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“You? Ferro Calvaresi? You’re playing the maturity card? You just…hijackedtech pirate and now you’re trying to tell me you’re mature?”

He gave her his enuine, a smile no one could find fault with A smile he never felt at all “I show the world what I choose to show the world”

“You think I don’t?”

“I think your armor is thin, cara”

He expected her to make some sort of snitty denial Say she didn’t wear armor She didn’t, and that was to her credit

“You tellher ar from his, “what do you think we need to do?”

“We need to make the world believe that all of our hostility has melted away into an attraction, an attachment, that we can’t deny We need to make them think we’ve fallen head over heels into, if not love, bed”

“And you think that ork?” She was blushing He couldn’t re a woman blush Or anyone for that matter Everyone he’d ever known had seemed born jaded

He hadn’t been He could re When he’d felt hope Optimism Passion

He’d learned He’d learned that there were no bonus points for getting through life withoutout of the gutter, but at least you were out, even if the filth clung to your skin for the rest of your life Even if it made you hard and old before your time

“I knoill”

“How?”

“The press, the public, are predictable We show up at a public event, we’ll make headlines around the world The seed will be planted, e pitch our design to Barrows, it all suddenly makes sense”

She flicked her hair back over her shoulder and shifted her weight, one stiletto clad foot out in front of her “But won’t Ha?”