Jacob stood with a bag of food in front of Claire's office door while impatiently tapping his foot on the floor. He felt like punching Aiden for pulling him away from his Phoenix Clan investigation to be a late lunch delivery boy.
Not to mention his wanting to leave the building thanks to all the pairs of eyes on his back. They were especially irritating.
The moment he stepped out of the elevator, he bumped into somebody by accident. Making everybody snap their heads in his direction when a few things fell on the floor. He was normally accustomed to being gawked at while he was by Aiden's side, but being stared at so intensely while being by himself wasn't something he wasn't comfortable with.
Jacob heard the door click open and sighed in relief. Aiden opened the door for him to come inside. Finally relieving the tension of the hawks looking at him from his shoulders.
"I'm seriously considering cancelling the subscription to our friendship." Jacob gave the bags of food to Aiden who was chuckling at his remark.
"Relax. You know I ordered your favorites too." Aiden gestured for Jacob to help him clear the coffee table covered with documents.
"Where's your handler?" Jacob started to carry stacks of papers over to the desk as he poked at his best friend. Being so many hours away from the office was evidence enough of how whipped he was becoming. All thanks to his little lady.
"Your jokes are getting worse by the day Jacob." Aiden replied as he too moved things from off the table. "She's finishing up with a phone call."
Just as he said so, Claire stepped out of the bedroom while speaking on the phone. She was barefoot and had styled her hair into a messy bun as she looked for something on her desk. Since she was so focused on her call, she didn't notice the looks of confusion aimed her way. After she finished talking and hung up, she got closer to the two of them who were standing next to the now clear coffee table.
"Hey Jacob it's been a while." Seeing as their expressions were somewhat surprised, she furrowed her brows in confusion. "What's wrong?"
"You speak Russian?" Aiden asked as he looked down at her. Now that she wasn't wearing any high heels, she had to really crane her neck to meet both his and Jacob's gaze.
"Well yeah. Don't you?" She looked at the two men as if the idea of them not being able to speak the language was stranger than the fact that she did. "Anyway let's leave that aside for now." She turned to face Jacob with a bright smile and excitement in her eyes. "What did you bring?"
Jacob couldn't help but chuckle at her cute reaction. She had grasped her hands in front of her chest as if she were a child awaiting for her presents on Christmas morning. Making his awful mood lighten a bit. "Everything you guys asked for and extra."
"Jacob, you are the best personal assistant I have ever met." Claire said as she sat on the couch after being ushered by Aiden. He didn't enjoy seeing her barefoot on what he knew was ice cold tile.
Aiden took a seat next to her where he shifted her legs over his lap and covered them with a blanket that was on the edge of the sofa. Meanwhile, Jacob took a seat across from them in one of the lounge chairs in her office. They all started to eat their dinner as the conversation continued between the three.
"So I'm guessing by that grumpy expression that you still haven't managed to find anything new in the last few hours." Aiden spoke to Jacob as he enjoyed his spicy crab salad. They had ordered sushi and other Asian dishes.
"I'm another dead end away from exploding." Jacob replied as he aggressively stabbed a piece of his sushi with his chopsticks.
"Anything I can help with?" Claire asked while she chuckled at Jacob's actions. He looked like a little kid sulking over not wanting to eat his vegetables. A phase she gratefully hadn't yet gone through with Lily thanks to her being the least picky eater in the family. Colton being the most.
"I don't think so." Jacob sighed. "I've been trying to get anything useful about the Phoenix Clan for the past month, but I've barely been able to find anything. By now I'm starting to believe I'd have better luck trying to take a picture of a ghost." His expression was a mixture of frustration and disappointment.
Since the guys were looking down at their food neither of them saw the slight pause Claire did before lifting her chopsticks at the mention of the clan's name. And thanks to it being a second long, it went by completely unnoticed.
"What do you want to know?" Claire casually asked as she continued eating normally. Although the same couldn't be said about the two men who had simultaneously stopped eating to look at her.
"You have info on them?" Jacob's voice was as surprised as his wide eyed expression.
"I'm practically a walking encyclopedia my friend." She chuckled at her own remark before asking again in an even more casual manner. "Sooo what do you want to know?"
"How many members are there?" Jacob quickly asked as if to call her bluff.
"They've been steadily increasing in numbers for a few years now so I don't have an exact number. But I'd say around fifteen."
"Hundred?" Jacob insisted. Anybody could give such a general number.
"Thousand." She corrected him making his eyes widen even more. The city was indeed large, but having such a big number of men belonging to a single clan wasn't something to take lightly. Especially when the Phoenix Clan was always rather small in it's numbers thanks to it's gruesome initiation process.
"Do they have a main base?" Aiden interjected after sensing she had more information about them than his team would ever be able to gather. He wasn't as surprised as Jacob due to having faced that side of his Angel before. Just like a real deity, she knew more than he could imagine.
"They don't even have sub bases. They work out of brothels and the main family's house." Claire kept eating nonchalantly as both men probed.
"How many members are in the main family?" Jacob snapped out of his initial shock and continued his line of questioning.
"Last time I checked the current leader had three sons. One passed away years ago, so that would make them three men in total."
"What about wives?" Although Jacob hadn't decided if he truly believed her or not, he was willing to admit that what she was saying went in accordance with the little information he did have on the clan. So she was either a very good source of intel or a very good liar.
"The Phoenix Clan doesn't recognize women as members." Claire's grip on her chopsticks tightened the slightest bit. Something that Jacob didn't notice, but this time Aiden certainly did.
"Then what do they do with the ones that are born into the main family?" Jacob asked while suspecting the answer was nothing short of inhumane given how the old clan was deeply ingrained with bloody traditions and toxic machoism.
Claire stopped eating and looked directly at Jacob. Her expression wasn't especially different from the one she had on the entire conversation. "I don't think you'd be able to sleep at night if I told you."
She replied without her voice indicating anything in particular, but thanks to Aiden being so close to her, he noticed how her eyes flared up for a second with her answer before she continued eating.
Jacob was about to ask something else when Aiden gave him a glance telling him not to. He casually kissed the top of Claire's head before focusing back on his food. "Well I'm not sure about you guys, but I don't think I'd enjoy my food as much if we keep talking about a bunch of dudes. So we can leave the rest of this conversation for later."
"Agreed." Claire said back to him as she placed another piece of sushi in her mouth.
Jacob sat without eating for a few seconds before he followed their example. The dynamic between them was both new and scary to him. How could a person that had so recently appeared in Aiden's life make him seem uninterested in gathering such valuable information? Information that Claire obviously had more of!
In all honesty he was happy for his friend. After all he knew what he had been through, Jacob couldn't be more pleased with how happy Aiden had seemed since he met her. And the fact that he was quickly modifying his life to accommodate her needs didn't faze him in the least given the fact that Aiden had always been an all or nothing kind of guy. But the way he purposely ended the topic of conversation just then made Jacob put into question if he should raise a red flag or not.
A decision he would make after having a conversation with Aiden later.