Page 48 of A Lion's Heart
Jace didn’t cower. Instead, he stood tall—albeit a relatively safe distance from the Assembly Leader—and stared him in the eye.
The distance was only safe because Kalina had positioned herself so that Rome would have to push her out of the way to get to Jace. That was a shame because at the moment Rome wanted to wrap his hands around the neck of a man he’d called friend for the better part of thirty-five years.
“You said finding Cole was our priority,” Jace continued.
“At the expense of my daughter’s safety? Are you really going to stand there and try to sell me that load of crap?”
“Rome,” Kalina said, placing a hand on his arm. “Let him speak.”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t give permission, nor did he deny it. He simply stood there trying to bite his tongue because words were quickly leaving his mind. In that instance the only thing left would be the physical and Jace Maybon was definitely not ready to receive what Rome had kept stored for anyone who dared to threaten his daughter’s life.
“She knows, Rome,” Jace stated. “She knew that someone broke into the files and obtained the confidential information on Jacques and Cole. She said it had to be someone with the access codes, meaning it had to be a shifter. She knows every shifter in that database. Not sending her up there to look for the culprit would have been unconscionably stupid.”
“No, Jace,” Rome said in as even a tone as he could manage. “You’re simply vying for the unconscious aspect. She’s my daughter and I expected you to keep her safe! Not send her into the arms of danger! That is not acceptable. None of this is.”
“What I think he’s trying to say, is, where is Nisa now, Jace?” Kalina asked.
Jace cleared his throat and admitted, “We don’t know.”
It was Nick who stepped in front of Rome this time, blocking the path to Jace. “You gotta come better than that, man. This is his only child.”
“She’s with Decan,” the guard that Rome recognized from being with Decan back at headquarters, said.
“Decan will keep her safe,” he continued.
“What’s your name?” Rome asked as he turned all his attention to the one that seemed to have some answers for him.
“Gold, sir,” the guard replied.
“Okay, Gold. Where is Decan?” Rome asked.
“I don’t know—” Gold began.
Rome was already shaking his head.
“I mean that I did not have the location to where he was going. Last night, that lycan said he had a place for Decan to go that would be safe. I figured Decan took the information,” Gold continued.
“But you haven’t heard from him since then?” Nick asked.
“No. But that’s not unusual. Decan knows better than to make too much outside contact. Especially above ground. We all knew to get back down here as soon as it was safe. For us,” he said looking toward a cheetah sitting in a chair with her legs propped on the conference room table.
“It was safe at first light because mostly everyone in the hotel was still asleep. We were able to get out undetected and we took two vehicles to get back to a doorway down here. We used the underwater entrance,” Gold said proudly.
Rome couldn’t bring himself to say that was smart. He was still too pissed off that his daughter wasn’t here to give any type of commendations for good work. Especially not to Jace.
“You sent them all up there and what did you get out of it? Nothing. They were run out of the gala without finding any more information about the murders or the shifter that betrayed us,” he told him.
“That’s not true.”
Every head swung to the door that had slid quietly open as Nisa stepped through.
“We received confirmation from Graham Parker that Ewen Mackey is working with a shifter. Why he would have that shifter killing for him? We don’t know, but at least now we are certain that a shifter is doing the killings,” she said looking directly at Rome.
Never in all his life did he think he would love so unconditionally and as deeply as he did his only child. She was, as Kalina had stated before, the best of both of them. She was also the future. Nisa was everything that Rome had worked for so hard to accomplish in these last twenty years.
Inside, he breathe a sigh of relief that she was alive and well. Outside, he was still pissed. The muscle in his jaw twitched and his gaze narrowed on his child. Her mother, however, was across the room in seconds, wrapping her arms around Nisa and pulling her into a hug that looked as if it might suffocate her.
“I’m fine,” Nisa whispered to her mother.
