Chapter 12 Found Him #2
He studies me for a long beat. Something unreadable moves across his expression before he shoves his cigarette back behind his ear, then running his fingers through his hair.
“I remember when you were with Lucy the first time. You were happy. Jack made your life miserable, but Lucy… she helped you get through it. I should’ve remembered that. She makes you a better man.”
I wish that were true. If I were a better man, I wouldn’t be holding her hostage and lying about who I am, no matter what Adrian thinks.
Hang on—
“What did you do?”
“Excuse me?”
“You said you should’ve remembered that in that careful tone you use when you made a decision, executed one of your plans, and didn’t think it would make a difference because you handled it… so what did you do, Adrian?”
My cousin crosses his legs, resting his ankle on his thigh. His fingers on his right hand twitch, and I know he’d be reaching for a smoke if he didn’t know that he’d be breaking the first promise he made to his newly-wed wife after he married her at gunpoint.
“Okay. Fine” He exhales roughly. “You need Lucy. I wasn’t sure how you planned on keeping her, but I knew that Heather needed to be handled. So I passed her on to an Owed who might be better for her.”
“And who’s that?”
“Alex.”
I roll my eyes to the ceiling. Alexandre?
Really? Sebastien Reynolds’s older bother is a confirmed bachelor and notorious playboy.
He blew past his thirtieth without taking a wife, but because Bas married Annaliese, I twisted the Order charter to let him keep his standing.
As long as a founding family will continue their line—something I know Bas wants to do with his wife one day—then Alex can have all the fun he wants with the Used and I’ll look the other way.
And that’s the Owed that Adrian wants to Offer Heather to? Not saying I like it, but her worth is in her pedigree and her virginity. If Alex screws around with Heather and doesn’t marry her, he’s fucking up her life even more than I already have.
“Adrian—”
“I know how it sounds, but I have a plan.” Of course he does.
“I told Alexandre just to distract her. That, if she resists his charms, he doesn’t have to worry about losing access to the Used because the old guard wants to punish him for not falling in line.
” As if I’d let them. “But, if he seduces her for shits and giggles, if he pops her cherry, he has to be the one to marry her. That the King said so, and if he refuses, he’ll never get to fuck another Used again. ”
I almost choke. “And he went along with it?”
Who am I kidding? This is Alexandre. Threaten to take away his free pussy and he’ll do whatever it takes to be in the Order’s good graces—
“Nope.” Adrian’s green eyes sparkle with pure mischief. “He refused.”
“Really?”
“He had a good reason.” Adrian leans forward in his seat. “Poor sap’s finally in love.”
What? “Does Bas know?”
“No, but neither does Alex.” A soft laugh, and then, “It’ll be fun to keep tabs on him and watch that unfold.”
I marvel at Adrian. “Fuck me, buddy. You sure you don’t want to be King?”
Every single time I’ve made the half-hearted offer, Adrian always scoffs and—like Alex, I guess—he refuses outright. But now… a strange look crosses his face before he shakes his head.
“Anyway, I had a back-up guy in mind. Brady. He works under me as an accountant for the Order. Good kid and I think he’ll make a good husband for Heather.
I gave him two weeks off and sent him on a ‘get to know you’ cruise with Heather and her parents so we don’t have to worry about them interfering again.
” He plucks his phone out of his suit jacket’s inner pocket, checking the time.
“They should be embarking right about now.”
“Shit, Adrian. You’ve been busy.”
He shrugs. “That’s my job, Dal. I’ve got your back. And you? You’ve got two weeks to show off Lucy as the new Mrs. Collins before the old guard starts invoking the King’s bride’s charter clause again.”
They can try.
Two weeks? Two weeks to make Lucy my wife?
Hell, as far as I’m concerned, she belongs to me now.
If only she believed it, too.
Adrian is a smart guy. Once he confesses that he handled the whole Heather situation behind my back, he makes a strategic exit from my office.
