22. Tristan
22
TRISTAN
We sit at the dining table silently. Tarquin at the head, Declan at the other side, and me in the middle of this ridiculous ten-seater table. It’s nearly eight o’clock. Dinner was called late today due to Tarquin and his mood. I glare at him, but he completely ignores me.
Declan stares between the two of us with an amused smirk, which just infuriates me further.
“What is your problem?” I suddenly snap at Tarquin.
Tarquin’s icy blue eyes lift slowly from his plate, fixing on me with that infuriating detachment. “I wasn’t aware I had one.”
“Bullshit,” I mutter, stabbing my fork into a piece of perfectly cooked beef with unnecessary force. “You’ve been pissed off since this morning.”
Declan leans back in his chair, swirling the red wine in his glass with obvious enjoyment of our tension, but he remains silent. Probably for the best.
Tarquin sets his cutlery down with precise movements. “Enough. This is not a topic for dinner conversation.”
“And yet she is the reason for this charming atmosphere,” I counter, refusing to back down.
The temperature in the room seems to drop several degrees. A muscle twitches in Tarquin’s jaw as he carefully dabs the corner of his mouth with a napkin. He pushes his plate away and gets up.
“No,” I say, doing the same and pointing my finger at him. “You do not get to walk away from this. Why are you so pissed off? Why did you throw her at me? What is going on with you?”
“Her purr!” he growls, still somehow managing to make it sound like a roar. “I want it. It’s the whole fucking reason she is here. “
“Oh, I see. And she hasn’t given it to you, and yet she gave it to me. Ever wonder why that is, Tarq?”
I see the second his front drops. Anger flashes in his eyes for all to see, and he backhands the plate and his wine glass off the table. It crashes to the floor, splattering red wine up the cream-painted wall like drops of blood.
Declan and I exchange a wary glance.
Once.
We’ve seen him get this way once.
It didn’t end well.
Declan clears his throat, ready to diffuse this situation instead of exacerbating it for once in his godamned life. “We have bigger things to worry about than her purring at whoever.”
“Oh?” I grit out as Tarquin tries and fails to calm himself.
“Yeah. I went snooping earlier. She had one dose of heat inducers in her bag.”
My blood runs cold as that catches Tarquin’s attention.
“Had?” I ask quietly.
“I took them. If it was her intention of illegally using them to trap us, she won’t get the chance.”
Silence falls. It’s uneasy and telling.
Until Tarquin says so quietly, I only just heard him. “Ranier.”
“What?” I ask. “What has he got to do with this?”
“She bought them for him. Not us. I bought her out from under him after I saw the video of them together. When I was there, she messaged him to ask if he wanted her during her heat.”
“Jesus,” I say, rubbing a hand over my face. “Shit just got serious. If she is caught here with those, or worse, us paying her while she’s on her heat, we are screwed.”
“No,” Declan points out. “ She is screwed. We will be fine.”
“So we’ll just throw her under the bus?” I growl.
“No,” Tarquin says. “We make sure she doesn’t take them, and if there is even a whiff of her heat, we take her home. End of story.”
“What if she already has?” I ask the question that is on all of our minds. “What if she had another dose?”
Declan shakes his head slowly. This is dodgy territory for him, and Tarquin and I are both fully aware not to make any sudden moves. “No, I don’t think so. They work pretty fast, it’s one of the reasons they are so dangerous.”
“That doesn’t mean she didn’t?—”
“She didn’t,” Tarquin says. “She got them for Rob. For the money it would earn her to give herself to him in that way.”
And there it is.
The money.
None of us says anything for a long time.
I break the silence first. “What do we really know about her?”
“A basic background check didn’t raise any red flags. She is squeaky clean,” Tarquin says quietly.
“That usually means someone has something to hide.”
He glares at me, and I’m taken aback by his lack of information gathering. For whatever reason, he didn’t dig into every second of this omega’s life and that in itself is a weird occurrence.
“Where are they now?” he asks instead, shifting his focus to Declan.
“In my drawer upstairs.”
“Bring them to me.”
Declan nods and gets up, disappearing out of the dining room.
“I need some air,” I mutter, and follow Declan. But where he takes the stairs, I head for the front door, scooping up the keys to my Bentley on my way out. Unlocking it, I get in and fire up the engine. Quietly, I set off, knowing my destination. Something isn’t adding up here, and I intend to find out what it is.
I set a course for Rob’s estate. We aren’t close, but we are friends enough that I can go there and ask him what the fuck he knows about this omega.
The drive to Rob’s estate gives me time to think, too much time. The road stretches before me, dark and winding through the countryside, and my thoughts are just as twisted. What is it about Synthia that’s got under all our skins? Under mine?
