Page 69 of Midnight Salvation

Dad’s dark glare landed on me the moment I arrived in the Council chamber. I hadn’t seen him since the day I took his company from him. Uncle Bart was on the next flight out of London heading to Greece later that day. I doubted he even had time to pack his toothbrush in his haste to leave.

“I didn’t think you’d have the nerve to attend today,” Dad hissed across the table from his normal perch.

I took the seat allocated to me and deliberately tipped it back to search under it, before sitting down. His dark gaze watched me.

“You can’t be too careful,” I said. “There are enemies everywhere.”

He scowled, his teeth bared like an animal ready to strike. “There certainly is.”

I deliberately ignored his snide comment. “Have we heard from Aaron or Oliver?” I asked. “There has been no signal from their trackers. My guys discovered that Cynthia has disappeared as well. Her sister went missing a few months ago. Do you think this is all linked?”

My expression was completely neutral as I stared at him.

“You didn’t think to discuss this with me before you stole my company?” he grated out. Dad was starting to lose his temper and was garnering a lot of attention from interested parties around the table.

My best asshole grin appeared and I sat back in my chair. “You always told me that you wanted a son in your image, Dad. It was you that told me you took Grandpa’s company from him. I thought you’d be proud.”

Hugh laughed. “He’s right, Matteus. You always said you were disappointed in your sons as they weren’t cutthroat like you.”

“Fuck off,” Dad growled. “The impudent little bastard stole my company from me and has the audacity to sit there and grin about it.”

My grin widened and I bounced my eyebrows. “This is a proud moment for Dad, he just refuses to acknowledge it.”

I could almost feel the hatred emanating out of his eyes from his narrowed glare. Some of the other Council members laughed.

“Looks like you taught him well,” Herbert said. “Like father, like son. I’m sure you have plenty of other businesses to stick your fingers in.”

Yeah, but they didn’t realise I had drained those too. What Dad had left was severely hampered. All his files in cloud storage had been encrypted by Jordan and Caleb and were no longer accessible without the translation key. Dad had very few moves left on this board, and he knew it.

I moved my attention to the remainder of the table as the rest of the Council sat. Jordan was last in as usual since he was always briefing the security guys. He had popped in here earlier when he arrived for their briefing to scan the room for devices.

Xavier chatted away to his dad like nothing had changed, telling him about Cassandra’s latest scan. That was the only thing I had ever envied about my friend’s life—his relationship with his dad. They had an equal business partnership when Dad had always kept me at arm’s length, lording his success over my head.

“That’s everyone in,” Jordan said. “I’ll get security to lock the doors.” He sat down and placed his drink flask on the table and opened his folder to scan the notes for the meeting.

“We have a lot of business to attend to, and I have another meeting scheduled,” Dad replied. He paused and looked around the room. “Firstly, I would like to give my condolences to our colleague and friend Dylan and to my son Ash.”

I froze at his words, knowing instinctively that he was setting a trap for me. My gaze never once left the file sitting in front of me.

“Nicole was abducted and a ransom demanded. Although Ash refused to pay, Dylan and I managed to send the funds for her release but all we received was a photograph of her body.”

All eyes turned in accusation to me. I slowly raised my attention to Dad. “Be fair, Dad. There is not a man in this room who would pay five million pounds in ransom for a woman they had never even held hands with. It would be different if she had been my wife, but we barely knew each other.” I turned to Dylan. “I am truly sorry to hear of your loss. This is the first I had been notified of it.”

All eyes swung to Dad and he knew that no one would have paid that sort of money in my shoes. Most of the men in this room would have put up one million to an assassin to get rid of the problem and save themselves four.

His jaw tightened as he expected more people to side with him, but this was a cutthroat bunch who only ever cared for the bottom line of a spreadsheet. Marriages were made between families and associated with power with emotions rarely involved.

“Thank you,” Dylan replied stiffly. “She was a good daughter and would have made you a proud husband.”

I nodded once in acknowledgement. “I know she would have.”

“The next point of business,” Hugh interrupted with a filthy look to Dad. “Refers to jewellery consignments going missing again. This is starting to be a frequent problem that needs to be addressed. A shipment went missing a few months ago, now another has disappeared.”

“This is the first I’ve heard of more than one going missing,” Jordan replied in a dangerous voice. “But then again, I only found out about the last one because you needed me to retrieve it.” He lifted his flask to open it.

“And did you?” Hugh demanded and Jordan lifted his eyebrows in question. “Retrieve it?”

I took the gum out of my pocket that Jordan gave me earlier and popped it in my mouth and slowly started to chew. Xavier did the same.

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