Page 78 of His Lair
“I mean, I came up to check on her, and she’s not here. There are, however, three of your guys unconscious on the floor,” Emmanuel says.
He went up to my mother’s room.I had three men stationed in the hall outside her door. What the fuck happened?
“Fuck. Where’s Lailani?” I ask myself more than anyone else. “I’ll call you back.” I hang up and dial Lailani’s number.
“Hello?” she answers, and I feel myself release the breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Thank fuck you’re okay.” I sigh into the phone.
“Why wouldn’t I be? What’s going on?” she asks.
“Where are you?” I say, instead of answering.
“In your apartment. I’m about to head out, though. You need something?”
“No,” I tell her. “I gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.” Jumping up from my chair, I text Emmanuel to let him know I’m headed to my mother’s suite.
When I step out into the hall, the last person I expect to see is Lailani. Talking to E.
“Hey, what are you doing here?” I wrap my arm around her back and pull her body against mine, while pressing a kiss to the side of her forehead.
“I came to check on your mother, but found this instead.” Lailani waves her hand at the door to my mother’s room. Peering inside, I spot the three guys I had stationed on this floor, all laid out unconscious. “I… ah… These guys were fine ten minutes ago.”
“How do you know that?” I ask her.
“Well, after I logged into your guest registry, I might have hacked your security system to see what was on this floor,” Lailani tells me. “Sorry.”
I don’t even know what to say to that. “You could have just asked for access. You don’t have to hack into anything.”
“It wasn’t hard.” She rolls her eyes. “Which we are going to fix by the way.”
“What the fuck happened here?” I step into the room. There doesn’t appear to be any obvious signs of a struggle.
“Have you tried to call her?” Emmanuel asks me. “Your mother?”
Fuck. That would be the first thing I would have done, except I didn’t. I heard my mother wasn’t where she was supposed to be and my first thought was about Lailani and if she was safe.
“Doing it now.” I pull out my phone and call my mother’s number. It rings, both in my ear and from the other room.
I follow the sound and find the phone on the floor in the bedroom. I bend over and pick it up.
“Fuck,” I curse as I log into the CCTV system and flick to the footage of this floor. “E, call Louie, tell him to lock the place down. I want everyone out looking for my mother.”
“I’ll find her,” Lailani says.
I look over to her. “Stay here… please.” I don’t know why, but I really need to have her in my line-of-sight right now. I cannot lose her.
Lailani nods, and Emmanuel walks out of the room with his phone pressed against his ear. After a few beats, she comes and stands next to me, watching the footage on my screen. I click fast-forward and we watch as all three of my men fall to the ground like they just fucking passed out.
“Huh,” Lailani says.
“What ishuh?” I ask her.
“I’ve done this before,” she tells me. “They were hit with darts. Puts you to sleep for hours. Rewind it and watch their legs.”
Sure enough, when I look back at the video, I can see them each take a dart to the thigh.
“They’ll wake up,” Lailani says.
