Page 130 of The Forsaken Heir
“See, that’s the thing,” Carlisle drawled, wholly unconcerned. “I actuallydon’twork for you. I work for Bastien Laurent. You’re just the little brother who’s never done much but catch himself a cute piece of ass he’s gonna marry in a week or so. Therealpower of the family gets to order me around. Not some limp dick little rich boy.”
This is not good.Not good at all.
The other men had moved quietly until they surrounded the car, watching us with a strange combination of malevolence and boredom.
“Howdareyou talk to me like that? I’ll?—”
“You ain’t gonna do nothing,” Carlisle said lazily. “My real boss told us to be on the lookout for anything weird. And this right here? Weird as fuck.” He shrugged. “Listen. Why don’t you and your boy here hop on out and tell your friends to hop on out of their vehicle, and we’ll get this all sorted out.”
“Mr. Bouchard…uh, Carlisle, can’t we talk about this?” Freddy asked, and that sentence alone let me know we were fucked. He’d given away all his power, had cowed down to the other man. Freddy Laurent was honorable, brave, and kind, but he was not a good liar or actor.
“We will talk about it,” Carlisle said with a shit-eating grin. “When you get out of the car. Let’s go,” he said, and actually opened Freddy’s door. “Hop on out boys.”
Sweat coated my palms as I glanced sideways at Freddy. His eyes were wide with fear.
Men moved forward quickly. I did my best to jerk my hat down low on my forehead to try and cover my face as I stepped out. One of the security guards nudged me toward the front of the car, near the headlights. Freddy stepped out and walked over to join us.
“What you all need to do,” Freddy said, trying to raise his voice to a commanding tone, “is let us go. Do you have any idea what you’re doing?”
Ignoring him, Carlisle reached forward and rubbed the patch on Freddy’s coveralls.
“Again, Mr. Laurent, why are you and three randos out here at midnight?”
“Itoldyou,” Freddy said through gritted teeth. “I’m, uh, learning about the family businesses.”
“Sure, sure,” Carlisle said, nodding along as though listening to a boring campfire tale. “How about you tell us the truth? You can do that, can’t you?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Freddy shouted, and now he was actually angry. More pissed than scared. “I am telling the truth.”
“Let’s do this,” Carlisle said and lifted his sunglasses again, eyeing Freddy with cold, gray eyes. “We’ll tell a little tale, and then you can tell me what you think. Cool?”
Freddy shook his head, obviously confused. “What?”
“What would you do if I told you, that about ninety minutes ago, averyhigh-profile prisoner escaped from the Laurent mansion?”
Nicolas and Julian stiffened beside me, and my heart thundered in my chest.Fuck.
“Not only that,” Carlisle said, “but a certainlittle brotherand a couple of healers also went missing around the same time. Ain’t that weird?”
“Wait,” Freddy managed, his voice dangerously high-pitched with fear. “Are, uh, are you saying Prince Aurelius has escaped?” He let out an off-kilter laugh. “You think I helped him get out? That’s…well, that’s crazy.”
Carlisle nodded, grinning along with Freddy. “It is. Itsureis. Yet”—he threw an arm around Freddy’s shoulders. “I get a call from the gate guard of this facility telling me Freddy Laurent has just rolled up with two other guys to dump some trash. What’s strange, Mr. Laurent, isn’t that you’re here.” Carlisle shrugged.“Rich people doing rich people shit isn’t my problem. Maybe you like to get your hands dirty doing thelittle peoplework and then go home to jerk off thinking about what agood, hard workeryou are. I don’t give a fuck about that. What Idogive a fuck about, is the fact that when you entered the gates here, there were three of you. Now, there are four.”
Carlisle’s grin stayed glued to his face, but there was no mirth there, only predatory tension. His eyes were cold and locked in, like a falcon eyeballing a rat, swooping in for a kill.
“Who’s this big motherfucker over here?” Carlisle asked, pointing at me. “Of the four of you, he sticks out like a sore thumb, don’t he?”
“You need to listen to me,” Freddy said, his face gleaming in the headlights from the sweat pouring down his cheeks. “I am Frederique Laurent, and I’m commanding you to?—”
Carlisle lunged forward and slapped the hat from my head. A ripple of understanding went through the group of security guards as they all recognized my face.
“Well, well, well,” Carlisle said, smiling so wide it looked like his head might split apart. “Caught us a big fish, didn’t we boys?” He leaned close to me, eyeing me through his sunglasses. “Or should I say a bigdragon?”
Those stupid fucking sunglasses went flying off the man’s face. I slammed my fist into the underside of his jaw. His teeth clacked together, and a single tooth went pinwheeling out of his mouth, along with a thin stream of blood.
He tilted over and hit the ground. There was a single moment of suspended disbelief on everyone’s faces as the security team and my companions stared down at Carlisle’s inert, snoring, andunconscious form, blood oozing from the corner of his mouth. The moment hung like that, balanced on the precipice of chaos for one second, then we tumbled over, crashing into a tumult of madness.
“Shit,” Freddy cried and shifted.
