Read Wicked Temptation (Nemesis Unlimited) for Free Online

her knock, the door swung open, and the burly form of a man blocked most of the light behind him.
    “This her, then?” he asked in a slightly rough accent.
    “And a very good afternoon to you, Lazarus,” Harriet answered crisply. “Your manners haven’t improved since we’ve been gone.”
    “This isn’t a salon, is it, Harridan?” the man retorted.
    “If it was, you’d be thrown out by the footmen.”
    Marco rumbled, “Lazarus, let us in, damn it.”
    The burly man stepped aside, muttering, and Bronwyn followed Harriet into a very ordinary walk-up flat. The door opened to a parlor, at the center of which was a large, worn wooden table. Beyond the parlor lay a small kitchen. Leading off the parlor was a flight of stairs. Curtained windows that fronted the street let in gray afternoon light. Aside from the mass of dossiers and papers on the parlor table, it was a singularly unimpressive room.
    She took a few steps inside and turned a slow circle, taking in her surroundings. “For all Lucy’s talk, I would’ve thought Nemesis’s headquarters would have boasted marble columns and war rooms to rival the cabinet.”
    “Nemesis operates in a pro bono capacity,” Harriet explained.
    “This isn’t a moneymaking operation,” growled Lazarus around the stem of a clay pipe. He had a salt-and-pepper beard, and carried himself like an old soldier. “Otherwise, we’d be damned foolish businessmen.”
    For some reason, Bronwyn found herself turning to Marco for confirmation. “But I thought, when you said you didn’t take up causes for people like me, it meant…” Her cheeks heated.
    “That this time we’re doing it for a percentage because you’d have the cash to cover it.” He set her bags down. “Wouldn’t be very fair of us if we treated you differently than our other clients.” He said this almost grudgingly.
    “Fairness never entered my mind,” she answered.
    “Why should it,” Harriet said, “when you haven’t been treated fairly?”
    “But all this grandeur”—Marco waved at the modest chamber—“is financed out of Nemesis agents’ own pockets.”
    She stared at him, shocked. These people couldn’t possibly be real, bankrolling justice for its own sake. “There can’t be very many of you, then.”
    He chuckled, a sound like the pouring of a rich, dark wine into fine crystal, then cut his laughter short. “Never enough.”
    “Some are on assignment right now,” Harriet said. “Desmond and Riza just came back from a mission that took them to the United States—you’ll meet them later.”
    Her mind whirled. This world was so new, so hidden. How could she have ever known of it? And yet, like a receding tide, it became revealed.
    “Your work is pro bono,” she said, “yet I can’t imagine what kind of outside employment you’d have to keep the Nemesis coffers full. Perhaps you’re bank robbers.”
    Lazarus chortled. “We stay on the side of the law. Usually.”
    “Usually?”
    “It’s true that we all have jobs beyond Nemesis,” Harriet said, ignoring Bronwyn’s alarmed demand. “Jobs where no one knows anything about this.”
    “None of you sit behind a desk,” Bronwyn said. “It seems so mundane.”
    “Few of us do,” Marco replied.
    What did he do outside of Nemesis? Of the three agents she’d met, he seemed the least likely to lead a quotidian existence. Would he go to some offices, remove his hat and coat and put them on hooks, then go through number-filled ledgers, go out to a chophouse for luncheon, then return back to work and yawn through the afternoon? The idea felt so ludicrous, she dismissed it at once.
    However Marco lined his pockets when not helping penniless widows, it certainly couldn’t entail anything so commonplace. What might suit him? What did he do ?
    An urge pressed upon her, demanding to know. Who he was—really. She’d never met anyone so opaque, so intriguing, so full of hidden depths. So terrifying.
    “The issue of Nemesis’s bank