I would’ve chased after him, demanding he tell me what other plans he has brewing behind the scenes, but I had five more in-person meetings scheduled that Loni—most likely acting on her husband’s orders, or maybe it’s because I pay her good money to keep me in line—insists that I can’t cancel.
I did take ten minutes in between the second and third one to check on Lucy. She was curled up on my couch in the living room, snuffing softly as she napped. I dropped a kiss to her forehead, stroked her shoulder, and trudged back down to the floor below.
After the third meeting, I think about telling Loni to hold the next one so I can check to see if Lucy’s woken up yet when I hear a buzz.
It’s not the office line. It’s my personal phone, and though I hoped that Lucy used her new one to call me, I’m not even a little surprised to see Adrian’s name on the screen.
“Yeah?”
“I found him.”
I get to my feet, clutching the phone. Him… there’s only one ‘him’ I give a shit about right now.
“Where is he?”
“Princetown. I followed his credit cards and realized he was somewhere in that area. Fairchild fucked up, though. He rented a place instead of paying cash to stay under the radar. Check just cleared. I’ve got an address. It’s about an hour, hour-and-a-half out of town, but I got him.”
I don’t know how Adrian does it. I couldn’t care less, either. He found him, and that’s all that matters.
My pulse spikes. “Give it to me.”
He does. And then, just as I expected, he says, “I’m going with you.”
I jolt. “You don’t have to—”
“I don’t have to do shit. I know. But you need someone to watch your back. I’ll be there. And you better tag Bas. You know he’ll be pissed if you try to leave him out of this.”
Look who’s talking. When Adrian and I went to rescue Loni from being sex-trafficked in the basement of the Fortress, Adrian tried to keep Bas out of it since Jack hated me, but he loathed Bas and his brother.
Bas insisted and he risked his ass for us, distracting Jack while we got past one of my old man’s enforcers—fuck you, Luke—and Adrian’s still trying to make it up to him.
Not me. Whenever I needed an extra hand for the dirty work that came with my old job, I always reached out to Bas—and, telling Adrian to hold on for a second, that’s exactly what I do know.
We found him
It’s four o’clock in the afternoon. Sebastien is probably down at the garage. Annaliese works from home, running her event planning business, while Bas works from open to close at the garage, either fixing engines or working on whatever bike he’s currently building.
I wait to see if he’s stuck under a hood or if he’ll answer me—
SEBASTIEN
Got it. You need a shovel?
I fucking love my brothers.
Probably. Some extra hands, too.
Meet at the Fortress in fifteen?
If you can
I’ll make it ten
I put the phone back to my ear. “Bas is on his way.”
“That’s good. I already called Loni. She’s going to meet up with Annaliese, the two of them going out to the movies while we take care of business. Said if I tried to sic a bodyguard on them, she’s filing for divorce.”
There’s an edge to Adrian’s voice that I recognize.
Yeah… if he thought he could get away with it, he would so take a new member of the Order and make him keep an eye on Loni while he was out of town.
Hell, he’d lock her up with their cats, and after how Eric Ward went after Annaliese in her own home while Sebastien was busy with me, he might toss his wife in after her.
Then again, Annaliese proved that she can take care of herself. Besides, it’s just the movies… but what am I going to do about Lucy?
It’s bad enough that she bolted yesterday after she got the wrong idea about Heather and me. If I take off tonight to deal with Fairchild—and who knows how long that will take—she might do a runner again. She’s too fragile to be left alone, and as I curse under my breath, I admit that to Adrian.
Between Bas and Adrian, they can handle Fairchild for me. But I want to be the one who makes him pay for not being able to protect Lucy. And what if he pushed her? I need to know, and I need to deal out the appropriate punishment.
But who will watch my sweet Lucy?
And then Adrian tells me he has a plan, and I suddenly feel a lot better about leaving Harmony Heights while Lucy stays behind.