Chapter 6
I warned them
Endo
Scarlett is pretty. I mean, really pretty. After she showered and freshened up from last night, she walked into the dining room smelling like a wet vanilla dream. Even though I did my homework before coming here, her beauty surprised me. Or maybe I like her brand of sass. It’s sharp but kind.
I predicted that she would appreciate a real diamond.
I couldn’t have slipped her a fake one. She likes nice things, and everyone she knows could spot a fake on her hand.
I needed other people to think this engagement is real.
Besides, giving a woman an expensive piece like that makes it appear as if I mean business.
I didn’t come here to play around. I want my brother back.
Wilfred, who’s interested in Scarlett’s dad’s money and Scarlett by default, will help me out.
I know it doesn’t look like that now, but he will serve my cause more than her father because he wants me to release Scarlett from this fake engagement.
He wants me to return to where I came from so he can make his move on her.
For all I know, he’s already made a move.
The idea of Scarlett with him sits as well as an onion would on top of my morning coffee. Smells like ass and ruins my plans.
I enter Daniel Pembroke’s office.
It’s a sprawling, traditionally furnished, masculine space with an impressive black leather seating area and a white bearskin rug that matches the white frames around photos of Daniel’s hunting escapades.
The two men are already seated, with Daniel’s back to the window, which means he is forcing me to sit with my back to the door.
I take my time viewing the pictures, stopping to look at the image of him and his two girls beside a dead boar. The girls look like they’ve been crying, but he made them pose with him anyway.
“Do you hunt, Mr. Macarley?” Daniel asks.
“Not animals, no.” I bend at the knees and grip the armrests of the massive leather couch. I rotate it so that when I sit, I can see both the window and the entrance to the room.
I rest my Nighthawk pistol on the arm of the couch.
“Now,” I say, “let’s get down to business.
Last month, my brother was overseeing the handover of your cargo when he disappeared.
Poof. Gone without a trace. And before you say he’s intentionally gone under the radar, my brother always checks in with me when he’s on the road.
One day, he’s eating caviar on his yacht; the next, he’s missing. ”
“Who is your brother?” Daniel asks.
I grit my teeth. “Drop the act, or I swear to God, you’ll be scooping Wilfred’s brains off the bear rug.”
Wilfred unbuttons his suit. “We do not recognize your last name.”
“But you do recognize me, don’t you, Daniel? At the party, you seemed to recognize me. Or was it that you recognized that the Grim Reaper had come for you?”
“I don’t know you,” Daniel says.
“Now you do. My brother’s name is Cassian Macarley. Goes by Cass.”
Daniel shakes his head. Wilfred does too.
I lay a hand over my weapon. “You’re begging for a bullet.”
“I’m telling the truth,” Daniel shouts. “I don’t know who he is. I’ve never met him. Never heard of him before.”
I tap the gun’s grip and decide he really is telling the truth. Wilfred? Not sure if he is truthful, but he’s less important now.
“You hired my brother to sell your weapons.”
Wilfred’s eyes widen, but he quickly schools his face. Too late. I caught it. I don’t know why he’s surprised, though. Could be because he doesn’t know about the illegal shipment of weapons Daniel is selling on the black market, or it could be he’s surprised that I know about it.
My brother and I run a tight business. We watch each other’s backs, which is why I’m so pissed he didn’t listen to me when I said no to this business offer.
But I’m even more pissed at myself. I told him no when he asked me to oversee the transport of this cargo.
I didn’t think he’d do it himself. I thought he would have called one of his men in the area.
But he wanted to see it through. The deal was massive, too massive to hire out. A billion dollars of profit for us. What really kills me is that my brother wanted to retire on this deal so he could fish all day or maybe raise a family.
I never wanted to fish all day. Or raise a family. And it should’ve been me who sailed with the cargo, not him. See, now I’m thinking he’s dead, and that makes me want to shoot someone.
Two someones.
How very convenient that I have two prime candidates sitting right in front of me. “Well?” I ask, getting impatient with their bullshit.
“We manufacture weapons,” Daniel says. “The company doesn’t sell anything outside of our government contracts.”
I shoot him below the kneecap.
The man screams in pain.
Wilfred jumps and shows me his palms. “Don’t shoot!”
I point directly at Daniel’s kneecap. “Five, four…”
Scarlett bursts into the room, and with one look at her father, she assesses him. Daniel’s red in the face from pain and breathes through his teeth, a whimper escaping him once in a while.
Quickly, she uses Daniel’s tie as a tourniquet and compresses the wound. In between administering first aid and telling the staff and Wilfred what to do, she glares at me.
I rise from the couch with a groan, realizing I’ll have to find out where my brother is the hard way. “No ambulance. No sirens,” I order. “Did you eat?” I ask her as blood seeps between her fingers and over the ring.
The housekeeper brings Scarlett her black leather doctor’s bag, and Scarlett injects her dad with something.
“Did you eat?” I ask her again.
Dr. Pembroke patches up her father, then rises from her kneeling position on the floor, her hands bloody, her face streaked with blood too.
She comes to me and looks up from her five-foot-nine position.
I’m six foot six, so I’ve still got nine inches on her.
Nine inches is a good length. The length of my dick.
Not that that matters now, but I thought I’d mention it anyway.
“What kind of a man shoots a woman’s father and then asks her if she ate?”
“The kind of man who knows his priorities.”
“You’re an asshole.”
She really turns me on. I swipe a smear of blood from her cheek and lick my thumb so I can taste it. “Did you eat?”
“Yes, I ate.”
“Good. We won’t call an ambulance since it’s a flesh wound that you fixed in record time. When people ask, you’ll explain that your dad had an accident with a weapon. We carry the same pistol, so that’s believable. Once you get him comfortable, you’ll pack your shit, because we’re leaving.”
“I’m not going anywhere with you,” she says, her voice full of venom.
“Is that so?” I glance at her dad. It’s enough to get my point across.
Scarlett steps back and swings, but I catch her wrist. She tries to tug her hand away, but I hold firm. “There is only one way out of this, and that is to give me information on the whereabouts of my brother.”
“I’ll get it for you,” Daniel says through clenched teeth. “I’ll get the information.”
Finally! “In the meantime, I’ll hold your daughter as collateral.”