Twenty Eight
E DISON
“And I’m telling you that if I had made the order to bomb your ports, Cheng, then there would be nothing left.”
Frustration filled me as I gripped the phone held up to my ear even more tightly.
My lazy morning in bed with my wife had been interrupted by a very pissed off phone call from the Chinese blaming me for a series of explosions that had taken place in the early hours and that, apparently, the explosives in question belonged to the Keane clan.
It had been a week and a half since the charity gala and things had been quiet up until this morning and now I knew why.
Apparently, whoever had been fucking with me for the past few months had now moved on to trying to frame me for shit that neither I, nor my men had done.
“What else am I supposed to think, Keane?” Jifein Cheng’s voice was tight as she spoke on the other end of the line. “Those explosives paired with the bodies of one of your men are all telling me that you are full of shit. I just can’t quite figure out what your fucking plan was when half of the shit that was exploded was your own product.”
My teeth gritted together at that. Not only had we lost a shipment by land a few months ago in that first ambush, but now we’d lost yet another one that had come in by water.
I hadn’t wanted to loop anyone other than Shuuhei Saito in on my suspicions that someone in the five families was trying to sow discord and start a war—the only conclusion I could come to as to why anyone would play a fucking game like this—but now I was pretty sure I was going to have to at least fill the Chinese in or else risk retribution.
I still didn’t even know who the fuck was doing it.
I had four suspects in mind—three now that the Chinese were being targeted as well.
My first suspect was the Russians. Vladimir Volkov wasn’t usually one to engage much with the five families, but I always had a hard time reading the man. The Russians had yet to be involved in any of this and that was suspicious in and of itself.
I wasn’t sure what sort of motive he had yet, but I had Collum on it whenever he wasn’t escorting Perrie to school.
Next was the Italians. I’d heard through the grapevine that Amante was still seething over my nuptials with Perrie, so it wouldn’t be that surprising if the famously impulsive man was trying to fuck with my business to get back at me.
Lastly, and unfortunately most likely, I suspected that Liam and the rest of the branch heads of Keane family members were behind this. It made sense that they would try it.
After all, they’d been trying to undermine my leadership for two years.
But they couldn’t be doing it alone. The first thing I’d done upon taking over was snip the reins of their power within the family.
Which meant that one of my first two suspects had to be helping them.
“I’m going to send you some files. When I tell you that these are for your eyes only, I fucking mean it, Cheng. If I find that you have anything to do with any of this, I will make sure to wipe you and your people from the face of this city for the foreseeable future.”
There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line and I could almost hear gears grinding in the woman’s head as she tried to decide whether to trust me or not.
“Fine. But these better be good.”
“I guarantee they are probably the most interesting thing you’ll see all year.”
There was a snort on the other end of the line. “I don’t know, Keane, this season of the Bachelor has had me on the edge of my seat.”
There was another long silence before the woman sighed. “You really have no sense of humor, do you? I feel bad for your wife.”
“Just read the damn files once you get them and call me back. They’ll self delete and fry whatever you read it on, so I suggest maybe finding an old laptop to view them.”
“Fine.”
We hung up and my next call was to my IT guy who spent most of his time in his little basement office. He was on the younger side, but I’d never met anyone as good with computers as he was.
“Finneas. I need you to send what we’ve gathered about the incidents over to Jifein Cheng.”
“You want me to send that stuff over to the Chinese, boss?” came the younger man’s usual nervous cadence whenever he spoke to me on the phone.
The sounds of fake gunshots and explosions filled the speaker of the phone and I held it away from my ear with a frown. “Are you playing video games during your work hours?”
The sound cut off abruptly. “N-no absolutely not, sir. I would never. I was just… uh…”
He apparently couldn’t think of a good enough excuse because he changed the subject. “Are you sure you want me to send that over, sir? You told me it was of the utmost importance that we keep it all safe.”
His words echoed my own worries about looping the Chinese in, but if I didn’t send it I knew that I would have Jifein’s men at my doorstep within twenty-four hours and the war that I was desperately trying to avoid would be here.
“Yes. Send it with one of those bomb things you keep telling me about.” I couldn’t pretend to even understand how it worked, but he’d shown it to me about six months ago and it had fried my laptop in less than sixty seconds.
“My wipers? Do they know that it will kill whatever they are viewing the files on after the timer is up?”
“They do.”
“Oh, well, all right then that’s good. Just send me the address of who you want me to send it to and I’ll get that right over to them.”
“Thank you,” I said with a sigh, my shoulders releasing the tension that I hadn’t even realized had been gathering ever since my phone rang twenty minutes ago. “Also: no more video games on the clock.”
“Yes, boss!” Finneas squeaked before the line clicked off, leaving me with a nasty headache and silence.
“Rhodes!” I called, forgetting for a moment that it was his day to take Perrie to school.
