Damaged Like Us (Like Us #1)(27)

I cement in place. “Basically, you’re opening your three-day camping trip to anyone who has a dollar.” The public. I raise a hand, my pulse pounding against my throat. “How many attendees will be chosen through the raffle?”

“All of them. So three-hundred.”

Three-hundred. Security is going to have to background check three-hundred people in seven days. And if anyone with mal-intent slips through the cracks, Maximoff will be put directly in harm’s way.





10





FARROW KEENE





Sweat dripping down my temples, I jab a red punching bag and finish my combination with a right hook and hard left kick. 4:23 a.m.

Not even five hours after I radioed security about the raffle, Akara called a mandatory and “emergency” Omega meeting at the Studio 9 gym.

See, I recognize the danger of the raffle, but if I can’t even convince Maximoff to let me drive his Audi, then I highly doubt anyone can convince him to alter a charity event that he’s poured months and months of work and thought into.

And I warned Maximoff that the entire security team would overreact about his Camp-Away changes. He just said, “I’ll speak to the Tri-Force and comply wherever necessary, but the raffle is staying.”

Not many people ever volunteer to speak to all three lead bodyguards at once. Price Kepler of Alpha, Akara Kitsuwon of Omega, and the bane of my career, Thatcher Moretti of Epsilon, are all at the peak of the security hierarchy.

The Tri-Force.

My gaze travels to the closed door; the silver plaque reads: office.

Maximoff has been in there with the Tri-Force for fifteen minutes already. The three leads think they can “further illuminate” the risks to him, but Moffy contemplates too much. Whatever they have to tell him, he’s definitely already considered.

In short, they’re wasting their time.

I peel off my black boxing gloves, my chest rising and falling heavily. Three rows of red boxing bags line the right side of the gym, where I stand. The left houses the boxing ring, racks of weights, and other gym equipment.

There are only five bodyguards in Omega. We’re all young compared to the other Forces, and that’s by design. The Hales, Meadows, and Cobalts hired us on to last a couple decades in this career, not just a couple years. Being closer in age to our clients, it’s more likely we’ll stick around for the long-haul.

While we wait for Akara to leave the office, the four of us squeeze in a workout, but we all slow around the twenty-minute mark.

Oscar tugs off his blue gloves, his damp, curly brown hair hanging over a bandana. “You guys hear that Luna pierced an ‘unmentionable’ place?”

I’m used to news traveling fast within the security team. Bodyguards gossip like family, but we never leak info to the public. Not even accidentally. Everyone’s too careful.

Quinn pauses his sit-ups on his punching bag. “What…like her…?” He gestures to his crotch.

I roll my eyes and unravel my black hand-wraps.

Donnelly tosses his towel over his shoulder. “Her clit? It’s not a big bad word.”

Oscar butts in, “Everyone lay off Quinn—alright, my little bro is young, impressionable, and still has his innocence and virtue; whereas the rest of us have lost our ever-loving minds.”

Quinn chucks his green boxing glove at his older brother, ten years apart in age. “Bro, I can say clit every day easily. Clit, clit, clit, clit—”

“We get it,” I say, dropping my hand-wraps on the mats.

Quinn scratches his unshaven jaw, sweat built on his golden-brown skin, and a tiny scar sits beneath his eye. Likewise, his nose is a little crooked from a short stint and bad blow in a pro-boxing circuit. Oscar has similar lasting marks. Security jokes that no matter how many punches Oscar and Quinn have taken as pro-boxers in the past, they’ll always be handsome motherfuckers.

“I purposefully censored myself,” Quinn clarifies. “I wasn’t about to mention a teenage girl’s…you know.”

“Clit,” Donnelly says.

“Jelly bean,” Oscar adds.

“Magic button.” Donnelly smirks.

Quinn shakes his head like we’re all the fucked-up ones.

My brows spike. “You’re the one who assumed ‘clitoris piercing’ at the word ‘unmentionable’.” I tilt my head at him. “And weren’t you like a teenager like one year ago?”

Oscar and Donnelly laugh loudly, and Quinn gives me a faint death-glare. He needs to work on his “intimidation” a bit—he’s very green: brand new to security detail, and at twenty, he’s the youngest bodyguard in the whole team. If he screws up, that falls onto Omega’s shoulders, but really, it’ll weigh on mine.

Akara texts me every day:

if Quinn needs anything, help him





check in with Quinn





keep Quinn in the loop





When I left Alpha and joined Omega, Akara told me straight up, “Don’t go rogue on me. I need you to help the new guy.” Because I’m around Quinn as much as Maximoff hangs around Jane.

Which is literally every hour.

Inadvertently, it’s made me Quinn’s unofficial mentor, and I’d never call myself a teacher. I like to do shit on my own.