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Denielle walks in with a glass of water and a pill bottle. I didn't even notice she'd left. "Joel says he has to take these." She thrusts both items at George, who inspects it closely before uncapping the lid. He hands Nate two white pills and the water.
"Can you guys stop hovering already?" Nate mumbles as he takes his, what I assume are, painkillers.
"We are not the ones who got stabbed," I deadpan, crossing my arms over my chest.
"Nate." George waits for him to make eye contact. "What happened?" He’s running out of patience.
Nate shifts so he is more upright. "The fucker stabbed me."
"Hank?" I ask just to confirm once more.
The confusion on everyone’s face is as visible as the fact that the dude is dead meat if he did what Nate claims—which I don’t doubt.
Winkey-Hank won’t be winking much longer.
Nate nods his head in my direction. "We were eating breakfast in my suite, as usual, preparing for the meeting. I was sitting on the couch while the little cunt, aka Hank, was telling me what to expect. Then my phone vibrated." Nate pauses and shifts, grabbing onto his side. "I’m going to kill this fucker," he mumbles.
"Nate." George holds a warning in his tone, trying to get Nate to focus. The crease between his eyebrows tells me he doesn't like seeing Lilly's brother in pain. George is way more than just an employee to Nate.
"Sorry." Nate groans then mercifully continues, "I picked it up, and I saw that it was a notification from the house alarm system. It was disarmed." Nate's eyes settle on George. They both stare at each other, and it seems like a silent communication is taking place between them. George's expression turns murderous, and Nate jerks his head up and down.
"Where is he?" George growls.
"No clue, man. I woke up in the fucking hospital with no ID or any way of communicating. You know my French is shit."
My pulse increases, and I'm starting to lose patience with the two. My fingers have curled inward and have left crescent-shaped indentations in my palms. "It's great and all that the two of you can, apparently, read each other's minds, but I want to know where my girlfriend is. So, please, tell the rest of us unknowing mortals what the fuck happened?" I glare at both men.
All eyes are on me, but I don’t care. They need to start fucking talking.
Nate adjusts his position so he can address me. "The house alarm system is set to send me notifications whenever it is armed or disarmed. It’s part of the system I have at all my properties. I added the protocol here when Lilly moved in. Additionally, everyone with access to my properties has their own code. No one uses the same. The message I received showed an alert for Hank’s code disarming the security system in this house." He pauses and waits for the rest of us to catch on.
Holy fucking shit!
"You are telling me that your bitch assistant has something to do with Lilly being kidnapped?" I grind out between clenched teeth. My entire body is vibrating from rage.
Nate presses his lips together. I turn and fling the first object within my reach across the room—a small, golden elephant statue from the coffee table. It makes a decent size dent in the drywall before crashing into the glass table underneath. I can't muster any remorse for the property damage.
"What next?" My father’s voice brings everyone back to the present. He has remained silent since Lilly’s brother stumbled into the house. Observing the scene.
"I told him I was gonna go take a leak. I started dialing George—fuck the meet with Lakatos. Lilly was in danger. That much was clear. The little shit must've realized that I was onto him, and next thing I know, I have a sharp pain in my side, and something hits me in the head." He inhales slowly. "I woke up in a Parisian hospital, and it took them two fucking hours to find someone fluent enough in English to get me a phone and call the hotel to find Joel. Their damn landlines wouldn't connect to a non-French number. It's like the stone age."
"I had already searched the suite when you called me." Joel stands in the corner of the room and addresses George. "Besides Nate's clothes, nothing was there. I packed everything up, and I went to the hospital. It took several more hours for them to agree to discharge him."
"We drove straight to the airport and came back," Nate finishes.
"Why didn’t you call me?" George admonishes him.
"Because I had no clue if anyone else was involved, if someone had gotten into my system, or what the hell was going on. My laptop was gone, and I couldn't check the feeds." Nate is one of the best, and for him to consider someone breached his homemade security system—not to mention hijacking his business partner and turning him against Nate?
Fuck.
George suddenly stands up and turns to one of his men. "I want an APB out for Hank Todd. He is your number one priority." The guy jumps at the order, bobs his head up and down, and storms out.
"Um, shouldn't they look for Lilly?" Denielle asks, wringing her hands together.
"No, they can concentrate on the traitor. I’ll find my sister. That son of a bitch is not smart enough to not leave a trail," Nate sneers and turns to George. "Have one of your guys go to his place and bring me everything he left. Laptop, phones, a fucking carrier pigeon if that’s how he communicated with Turner. I want it all here within two hours."
His head of security nods and pulls his phone out, putting it to his ear as he follows the other guy.
