He didn't let go. Instead, he began to haul me toward the back of the hotel, toward the darkened hallway that led to his private office. Conventional wisdom—the kind they teach in every self-defense class in the city—says you never let an assailant take you to a second location. Once the doors close and the witnesses are gone, the stakes change.
I didn't yell. I didn't beg. I let him drag me.
The pain would come no matter what; I knew that. If I fought him here, in the lobby, it would be a spectacle that served nothing but his ego. If we were alone, I’d get my answers quickly. Finding out where my brother was and what the Blackwoods wanted was all I cared about. My safety was a secondary line item.
My father shoved me into the office, the air here smelling even more strongly of the past—old paper, stale cigar smoke, and the musk of a predator who had spent too long in a small cage. He slammed the door behind us and turned, his face contorted in a sneer.
"You think because you wear a suit and work for humans that you’re above blood?" he growled, stepping into my space.
"I think that while you're busy asserting dominance over your daughter, the Blackwoods are deciding how to carve up what’s left of your heir. What did you do? What's your debt to them?"
"I didn't do shit. This was all your brother's doing."
That caught me off guard. I’d spent my life thinking of Elias as the obedient son. Like me, he was more brain than brawn. Hebelonged in a corporate office surrounded by computers, not in a boxing ring. I didn't think he’d ever make a move without being told to do so by the man currently snarling at me.
But then I looked around at the office; the peeling wallpaper, the dust motes dancing in the stale light, the smell of a kingdom in its death throes. This was Elias's inheritance. He was the heir to a rotting carcass. Maybe my little brother had finally seen our father for the loser he was and decided to take action to save the den before the roof collapsed on them both.
"What did he do? What is his debt?"
"He thought he was clever," my father spat, pacing the small space like a trapped animal. "He skimmed off the Blackwood's distribution logistics. He stole seven figures right out from under their noses. Six million dollars, Adolpha."
I collapsed into the cracked leather chair opposite the desk. Six million. I had savings—good savings for a woman my age—but it was nowhere near that. If the tarnished brass and the empty bar outside was any indication, my father didn't have a fraction of it.
The corporate logic in my brain frantically tried to find a loophole that didn't exist. "They’ll kill him. They’ll kill us all for that much."
"They don't want the money," my father said. He stopped pacing and looked long and hard at me, his eyes dark with a look I couldn't quite decipher: a mix of resentment and cold calculation.
I knew what was on the table before he said it. These were wolves. They had a way of dealing with territorial and power issues.
"You." He snorted, a dry, ugly sound. "The Blackwoods want you."
The silence that followed was absolute. I'd been here before. I'd run from this before. The walls were closing in now, and I didn't see a way out. I was an asset being repossessed.
CHAPTER FIVE
VIDAR
The dossier lay spread across my obsidian desk like a post-mortem. Adolpha Vane. Age twenty-eight. Junior Associate at Sterling & Associates. No criminal record, no scandals, and a credit score that suggested a woman who slept well at night. I’d spent three hours studying the photographs my private security had pulled from her social media and corporate headshots.
She was beautiful. Curvy in the ways I preferred. Her skin was too pale, a translucent Irish cream that looked like it would bruise if the wind caught it. I preferred my women darker, sun-kissed, but that was a minor variable.
My parents had an arranged marriage, a cold transaction that had somehow warped into a lifelong romance. They were the anomaly. I didn't believe in the anomaly. I believed in loyalty. I had never felt a flicker of affection for anyone outside my own bloodline, and I didn't expect to start now. I would treatAdolpha fairly. I would respect her—provided she proved herself worthy of it.
Then the elevator door to the executive suite opened, and my wolf decided I was wrong.
Her scent hit me before she even took a full step into the room. Expensive perfume meant to command attention and call over service workers on commission. My wolf dismissed it. It lapped up what was beneath. Confidence without hesitation, power without apology.
Desire spiked through me, hot and heavy, a physical ache that tightened my chest and made my pulse hammer. I sat perfectly still, my hands flat on the desk to hide the sudden tension in my frame, but my body was already betraying the "business" nature of this meeting.
Adolpha Vane walked in like she was heading to a corporate takeover, her heels clicking a rhythmic warning on the hardwood. She didn't look like her photos. She looked like a storm in silk.
"Where is my brother?"
"Sit, Ms. Vane."
She didn't sit. She walked to the edge of my desk, her eyes—green and hard as emeralds—locking onto mine. Red hair bounced around her shoulders like a halo or a cape. Was she here to save me or to take her vengeance? My tongue pressed hard against my teeth, held there by force. My wolf surged forward anyway, teeth aching with the need to test what she’d do if I bit.
"Where is my brother, Mr. Blackwood?"
