Chapter 7
CHAPTER SEVEN
NELL
As he led me through the side entrance of the main Blackwood estate, he chattered with a frenetic energy that reminded me of an atomic model. He was young, soft in the face, but the golden flecks in his eyes were just as sharp.
"So, it’s not just about stealing the money?" Ivar asked, tilting his head as we moved through a hallway lined with portraits that looked like they belonged in the Louvre.
The frames alone were museum quality: heavy gilt and dark wood.
The lineage clearly depicted other Blackwood men through the ages.
They had the same bone structure, the same quality of contained authority in the set of the jaw and the directness of the gaze, rendered in oil paint by artists who had clearly understood they were documenting something that was expected to last. Dark hair going silver at the temples in the older portraits.
Eyes that held the amber even in paint. One man in what appeared to be Viking-era dress, his hand on the head of a wolf that sat at his knee like a kept animal and looked at the painter as if it was deciding if they would be a snack.
And then the other lineage, running alongside the Blackwood portraits with equal weight and equal frame size.
Chinese men and women in silk and formal dress.
A woman in a Qing Dynasty court robe. A man in a Nationalist-era military uniform.
A couple from what looked like the 1940s; he in a Western suit, she in a qipao.
"No," I answered Ivar. "A hostile takeover is an art form. You don't just take the assets; you dismantle the will of the board. You squeeze their personal liabilities until they have to choose between their company and their yachts. It's a structural erasure."
Ivar’s eyes lit up. "Gunnar usually just breaks things until they stop working. You dissolve them. That's way cooler."
Behind us, Fenrir Blackwood walked in a silence that was more unnerving than any growl.
I felt his gaze on the back of my neck; heavy, ancient, deciding, like the painting of the wolf.
I kept my chin up, projecting the Odhiambo pride my grandmother had hammered into me.
I wanted him to see a peer, not a prisoner.
I wanted him to see the CEO I was about to become now that my job here was done.
We turned a corner into a kitchen that felt jarringly human. It was massive, smelling of ginger, garlic, and expensive olive oil. At the professional-grade stove stood a small Asian woman, her movements fluid.
Fenrir walked straight to her. His large, scarred hand cupped the back of her head as he pulled her into a deep, lingering kiss. I looked away, feeling like an intruder on something too raw for a boardroom.
Ivar rolled his eyes, a classic teenage gesture that momentarily broke the tension. He reached into the fridge, pulled out two juice boxes, and handed one to me with a wink. "My parents are gross. You get used to it."
When they finally broke apart, Mrs. Blackwood turned her gaze on me. It wasn't the look of a curious hostess; it was the look of a jeweler examining a stone for flaws. She shared a long, silent look with Fenrir. It was the kind of telepathy that only comes from decades of shared blood and secrets.
"This is Addie’s best friend, Nell," Ivar announced, oblivious to the weight of the silence. "She found out about the wolves, so she’s been staying at Magnus’s cabin."
The way Magnus’s mother looked at me changed. It went from curiosity to something darker—concern. Or perhaps pity. I felt like a lamb that had accidentally walked into the wolves' Sunday dinner and started critiquing the silverware.
"Hello, Nell. I'm Mei Ling."
"Hi." I held up my hand, five fingers splayed. To show her I had no weapon, perhaps.
"You must be hungry," Mei Ling said, her voice like silk over steel. "Sit. I will feed you."
Before I could answer, the back door swung open. A man built like a linebacker and wearing a grin that was far too charming to be safe sauntered in. He leaned against the counter, his eyes raking over me with an appreciation that was loud and unmistakable.
"Gunnar, shoes," said Mei Ling.
Gunnar kicked off expensive sneakers that held not a speck of dirt. "It's the girl who fainted. You're prettier with your eyes open."
I was more upset that he remembered me fainting than the lame come on.
I opened my mouth to explain it was the viscera and not the wolves that had made me weak-kneed, but the room was flooded with more Blackwoods.
Addie rushed in, her face pale with relief when she saw me.
She threw her arms around me. For a second, we were just two girls on my sofa drinking wine out of coffee mugs again.
"Nell! Thank God," she breathed, pulling back to scan me for injuries. "I've been going crazy. Magnus wouldn't tell me anything."
My knees did the thing they had done in the park; that treacherous loosening, weakness of a body that had been holding itself together on adrenaline and stubbornness and had just encountered something safe enough to approve of letting go.
It finally felt real. All of it. The murder.
The kidnapping. The blackmail. The wolves.
Addie was a wolf.
Still, I gripped her arms. Breathed through it and told myself I was fine. Which I was. Mostly.
Vidar stood behind her, his expression like a thundercloud.
He looked at me with a cold, simmering resentment that made my stomach flip.
We hadn't gotten along at our first meeting.
Or our second. Our third was going just as well.
I'd accused him of being an abusive husband.
I stood by that statement. Case in point, he clearly didn't want me around my best friend.
And then... the air pressure in the room changed.
Magnus stepped across the threshold. He was in a tailored suit which was unfair to womankind. When his gaze landed on me, the temperature in the kitchen rose ten degrees.
"What are you doing in here?" he asked, his voice a low, dangerous rumble.
"I invited her to lunch," Ivar said, popping the straw into his juice box.
"I told you to stay at the cabin, Ms. Odhiambo," Magnus said, ignoring his brother. He stepped toward me, his presence so massive it felt like he was sucking the oxygen out of the room.
Addie stayed by my side. I noted her husband reached for her, but she threaded her arm through mine. That did not win Vidar to my side. I decided to focus on the Blackwood in front of me.
"I did what you asked. And then I got bored."
"What did he ask you to do?" asked Addie.
"She dismantled the Volki," Magnus said.
"What do you mean, dismantled?" Addie asked.
"She did a hostile takeover," Ivar grinned and went back to sipping his apple juice box.
"Volkov Industrial is gone." Magnus explained. "Liquidated. The Volki board is dissolved; their holding companies are hitting default notices. Their Alpha was at the council table when every alert hit his phone simultaneously."
I shrugged. "That's what you said you wanted me to do."
"In under six hours."
"Three hours."
Fenrir's eyes moved to me with a slow, deliberate attention that felt nothing like the suspicious assessment from the garden. This was something else. The look of a man recalibrating.
Gunnar let out a low whistle. "You bankrupted the Russians. That's hot."
"Structurally erased them," Ivar corrected, slurping the dregs of his juice box.
Addie looked at me with the pride of a woman who had always known what her friend was capable of and was now watching the rest of the world catch up.
"That's extraordinary," Mei Ling said, still regarding me with those jeweler's eyes. Whatever flaw she'd been looking for, she appeared to have stopped searching. She looked at Fenrir. Once again, something passed between them.
Vidar said nothing. But his expression had shifted from thundercloud to something more reluctant and considerably more dangerous: respect he didn't want to give.
"My work here is done," I said. "I held up my end. I want the company."
"The company is yours," Magnus said.
Addie's eyebrows went up. "Company? What company? Sterling?"
"Odhiambo the storm-and-heat scent, the thing that had been in my lungs since I woke up in his cabin.
"They don't know your name yet. But they know someone inside Sterling's system did this.
It won't take them long to find the thread, and when they do, it leads directly to you. "
"So you're telling me that I did exactly what you asked, I did it better than you expected, and my reward is that I'm still a prisoner."
"Your reward," Magnus said, "is that you're alive. And the only way that remains true is if you stay inside Blackwood protection until this is resolved."