Page 67 of Bloody Kingdom

Duke pauses. “Shouldn’t we wait for the cleanup team? I don’t want someone to accidentally come across this.”

“No.”

He runs up beside me and clamps his hand down on my shoulder in an attempt to stop me, but I violently shrug him off. “What’s going on?”

I shove the picture into his hand wordlessly.

It takes him a second to figure it out but when he does, he curses harshly. “Fuck! Okay, let’s go.”

“I don’t give a fuck if someone finds this mess, I need to get her out of the city. Tonight, Duke. Start making preparations. Make sure the pilot is on standby and the jet is fueled enough to get us out of the country.” I bark orders at him. I’d planned to flee to Europe alone, but now, it’s not safe for me to leave her here. My enemies know about her.

I shift restlesslyin my seat again, counting each mile in my head until we reach the estate in my head. Who are they? Why are they coming after me now?

If they were a true enemy of mine, I would have disposed of them a long time ago. I’m not reckless enough to allow the people who wish me dead to walk away breathing. I usually take care of them on the spot, it’s how I’ve lived this long at the top of the food chain. If someone challenges me, I quickly remind them why I’m in charge. This also acts as a deterrent for those who also have the ill-advised idea to take me on.

The shrill sound of Duke’s phone fills the tense air of the vehicle.

“Now isn’t a good time, Rory,” Duke answers the phone, the stress he feels evident in his tone.

“I don’t care. Laurent needs to hear this,” Rory’s voice comes through the speakers of the car.

I sit like a piece of stone, waiting for more bad news to come from her mouth.

“You’re on Bluetooth, he can hear you,” Duke tells the hacker.

“I did some digging like we talked about. I’ve basically been awake for forty-eight hours searching through this information. Each company I found that was connected to the plane just led me to a different shell company. Whoever these people are, they’re going to great extremes to keep their name off the public records.”

The annoyed growl that escapes me has Duke side-eyeing me with worry. “Get to the fucking point, Rory!”

“The point is, I finally found a name,” Rory announces. “I had to search through many companies and a million different documents. It took me in circles for days, but then I saw a name on a form that was filled out literally over a hundred years ago. It was filed with the city clerk in London to start a new business. I’ll save you all the boring details, but I followed the name and company all the way back to today and get this… It’s the same company that has been trying to buy Blackwood Technologies for thirty years. Just earlier this year, they made an offer the board of directors debated accepting until Silas put the kibosh on itrealquick.”

I have no intention of selling Blackwood off. Even if I can’t run it myself anymore, it’s a proprietary I never plan on giving up. Technology will continue to grow and change as the years pass, and I want Blackwood to spearhead those advancements.

“Laurent, do you recognize the name Gideon Rolfe?” The name washes over me like a bucket of ice water, fear chilling me to the bone as the pieces that had been missing snap into place. “His name isn’t on the company documents anymore andhell, the company name isn’t the same anymore either. It’s changed multiple times over the years as bigger organizations acquired it, but his name was on the original document one hundred and twenty years ago. He’s dead. But maybe you know someone else with the Rolfe name? Someone in his family tree could be coming after you?” Rory theorizes.

No, it’s not a descendant of Gideon.

I haven’t thought of that man in a very long time, our business was finished a long time ago, there was no reason for me to even consider him as a threat, but in hindsight, it appears I shouldn’t have been so lenient with his life.

Duke, noticing the fury on my face, quickly tells Rory we’ll call her back and ends the call. “Who is he and how bad did you fuck him over, Silas?”

The anger gets the better of me, and I slam my fist into the dashboard repeatedly until there are sizable dents in it. It does little to soothe the raging inferno in me. “Gideon was an ally of mine for forty years, a very long time ago. He played a role similar to yours until he did something foolish, and I had to clean up his mess. I…dealt… with it accordingly, or I thought I did, and I never saw him again.”

“What happened?” Duke yells at me. “What did you do to him that has him coming after Quincey now?”

I rub my hands over my face as the memories I thought were long dead come rushing back. “He fell in love with a human and as humans do, she got sick. She was dying and he couldn’t live without her. So, he changed her to be like us, but Margret didn’t come back like herself.” She came back the same way Cecily did, all the humanity had been stripped from her. “She was uncontrollable, killed over a dozen people in her first day, twice that the second day. Gideon was too weak to do what needed to be done, so I did it. I tore her head from her body and then set it on fire while two of my enforcers held him back.” The pained screams that came from him as he watched echo in my head now just as loud as they did over a hundred years ago. “It wasn’t a law punishable by death then and I allowed him to walk away, but after that day, I put the law into effect. I never wanted what happened to Margret to happen to another, the world would never survive the bloodshed if it continued to happen.”

Gideon fled after that, and I never thought about him again. Until now.

While I was busy forgetting his existence, he’s been sulking in the shadows, biding his time until he was able to ruin my life as I did his. I was right, this whole thing is personal.

“I stole his sun from him and now he wants to take mine,” I say lowly to myself. “I took Margret from him, he plans on taking Quincey from me,”

“Fucking hell, Silas,” Duke mutters while his foot presses harder on the accelerator.

“I should have just killed him when I did her. It would have been a mercy.” He’s walked this earth alone for the last one hundred years because of me. At the time, I thought I was doing him a kindness by allowing him to live, now I’m learning my leniency may have done more harm than good.

A loud alarm blares through Duke’s phone making him swerve on the road as he dives for it. “Shit! Something’s happening at the house, all of the security sensors have been tripped.” He puts the phone to his ear and tries to call someone, who, I’m not sure, I’m too distracted by thoughts of Quincey.

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