Chapter Fourteen
Chapter
Fourteen
“The police know absolutely nothing. Useless.
What do we even pay them for?” Edward Kirkallan paced the floor of Damon’s
office. He was in quite a state less than twenty-four hours after the failed
kidnapping attempt. He’d threatened the police for not solving the case within
twenty-four hours, the press for not giving him good enough coverage, and the
restaurant for not searching every person who came in. “The news of this nearly
gave my father a heart attack.”
Mal watched them carefully. Though he couldn’t stop thinking
about Vivian and how he’d spent the previous evening. Wrapped around her.
Sleeping beside her after they’d tired themselves out with pleasure. Waking up
beside her had been one of the sweetest moments of his life.
And now he had to work. He’d never found it hard to
concentrate on work before, but then he’d never had a Vivian.
Tatiana sat beside him looking chic and cool in a designer
sheath dress that showed off how thin she was. “That was the fun part.” She
looked up and no one was laughing. “Sorry. I guess humor has no place here.”
“I was almost kidnapped,” Edward complained, staring at her.
“And you’re joking.”
She simply shrugged and took a sip of the tea Vivian had
brought in earlier. There was something strangely controlled about Tatiana’s
every gesture. Like she was playing a role and didn’t want to miss a
well-practiced move. When the terrible twosome had shown up for their morning
appointment, Vivian had brought tea and coffee and then Oliver had given her a
kiss on the cheek.
He had to stop himself from throwing his body between them.
He didn’t. He’d sat there like watching her put hands on another man—even one
he considered a friend—didn’t make him want to go mad.
Then she’d started to walk out and turned at the door,
giving him a wink, and all was well again.
His mood depended on her smile. It seemed like a dangerous
place to be. Her father hated him. Her mother watched him with an almost
clinical detachment, as though he was a patient and she wanted to figure out
the risk of him before weighing in. Her brother watched him like a hawk. Her
uncle was weirdly fun to be around.
How long would it be before she realized he didn’t fit in
and never would?
Fuck. He really was turtling. This was what Vivian was
afraid of, what she’d told him she would be patient about. It would feel so
safe to hide again, to let himself build those walls, but now he had to
consider whether or not those walls would contain Vivian. If she stayed with
him behind those walls her life would be smaller than it needed to be.
And he definitely didn’t want walls between them.
Though her father was probably thinking about murdering him
and stuffing his corpse behind a couple.
“Eddie, I think you’re under a serious misconception.”
Oliver sat across from Tatiana while Mal stood near the door. “We don’t believe
they were coming after you.”
Edward’s brows rose. “You think it was some other chap they
were after and we got caught in the chaos? Who there was more important than
me? Well, that feels insulting. I lost a bodyguard. I have to pay his widow a
massive sum.”
“It was in his contract,” Tatiana complained like she was
talking about withholding a tip from a bad lunch service. “I told Eddie he
should read those before he signs them. The man didn’t deserve a bonus at all.
I think him dying proves he wasn’t good at his job.”
Mal glanced at Damon, who was behind his desk. He hadn’t
been at The Garden for terribly long, but he knew what it meant when Damon
Knight went cold and quiet.
“I would advise you to keep those thoughts to yourself or
you’ll also need to hire a crisis publicist. You certainly don’t want anyone
saying the Kirkallans don’t take care of their own,
do you? Right now the press and the public feels for you and your family, but
that can change,” Damon said in a cold tone. “Those contracts are standard in
the industry now. They’re to protect the family he left behind. He had a wife
and two children, you know.”
It was good to have Damon around because it meant Mal didn’t
have to put the man in his place. He felt for Gerald and his family. It was
good they wouldn’t have to worry about money as they were mourning.
Edward brushed him off. “Of course, I know. I’m sorry, Mr.
Knight. I’m afraid I’m still a bit upset. And now I worry that I’ve gotten
terribly anxious for no reason. Who else in that room would anyone possibly
want to kidnap?”
Now the idiot was jealous he wasn’t the prime target. The
man was a complete narcissist.
“Malcolm, do you want to jump in here since your team did a
lot of the research?” Damon offered, his way of saying deal with these
morons so I don’t have to.
He wouldn’t call Lucy and Sami his team. Especially not in
front of them, but he understood that Damon wanted a man to have to deal with
these people. Lucy might murder them. In an ecologically friendly way, of
course.
