I shrug before opening the door and walking out, pulling my car keys out of my bag.

"So Kingston is your mother's maiden name." He states as he follows me out. I nod.

"I'll never go by father's last name as long as I live."

"Ok." He nods thoughtfully as I get in the car and start the engine.

The car moves a grand total of five feet before a certain i***t jumps in front of it.

I slam on the breaks and let out a string of curse words before the passenger side door is opened and Devin slides into the seat next to me.

"What the hell?" I question, turning in my seat to face him.

"I still need to yell at you for a certain problem you've created, you stab happy nameless person." He glares at me and I stare blankly back at him.

I shake my head, "You can yell at me when we're at the company."

***

I exit the elevator followed closely by Devin as I make my way to my office.

"We're at the company." He states, walking backward in front of me.

"Gee I hadn't noticed."

"We're on the top floor."

"Really now?" I ask mockingly, raising an eyebrow at him. He narrows his eyes. I see her a moment too late.

"Devin lookout," I warn.

"Look out for wh-" He's cut off as he crashes into her and immediately both of them fall down, papers and files flying everywhere.

"Ow!" She lets out a cry as she rubs at her head.

"I'm so sorry," Devin says immediately and begins to help her pick up all the papers.

I roll my eyes and hold my hand out to her. "You alright Megan?" I ask kindly, her eyes widen when she notices me.

"Miss Kingston." She says as she takes my hand and I help her to her feet. "I wasn't aware you were back."

She smoothes a hand over her shirt and tugs on the ends of her skirt. Trying her best to make herself look presentable.

"I just got in yesterday," I reply. I notice the ring on her finger, I raise my eyebrow. "When did that happen?" I gesture to ring.

She blushes and casts her brown eyes downwards at her feet, brushing a strand of her dark brown hair out of her face.

"A couple months ago." She says shyly.

"Congratulations," I say as Devin gets to his feet holding all the files out to her.

"Thanks." She responds to both me and Devin as she takes the files from his hands.

"What are those?" I question.

"Oh. They're mostly resumes. People who want to work at the new building." She replies politely. "I've already looked through a lot of them and tossed a few. I was mostly narrowing it down to the top few positions." She says hurriedly, trying to explain herself. "I was going to email you the final list I'd come up with when I was finished going through all of them."

"It's fine Megan." I take the files out of her hands and shift them into my better arm. "I hired you to run the building whenever I'm not here. Any choices you make I trust." I tell her and she nods mutely. "What's been going on that I need to know about?"

"The eighth building is nearing completion. Should be completed within the next couple months. You need to go through the files I emailed you if you haven't already, and Fred called, he needs to speak with you about some renovations that are being done in building four."

"Tell him I'll call him as soon as I can, and the files you emailed me I emailed back last night with the necessary revisions." I begin walking towards my office. "If there's anything else you forgot I'll be in my office."

"Oh." Megan starts and I stop, turning around to face her. "You got a call yesterday. An Agent Stevenson with the FBI. He said he had something urgent he needed to discuss with you." Devin furrows his eyebrows and turns towards me.

"How'd you piss off the FBI?" He questions.

I scowl at him. "I didn't piss off the FBI." I put my hand on the door to my office. "And even if I did do something-and I'm not saying that I did," I add quickly when I see Devin's smug look. "I can guarantee that they have no evidence that they can hold against me."

"So you're implying that you did, in fact, do something..." He trails off a smirk on his face.

"Not recently," I growl out at him and he smiles a victory smile. Megan looks between the two of us.

"Megan this is Devin. Devin, Megan." I introduce. Megan looks at him then me, as if silently asking who he is. "Devin's a-" I can't say coworker, cause as far as anyone working here is concerned, this is my only job. "Friend." I finally finish.

"Ouch." Devin places a hand over his heart as if I shot him. "I thought we were best friends." I ignore him.

"If there's anything else you need Miss Kingston, I'll be in my office," Megan says before turning and walking off. I push open the doors to my office and stop in my tracks as I notice what's on my desk.

"What in the world?..." I trail off. Devin pushes past me into the room.

"Who would send you flowers?"

I glare at him before shoving the stack of files into his hands and walking down the hall. I knock lightly on Megan's door before pushing it open. She looks up at me.

"The flowers on my desk" I start before she can say anything. "Who sent them?"

She gives me an extremely puzzled look. "There were no flowers on your desk last night when I went to grab a couple files." She says.

"Then who came up this morning?"

"I'm the only one who's been up here for the past couple weeks." She replies. "No one else has come up."

I drum my fingers on the door frame in annoyance. "Okay, thanks," I mutter before walking back into my office.

I see Devin sitting on my desk waving around a white envelope. He opens it up before I can stop him and slides across the desk to the other side as I try to snatch the envelope from his hands.

