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“I am, but more importantly, I’m my father’s only child.”
He took several steps back, appearing utterly stunned.
“You have to remember. Omegas work now.”
“This can’t—” He glared at Wyn. “You didn’t see this in his file?”
“We don’t ask who your parents are or what kind of lupine you are on our applications for employment,” Wyn snapped.
Royce’s focus was back on me. “I… How can… You’re a member of the jarl.” He said it like he was in a daze.
“The jarl?” Wyn repeated. “He’s rich?”
“My father is rich,” I told him. “Though I do have a trust fund, like Royce here used to.”
“Wait—” Royce was trying, and from the look on his face, failing to get his bearings.
“Both of you get out.” I slipped around the end of the counter and rushed toward my front door.
“I want answers about the chest!” Royce yelled.
“Not today,” I assured him.
“Stop moving!” he ordered.
“Jesus, Royce, why do you have a gun? You told me you wanted me to find out if he had the diary, you never said anything about a gun!”
Looking over my shoulder, I saw that Royce had pulled a handgun, but his focus was on Wyn for the moment, not me.
“This is about River’s family and his place in the jarl. He’s paying me a lot of money to fix this for him, and I need those funds to start my new life abroad.”
“New life?”
“You’re useless,” he shouted at Wyn. Then to me he said, “And I will shoot you dead if you don’t stop moving right the fuck now!”
“But then you’d never learn who I gave the diary to?” I baited him, still striding toward the door. For some reason, when a maniac was pointing a gun at me, my small seven-hundred-and-fifty-square-foot house suddenly seemed enormous.
He yelled in frustration, and I threw open the front door, ready to bolt, but instead came to a dead stop because Deacon Houghton-Crowne was standing there staring at me.
I’d never been more stunned in my life.
6
DEACON
Those big dark blue eyes of his were staring up at me like he was seeing a ghost. I scowled back, grabbed his bicep, wrenched him out the door, and then shoved him behind me. I’d heard yelling when I was walking up to the door, but seeing Royce Kimball, who I knew was out on bail, was a surprise.
“Oh, buddy, I think you’re violating the rules with the whole trespassing and the gun,” I baited him, winking for good measure. “I’ll be sure to ask Detective Massey when I call him.” I pulled my phone from the breast pocket of my topcoat. “Plus, you know, since you set me up, and that’s what I told the FBI, I don’t think you’re supposed to be anywhere near me.”
“Set you up?” Sasha asked from behind me.
“How aren’t you dead?” Royce asked, looking a bit beleaguered at the moment.
I grinned at him. “C’mon, when have you known me to be dead?”
He raised the gun, and I groaned, thinking that I just got better, and I really wanted to talk to Sasha. Although, if I ended up back in the hospital, fighting for my life, he might feel sorry for me and listen to everything I had to tell him.
Maybe.
