AllFreeNovel
Share Us
2
Gettinginto a fistfight on the street with ten policemen won’t solve anything, and won’t stop them from taking her. Plus, the one small mercy when I storm out of the front doors after them is that there isn’t a media presence. When they escort her handcuffed into the back of a waiting police van, there’s barely anyone on the street who’s paying attention.
Punching a police captain eight feet from lobby of my building would very much change that.
My eyes narrow, jaw grinding painfully as I watch them drive off with her. My hands curl to fists, muscles straining at the seams of my suit. But then, with one vicious snarl, I whirl and storm back inside.
Liam wordlessly falls into step behind me.
“Find out if Prince is still in the building,” I hiss darkly. “If he is, have him ejected from the nearest window, regardless of the floor he’s found on. Otherwise, I want him barred from entering again. Permanently.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
He’s already pulling his phone out, barking quick commands to building security. And I know he’ll be reaching out to his contacts in the Metro Police to see if he can glean why in the holy fuck they’d be chargingEllawith the murder of her own mother.
Lewis drags his eyes up from the documents in his hand when I storm back into the boardroom. His brow furrows.
“You’ll want to see this. It’s what she walked in here with.”
My eyes narrow at the stack of documents I take from him—the ones that were tucked under Ella’s arm in a legal folder when she stepped into the boardroom, pointedly ignoring me.
Shit.
I know what I’m looking at. But worse, I know what the pages I’m looking atlook likeif taken in the wrong context: if they all comes bundled together, with the Oliver fucking Prince whispering little insinuations into her ear along with it.
The list of high donations to the force. The un-redacted police report that puts me there, at the house that night. Before I made them change it.
I even know what the scrawled notes about chemical compounds mean.
And I know that all of this put together paints a very specific picture.
I breathe slowly as I stab my gaze through the pages in my hand.
“Lewis, I need the room. And I need you to start doing everything you need to do to get her out of custody. Make it happen yesterday.”
My attorney nods smartly, turning to the few other lawyers in the room with him and gesturing with his chin. They all file out, leaving Liam and I alone.
I drum my fingers across the top of the boardroom table.
“That thing we’ve spoken about before, concerning Oliver Prince’s whereabouts the night Cassandra Ashford died.”
“Milan,” he grunts in response. “His company was acquiring an Italian telecommunications group.”
I nod.
I know. Just like I know he was in the States the night Matilde died. Or how I know there’s a reason I’ve never shared this dark suspicion that I harbor about a man I call my rival with anyone but Liam.
And of course, a man with Oliver’s means could have obviously hired people to do that task, rather than getting his own hands dirty. But it was years ago that I asked Adrian—without giving him the full theory of course—to look into that for me. I mean the man knows every lowlife scumbag in Britain, and most of the ones in France.
But he came up empty-handed looking for men that’d been hired to commit arson. And anyway, the way Matilde and Cassandra were both killed was too personal to have been hired out. Someone did that and wanted to feel themselves doing that.
He’s always been my rival. But I never wanted to think he’d take things that far, or was capable of taking things that far.
And now, regardless of my dark theory, he’s packaged up this nice little narrative and spoon fed it right to Ella—obviously to poison her against me and secure his fucking vote. That’s enough for me to go to outright war with him. But my suspicions are that Liam’s probe into how and why Ella was just taken into custody are going to lead back to the same man.
My jaw grits tightly.
“Double check Oliver’s alibi for that night.”
Liam nods. “I’ll get on it.”
“Good. I want proof that he was in Milan that night carved in goddamn stone.”
Or I’m going to break him in half for trying to take what’s mine.
