Her eyes widened as she took him in, drinking him from head to toe. She had to admit that although they hadn’t seen each other in almost three years, her brother looked exactly the same, his intense eyes waiting for her to make the first move, his powerful strides not faltering even though he was in a casino house the one place Zayn would not be caught dead. And there was that gait that made everyone turn to look at him, whether they meant to or not.
He was getting a lot of attention, and she knew that if she crossed the little space between them to meet him, everyone would be more interested in what Zayn Graham was doing there. No one knew her real identity in the casino, and she planned on keeping it that way. Using her slender finger to remove a card from her stack, she winked at the people playing with her on the table, and got up gingerly, her hips swaying as she sauntered into the back room. She had an image she had to keep up with, and Zayn just almost ruined it.
Zayn waited a full minute before moving again, his villainous look causing people to stare as he crossed the room with a demeanor no one could copy or approach for that matter. Finding the back room was the easiest thing, but when Zayn walked inside, he was already running out of time. He’d told himself he wasn’t going to spend more than a few minutes inside, but from the look of things, he had already waited for almost five minutes.
And Zayn Graham hated waiting.
“Zayn,” she drawled as he stepped into the room, her voice back to the way he knew it to be, and the smoky look that had been in her eyes settling into the familiarity that existed between them, mixed with a tinge of awareness as to what brought her brother into a casino. “Isn’t this such a nice surprise?”
Mago was a stunner, her shiny dark brown hair cascading down her back in waves, and her petite form making her look so small and easygoing, yet Mago was one of the most defiant and strongly opinionated people Zayn knew. The other was hours away, perhaps still having dinner in some place Zayn wouldn’t have loved her to be at given the situation back at home. Still, he knew she could take care of herself.
“You knew I was in Hong Kong,” he muttered, rolling his eyes and taking the leather couch in front of her. “I saw one of your men at the airport. You need to tell them to start doing a better job at spying on people. I could easily identify him in the crowd.”
Mago shrugged. “But he can hide perfectly in the dark. He saw you come in the second time. Skillful, right?”
“That is what the night is for,” Zayn replied, amusement in his tone. “If he was my man, he would have had to make a choice between staying to work for me like he ought to or hitting the streets. His sloppiness should be a studied course.”
“But he is my man.” Her brown eyes regarded Zayn. “But I’m quite certain my older brother didn’t stroll into a casino to talk to me about one of my men. Is it Dad? He’s well, isn’t he? I spoke to him last night and he said…”
“Dad is fine.”
“Then, Nathan? Is he back in prison? I have to say that it wasn’t exactly unexpected, you know? He always had a bond with the inmates in there, tighter than he would ever with us.” Although it was meant to come out as a joke, the truth in those words made the laughter hard to escape through their lips. Instead, Zayn scoffed and drew closer to her.
“I haven’t heard from Nathan, and neither had Dad. But it’s not the reason I am here.”
The skin on her forehead got wrinkled as Mago was furrowed in concentration. “So what then?”
“You know I’m opening a branch of my company here,” Zayn started, getting right into it. “And I want you to head the financial department.”
“Zayn,” Mago shook her head slowly. “You know what my answer would be. I love working without a boss. I don’t want rules to keep me stuck in one place.”
“You cannot keep getting financial trends and making analysis to sell to companies, get paid, and then move on to the next. You need to settle in one spot, and Mago, you are one of the smartest financial analysts I know. You are skilled at taking one look at the market trend and knowing what would work for it at that moment. And I want that in Graham Conglomerates.”
“Do your people know you can be this earnest about a request?” Mago teased, angling her head.
“I don’t care about what either of them feels or cares for, at least when it doesn’t have a direct connection with me. But you, Mago Graham, are my sister, and it is my duty to care for you. Hong Kong has been a great place for you to thrive, but it’s high time you came to work for me. After one year, I would let you leave if freelancing is still what you want to do. But you owe me this, remember? I helped you when your lunatic boyfriend thought if he couldn’t have you, he would kill you then.”
“Are you ever one to do a person a favor without reminding them about it donkey years later?”
Zayn smiled ruefully and shook his head. “I didn’t become this known in the business world by letting all of my favors go, did I?”
“When is the company going to officially open its doors and what are you going to specialize in here?”
“What? You are actually going to do it?”
“I have been thinking about leaving freelance. It’s not as fun as it used to be, and my fake name isn’t so alluring anymore. Maybe admitting I’m a Graham, and using the family’s connection isn’t such a bad thing after all.”
“I told you so.”
“Now that we are done with that, I’ve been hearing interesting conversations about Rina Powers back home. I need the gist, first hand.”
Zayn got up and headed to the door. “We’re done here.”