“We have identified the men who attacked. We have access to
one of their computers, and it yielded a lot of intelligence.”
“You have their computer?” Tatiana’s brows rose. “How did
you get that? Shouldn’t it be with the police?”
“We got there first,” Mal admitted. “We ID’d
the subjects hours before the police did so we were able to get into the flat
before they did. I don’t think the police are the best organization to take
this investigation on. We have excellent connections and can move quickly. This
is the kind of event Interpol would normally handle, but it will be weeks
before they’re called in. We believe the people who hired the men were based in
France.”
Tatiana took in a quick breath, but when he looked at her,
the expression on her face was blank.
“So some French bastards wanted to kidnap someone in that
restaurant?” Edward asked with a blustery tone.
“We believe they were after Tatiana,” Mal said, moving from
his spot to join Oliver. He quickly went over everything Lucy and Sami had
found. Penny was still working on the code, but was certain she could crack it
soon. If her bloody computer would stop going on the fritz. She was having to
restart it multiple times, and she’d lost work. It was a deeply inconvenient
time to have technical issues.
Tatiana seemed far more serious now. “But Eddie was right
there. Why would they be after me when they could take him? I know my family is
wealthy but not close to the Kirkallans.”
“Perhaps they knew I would be the harder target,” Edward
announced. “I do spend a bit of time in the gym, you know. They were afraid to
try to take me, so they attempted to kidnap my bride.”
This was going to be an exercise in patience.
“We believe it might have something to do with the
kidnapping in Tatiana’s childhood,” Mal explained.
Tatiana went completely white and swallowed twice, her
elegant hand at her throat. “That was kept quiet. There isn’t supposed to be a
record of that except with my family’s attorney.”
He wondered why she seemed far more afraid of old
information coming out than she was the fact that someone was coming after her.
He made a mental note to explain everything to Vivian, though she was watching
along with Ariel from Lucy’s office. They’d installed cameras so they could
watch without being seen. Vivian thought Tatiana would be less guarded if there
wasn’t another woman in the room, which made no sense to Mal, but she seemed
firm about it.
“I assure you MI6 has a file,” he replied. “Your family
worked with a security group. Since you were taken to a foreign country, there
are records. One of the Tottenham businesses has had government contracts for
years. It was an MI6 agent who actually saved you.”
She shook her head. “Mummy said they paid the ransom.”
“Delivered by an MI6 agent working with the security group
so there was no scandal. One of the companies owned by your father was building
very important microchips at the time. The government didn’t want their work
disrupted with a lot of media scrutiny,” Mal explained. He was surprised she
didn’t know, but then should he be? She didn’t seem like a person who thought
much about the past. “I only tell you this because we believe we’ve identified
the group who kidnapped you in the first place. Have you ever heard of The
Chateau?”
He hadn’t thought she could get more pale. She shook her
head. “No. I mean I’ve heard of a chateau, but this sounds like you’re not
talking about a building.”
“This is an underground group working in Europe and Asia
right now,” Oliver replied. “We believe they’ve been around for a long time and
have likely adapted several times. They mostly make their money off of illegal
brothels filled with children, though they do like to also train them as
assassins.”
“Are you serious?” Edward asked, settling back down beside
Tatiana. “You think these are the people who took Tati when she was a kid? I
know about the kidnapping, but I was told it was simple. She was taken to a
hotel room in the south of France and was released a week later when the funds
came through.”
Now that was something he had thought of. “Why wouldn’t they
simply pay? Why wait a week? Did they not have liquid at the time?”
“I don’t know. I was eight,” she said with a sigh. Her hands
trembled, but it was obvious she had some of her armor back on. “I don’t
remember much, but I wasn’t physically harmed. I don’t see what this has to do
with anything. My parents said they were low-level criminals who got lucky. I
think they would know if this was some kind of organized crime.”
He couldn’t tell them they also suspected the Kirkallan company had something to do with The Chateau.
They’d discussed this. There was almost no way Edward knew enough about the
business to know what it was built on. So they had decided it might be
interesting to see what happened if Ollie let it slip he’d heard the name of
the organization. The wedding was in a week. The team wanted to shake things up
and see what the fallout was. Something was happening at that wedding. A