One glance at the clock told me that she must be in her photography class right about now and I was once again regretting that our morning in bed couldn’t have ended with me in between her legs while I watched her wrap her plump little lips around Rhodes’ cock again.
It had become a favorite position of mine ever since we came together that night in the hotel and I was starting to wish that I really was some random bird farmer somewhere far away with nothing better to do than be with my pack.
Rubbing my temples to try and ward off the impending migraine, I called the next person on my mental list. “Oona.”
The housekeeper had been hovering worriedly all morning ever since she brought me news of the explosions, so it didn’t surprise me when she stepped through the doors of my study within seconds. “Yes, Master Edison?”
“I need you to get me a report on what each of the older members have been up to in the past forty-eight hours. Do it your usual way.”
Oona, while being a fine housekeeper and a permanent fixture in the Keane Mansion for over thirty years, was also well versed in many other things. Namely espionage.
The employees who worked in the other households were mostly hand picked by her without the branch heads even knowing about it.
“Of course, anything I should be looking for in particular?”
“Strange phone calls, meetings, and the usual indicators of plans going on behind the scenes. I need to know if they’ve had any contact with the other four families too.”
I knew that there was legitimate business happening between my people and those of the other families, but there had to be something off. A thread I could pull to unravel all of the bullshit and figure out just who was fucking with me.
Oona nodded, folding her hands in front of her as she seemed to be making a mental checklist. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
“Thank you.” I slumped into my chair and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to sort through all of the new information I’d learned, categorizing it and turning it over in my head like a Rubik’s cube that I couldn’t make match up.
“Sir?” Oona’s voice cut through my mental puzzlement and I realized she hadn’t left yet.
Opening my eyes, I found her standing just on the other side of my desk.
“I know it isn’t my place, but may I offer some advice?”
Oona was never one to overstep her boundaries, but seeing as she’d been the one to take care of me in place of my mother, I never minded. “You know you can.”
“Your father, may he rest in peace, lost a lot of his power during his time as the head of the Keane clan. It was something your grandfather warned him against, but after the war, in order to rebuild the family, he made many concessions to the heads of the branch families allowing them to grow in power.”
“I know that,” I told her with a frown. “What’s your point?”
Oona’s lips twisted, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to say her next words. “You have at least one young man from each of the branch families who is loyal to you. Wouldn’t it make sense to push for them to take over their families seeing as the youngest branch head is pushing sixty-five?”
“How am I supposed to do that without them revolting?”
It was what I’d been fighting against for the past two years and she was practically telling me to give in to it.
“Sometimes,” she said mysteriously. “You have to engage in smaller battles in order to avoid an all-out war. This family is at a turning point, Master Edison, and I worry for you and Rhodes and Perrie if you don’t acknowledge that something needs to finally happen in order for the Keane clan to survive to create another generation.”
Her words echoed my own nightmares that I’d been having since the night of the college party Perrie ended up at.
By not acting, I was putting her in more danger and I couldn’t allow my omega to be hurt. It went against the very grain of my instincts.
“Just a thought, sir,” Oona hurried to say, reaching across the desk to put a warm, dry hand over mine. “But you know that I will be here to support you for whatever you choose.”
With that she turned and left me to my thoughts.
If I was going to challenge the authority of the older generation, I would need to put contingency plans in place to keep Perrie safe. If anything happened to me, her life would be forfeit—especially if she was pregnant with my child like I hoped she would be after her first heat.
My musing was cut short by the sound of my cell phone ringing.
Glancing at the caller ID, I saw Rhodes’ sleeping face popping up on the screen. Perrie must have gotten a hold of my phone at some point and changed his contact picture.
A smile was already pulling up on my lips as I hit the green answer button and held the phone up to my ear. “Hey, Rho, you would not believe the fucking morning I’ve had. Did you dip out of her class for a second? Was Perrie trying to get you to pose for her again?”
I fully expected the other alpha to make a snarky comment about him not being interested in nude modeling, but instead I was only greeted by a shaky breath. “Edison.”
His tone had me sitting up stock-straight. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know—” There was a pause as I heard someone ask him a muffled question. “No, you need to take her to St. Stephen’s memorial where her oncologist is. I don’t care if it’s further away.”
Then the sound of a siren filled my ears.
I was already standing up, my desk chair falling backwards as I tried and failed to yank my jacket free. “What the fuck is happening, Rhodes?”
“I don’t know, one second she was fine and then the next there was blood everywhere!” Rhodes had never been prone to panic before, but now as I listened to him babble, I could hear tears in the man’s voice.
“You’re going to St. Stephens?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ll be there in twenty.”
“Hurry, Edison.”
I didn’t need to be told twice as I hung up the phone.
“Oona!” I barked, hoping the woman hadn’t gotten far from my office. “I need my car pulled up.”