I can still hear her purr, feel the way she melted against me. God, that sound. No wonder Tarquin is losing his mind over it. But there’s more to this than just primal satisfaction. There’s something about her that doesn’t quite fit.
Rob’s estate comes into view, a sprawling Georgian mansion lit up against the night sky. I pull up outside the gates and slide down the window to push the buzzer.
“Yes?” a female voice comes through the intercom.
“I’m here to see Lord Ranier. It’s Tristan Brayfield.”
“Do you have an appointment?”
“No. Tell him it’s about Synthia Fuller.”
She hangs up. I don’t have long to wait until the iron gates swing open and I drive up to the stately home, pulling around the driveway to stop right outside the steps leading up to the door.
It opens as I get out, and Ranier is standing there with a whiskey in his hand. “Tristan.”
“Rob. Sorry about the drop-in so late.”
“You wanted to ask about Synthia Fuller?”
“Yeah, if you don’t mind, I have a few questions.”
He indicates that I should follow him as he steps back and leads me to his office. He sits and leans back in his chair, regarding me closely as I sit opposite him. “What do you want to know?”
“Anything you’ve got.”
“May I inquire why?”
I chew the inside of my lip and decide fuck it. Tarquin can kick my arse later if he wants to. “Tarquin hired her for a week. She is currently sleeping upstairs at the house.”
“A week?” Ranier raises his eyebrow. “From when?”
“Two days ago.”
He grimaces. “So that’s why the agency cancelled my weekly meeting with her.”
I shrug. “I don’t know about that. I’m going to be very blunt here. Did you arrange to hire her when she was in her heat?”
He narrows his eyes. “Why?”
“Look, I get it. But it’s important. Declan found something on her, and I need to know.”
“What did he find?”
“Heat inducers.”
“She told me her heat was six weeks away.”
“So you don’t think she got them for you? To bring her heat on early to get that payment early?” I lay it bare.
He raises an eyebrow. “If she did, she didn’t tell me. How much did Tarquin pay for a week?”
“A lot. But I want to know who she is. What have you got?”
He sighs. “Not much. She has no family to speak of. She ran away from home when she was sixteen. Nothing came up for her again until two years ago.”
“So seven years of blackspot?”
“Pretty much. I guess if she was on the run, she wanted to stay off the grid.”
Well, I guess that makes sense.
“Finances?”
“Quite well off by appearances. Nice townhouse on the outskirts of the city. Expensive clothes and shoes.”
“But?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t done a deep dive on her. I’m not that interested. She comes once a week to service my cock, she gives me a good time, purrs like a contented omega, giving me an ego boost and pride in being an alpha male who can satisfy an omega. I pay her, and she leaves.”
“So why did you want her during her heat?”
“You haven’t heard that purr.”
Oh, that’s where you are so wrong.
I don’t say anything to that. Still, none of this makes any sense unless she was desperate for the money. But it doesn’t sound like she is. Her missing years aren’t even that suspicious. She was a teenager. Tons of people drop off the face of the earth to reappear, newly invented and doing well for themselves. Look at me, for fuck’s sake.
“I suggest, if you have concerns, ask your guy to dig into her. I’m surprised Tarquin hasn’t already.”
Or has he, and he isn’t talking.
“That makes two of us,” I mutter. “Thanks, Rob. Sorry for barging in.”
He shrugs. “Nothing to it. If you decide to throw her out, send her my way with those inducers, yes?”
My stomach clenches at the predatory gaze in his eyes. “Sure,” I mumble and head out, slipping into my car and getting out of there as quickly as possible.
The entire drive back to the house, I’m lost in thought. Rob gave me nothing concrete, and yet I feel like I’m holding pieces of a puzzle that don’t quite fit together. Why would an omega who seems financially stable risk carrying heat inducers? And why is Tarquin, who investigates everything down to what brand of toothpaste people use, suddenly so incurious?
I pull up to our estate. The house looms dark and imposing against the night sky, only a few windows illuminated. I sit for a moment, hands still on the wheel, before finally getting out.
Inside, the house is quiet. Too quiet.
In the living room, I pour myself a whiskey and settle into one of the leather chairs. The amber liquid burns pleasantly down my throat as I pull out my phone. I hesitate for only a second before dialling.
“John? It’s Tristan Brayfield, head of the Brayfield Trust.”
“Oh, yes, Mr Brayfield. What can I do for you?”
“Sorry to be calling so late, but I need you to look into someone for me. Discreetly.” I pause, swirling my drink. “Synthia Fuller. Everything you can find. Especially her missing years between sixteen and twenty-three.”
“On it. Give me a few days.”
“Sooner rather than later, and there is a huge bonus in it for you,” I murmur and hang up.
I will find out what Tarquin is so adamant to leave under the rug and what Ms Fuller’s story really is.