Page 17 of The Forsaken Heir
“Fair enough. Good night, Dad. I love you.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled. “I love you too, son. Good night.”
Exhausted, I dropped my briefcase in my office, then headed to my quarters. All I truly wanted was to go to bed. I was still not fully recovered from my trip, and combined with the drama ofthe council meeting the night before and talking with my father, I was ready to crash.
Silence washed across the massive building I called home as I walked the halls. Silence, but for what sounded like a muffled conversation. In the hallway leading to my room, I could pick out a couple of voices. Too quiet for me to make out the words or whether they were male or female.
Perhaps the staff were changing my sheets. It was incredibly late for such a task, but I couldn’t imagine who else might be in there.
As I opened the door, a strange new scent assaulted my nose. It was both foreign and familiar. Awolf?
Before I’d made it two steps into the room, a strange and confusing tableau presented itself to me. What I was seeing was so incomprehensible that I froze where I stood. Vincent and Rasp were in my room, for some ungodly reason. Vince was on his knees, his hands full of rope, tying knots. Not an entirely unheard- of situation. He had a thing about puzzles and knots, but what didn’t make any sense was the fact that he was tying a woman to a chair. A woman I’d never seen in my life. A woman who, by her scent, was a wolf.
Rasp straightened when he noticed me entering, a self-satisfied smile on his face. He looked like he’d returned home from school with a report card that declared he’d made the honor roll.
My eyes darted from my friends to the woman, taking her in. She looked a bit frazzled. Her hair was a mess, and her jeans were stained with dirt and grass. But what trulycaught my attention were her eyes. Bright green, almost like shards of jade. When she looked at me, the fear in her eyes was real, but beneath it was something else. A barely hidden fire. She was afraid, but notterrified. Vince’s ropes had bit into her soft skin, accentuating certain areas. My gaze tracked over her, and my breath caught in my throat. She was curvaceous and sexy, and her face made my chest ache with longing. Gods, she was beautiful. No, she was stunning. Something stirred within me, but I tamped it down, too concerned with what was going on to explore it any further.
Pointing a trembling finger at the woman, I glared at my two best friends.
“What the fuckis this?” I asked, my voice barely above a whisper.
Rasp chuckled in delight. “We helped, bro.”
“Yeah,” Vince said awkwardly. “We, uh, helped.”
Taking a couple staggering steps into my room, I grabbed the door and slammed it shut. The captive woman flinched at thebang.
“Helped with what?” I asked, heat rising inside me.
“Dude,” Rasp said with a smile. “This is Bastien Laurent’s sister.”
“She’s the oldest,” Vincent explained.
“Right,” Rasp said, still grinning ear to ear. “He’s the heir to the family, but he’s not the firstborn.Sheis.”
I wouldn’t have been more shocked had I walked in to find Rasp having sex with a donkey on my bed. The ground seemed to give way beneath me as the true scope of what they’d done sank in.
Pushing my hair out of my face, I glared at my two friends, then shot a quick glance at the woman again. My God. This was Brielle Laurent? The eldest daughter who’d been missing foryears from her family and public life? Her location and what had happened to her were a closely guarded secret. Why on earth had these two thought kidnapping her would do anything good?
“You kidnapped this woman?” I asked, circling the three.
Rasp, sensing my displeasure, was rapidly losing his smile.
“Uh…yeah,” he said.
“I found her,” Vincent said, pressing his thumb into his chest.
“Oh yeah!” Rasp said, his smile regaining some of its former brilliance. “He did a bunch of research last night. I don’t know how he did it, but our boy here was able to find where she was whennobodyelse knew.”
I turned my glare on Vincent. “You found her? What the hell does that mean? How did you find her? She’s been missing for over ten years.”
Vincent grinned at me, obviously pleased with himself. “I hacked some of the Laurent accounts. Found some strange wire transfers to a local bank account. Thought that was weird. So I checked on it and found an apartment with Laurent LLC as the leaseholder. Then I hacked the security cameras in the area and found a lady entering that looked sort of like the old pictures of Brielle Laurent. Easy enough.”
Finally unable to keep my temper leashed any longer, I lunged at Rasp, holding my hands out at my sides.
“What have you done? Do you have any idea what this will cause?” I shouted, unable to keep my voice steady.
Rasp flinched back in surprise. “Hey, man, this is good. We have their eldest daughter. We found her living in some humanapartment. It was obvious she’d been kidnapped. Probably stolen by, like, sex traffickers or something. Wesavedher, bro. Now we can get her back to her family and stop all the animosity and shit.”