"You do know that opening up other people's mail is considered a crime right?" I hiss as I move around the desk to get to him. He matches every step of mine with a step of his own, neither one of us doing anything more than circling each other around the desk.

He clears his throat as he pulls the card from inside the envelope.

"A couple dozen red for you, and a half dozen white for them. Not one more, not one less. What the crap even is this?" Devin grumbles as he stops reading aloud for a second, his eyes scanning over the card.

I make a move the grab it again but he dances out of the way. I need to get that from him before he finishes reading it. I've already figured out who it's from, and if he does the same...I'm in trouble.

"Friday night, 8:00. I'd tell you which restaurant but there's no need, you've been there a dozen times before. See ya then Daggers."

"Give me that," I order right before I finally snatch the card out of his hands.

"Daggers." He mutters thoughtfully. "I like that, it's a good nickname for you."

I scoff. "Anything's better than stab happy nameless person."

"Excuse you, that nickname is gold, pure gold." He eyes me as I walk over towards the far corner of the office. "What are you doing?"

I read over the card once myself...before tossing it into the shredder.

"What the hell? You're not even a little curious as to who that was from?" He asks, disbelief at what I've just done splattered across his face.

"Nope."

"Do you already know who it was from?" Yes.

"No." Lie.

"So you just don't care."

I let out a sigh. I need to change the subject. "Didn't you want to yell at me about something you have no proof I actually did?"

His face lights up at the reminder. "Yes, I did." A few seconds pass and I hear nothing from him. I turn around to face him. He's playing with the desk light, turning it on and off.

"Devin." He looks up from the light to me, taking a seat on the desk again. "I'm not hearing much yelling."

"I said I was going to yell at you." He shrugs as he looks at me. "I thought about it carefully, and changed my mind."

I raise an eyebrow. "You changed your mind?"

"Yep." He pops the 'p.'

"Why?"

"You've worked at the agency for what? Like fourteen years now?" I nod. "And in all that time, my father's never changed. He's been exactly the same as he was then. So it got me thinking," He tosses a pen in the air and catches it. "You've had fourteen years of dealing with him and you've never once gone at him." He puts the pen down. "So what did he do that caused you to finally snap?"

"I'm not having this conversation with you," I state.

If Devin doesn't already know how twisted and corrupt Zero is, I'm not going to be the one to tell him. I'm not going to be the one to ruin the image of his father for him.

"I'm serious." He starts again. "What was it he did, that pushed you over the edge?" I say nothing and turn away from him, staring out the large floor to ceiling windows. "You're not going to hurt me by saying anything." I hear his soft footsteps as he makes his way over to me. "Please tell me."

I sigh, but keep my back to him. "It was two things," I mutter. "One was sending you boys on a suicide mission just to keep me from resigning."

"You were going to resign?" He interrupts. I shake my head with a small smile on my face.

"Is that the only thing you got out of that?" I turn to face him and he smiles back at me.

"I already knew." He says quietly.

"About what?"

"The suicide mission." I stare at him in shock.

"How?"

He scratches the back of his neck nervously. "It was my idea." I stare at him, not making any sounds. He takes that as a sign to continue. "I saw your resignation form before you finished filling it out." He shrugs. "My father already had his suspicions that you were planning on resigning. He didn't want that."

"So you helped him plot to keep me here?" He winces at my tone.

"When you put it like that it sounds pretty bad." I glare harshly at him, he doesn't look at me. "It was a better plan than what he planned on doing."

"And that was?"

He's silent before looking back at me with pleading eyes. "Don't make me say it."

I take a slow and threatening step towards him. "What was Zero's plan?" I repeat, my tone deadly.

"To pull the plug."

I freeze where I'm at and look him over, waiting for him to give me sign that I heard him wrong. When he says nothing else, a pure rage pumps through my veins.

I really want to kill a certain someone who I happen to work for.

I turn away from Devin and rest both hands on the edge of my desk, my fingernails digging into the wood.

"How much do you know?" I question, my voice soft, but there's a hidden anger behind.

"Not all of it." He replies with a shrug. "But enough."

I pull the hair band out of my hair and run my fingers through it. My whole body shaking with anger.

"Don't worry," He says and I feel a hand on my shoulder. "You secret's safe with me."

"You shouldn't even know," I whisper.

"Well, I do." He says, his tone of voice back to its usual chirpy tone. He frowns for a moment. "What was the second thing? That caused you to stab him?"

"It's personal," I state, my tone final, leaving no room for any argument from him. Thankfully he lets it go.

It's not like I'd tell him anyway. Just knowing one of those secrets is enough. I don't need him knowing more...especially not that one.