Page 47 of Legally Mated
“There’s talent in the pack. We made good use of it.” I got out my legal pad and laid out my pens ready to hand. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eva doingthesame.
“I can see that,” Mutch said, but while I didn’t doubt the sentiment, the way he said it sounded slightly perfunctory, as if he was thinking of something else. I glanced over at Quin and Holland and they both wore the same wary expression that kept trying to creep over myownface.
“Shall we begin?” Eva said brightly. She smiled at each of us around the table as if none of the tension filling the air existed. “I know your medical expert is coming, but perhaps we can get the preliminaries out of the way, since they cover a wider variety of topics, and we’ll deal with the specifics of her specialty when she arrives?” She put a hand on Mutch’s arm. “You okay, UncleJesse?”
He nodded and glanced at us and that’s when I realized that the expression on his face wasn’t arrogance, but simply the way the lines of his face fell when he was distracted by something. He wasn’t someone I would have wanted to put on the stand in a trial, because the first impression he gave would have turned the jury against him right from the start. “I think we should show them the bookfirst.”
“Yes, I think you’reright.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his suitcoat and withdrew a small, battered journal, as old as the one he’d given Holland that night in Washington. “This, too, has been handed down in the family since the beginning. It’s instructions, a sort of legal will passed from father to son to keep track of our gains, and our responsibilities. It’s the book that reminds us of where our good fortune comes from, and demands that we help when we can, as our family was helped in the very beginning.” He passed the book over to Quin, and both Holland and I craned our necks to peer at the spidered writing covering thepages.
“I think you should look at this,” Quin said after a moment, and slid it down the tabletome.
I flipped quickly through it. “This is going to take more time to read than we have.” The pages were tightly covered with words and numbers, some of the handwriting so crabbed I had to squint and guess to make sense of what it said. Several of the pages I glanced at looked like accounting, something I’d want Cas togoover.
Cas.
I held the book back out to Quin. “Can we have Cas look at it? He’ll be able to analyze the numbers in there betterthanme.”
“Who is Cas?” Mutchasked.
“Tax lawyer,” Quin grunted and leaned over to whisper in Holland’s ear. Holland nodded and slipped out of the room withthebook.
Mutch watched him go with a gleam of sharp understanding in his eyes, then looked over at me. “Well, while we’re waiting, how are you doing, counselor?Mendingwell?”
“Yes, I am. Adelaide says everything ishealingwell.”
“I heard that he’s being charged with attemptedmurder?”
“Yes.” I kept my answers short, a common tactic in the courtroom. I’d seen Laine use it to draw out the most amazing unwitting confessions. Hopefully, it would work as well for me; I was a civil lawyer—questioning someone off the cuff wasn’t myforte.
“That was unusual, wasn’t it?” He blinked innocently at me as he asked his questions and his sharp mind peered out at meagain.
“I have a friend who pushed to make sure it was chargedcorrectly.”
“Yes, I heard that. It’s quite unusual, isn’t it? To have a human take so much interest in justice for ashifter?”
“He’s my friend. And a friend ofthepack.”
Mutch leaned back in his chair and looked back and forth between myself and Quin. “That’s good. He’s a criminallawyer,yes?”
“Mainly. He takes on other cases too. LikeJason’s.”
“Yes, I read about that. How is hedoing?”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Why all thequestions?”
He turned to Eva and whispered in her ear. I was tempted to borrow from my wolf to eavesdrop, but I wasn’t fast enough to catch what was being said before she nodded and leaned over the arm of her chair to pull a thick sheaf of papers out of her briefcase. She laid them in a neat line on the table in front of Quin and myself, five small stacks ofpaper.
Eva touched the top of the first pile. “Paperwork for trusts.” She tapped the document. “For healthcare.” Her fingers moved to the second one. “Education.” The third. “Housing.” Fourth. “Enterprise.” And then the fifth. “Special projects.” She folded her hands on the table in front of her. “I’d like you to look over them—I took contracts, but my interest was always in Constitutional law. I want to be sure they’re set upcorrectly.”
I glanced up at Quin. He nodded, and I gathered up the paper. “It’ll take me a while to go over them. Are you willingtowait?”
Mutch waved his hand and that hungry look came over his face again. “No, keep them and take your time. But I would like to talk about what those trusts could mean to the pack. All the packs, eventually.” He laced his fingers together over his belly. “When the Mateisback.”
Chapter39
Quin and I exchanged a look.The muscles tightened around his eyes and I huffed his scent to make sure I’d read him right. We’d wait for Holland, and it seemed like he was thinking the same thing I was—Mutch wanted to bring omegas back to some position ofpower.
