AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Jesus, Rio,” he grunts, slipping. He rarely calls me Rio. “Sarah’s a friend of Riley’s. I wouldn’t have jumped the gun without proof.”
That’s just the thing; we had concrete evidence…against her. She’s logically still the only suspect we have on hand.
I want to believe she has nothing to do with the blackmail, but that’s mostly because I want to fuck her. We’ll know soon enough. The window the board had to give in to the blackmail is closed, and Pa was clear on their plan: pay up, follow the money trail, paint some walls bloodred.
It’s too late for me to do anything about it other than brood while I wait for news.
“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to risk it.” I shrug, turning to my younger brother. “Any specific reason why you’ve gathered us here?”
Markus nods. “We had dinner with Ma and Pa today. Did he tell you the latest about the blackmail thing?”
“What?” I bark, annoyed he heard any details before me.“There’s news and no one told me?”
Like anything about Sarah lately, this has become personal.I need to get to the bottom of it, and I want to be the one untangling the mystery.
I’m certain she’s at the center of it, as the puppet master or as the useless doll being moved without her knowledge.
I can’t quite decide what I’d do if she’s the master, but one thing is certain. The doll belongs to me. I’m the only one allowed to play with it.
“Pa said the board’s usual team couldn’t follow the cash. It was sent to a crypto account, then moved around a bunch of times all over the globe.”
I curse under my breath. I can’t imagine Sarah holding offshore accounts or bouncing cryptocurrency around. And no one in the list of all the fuckers who abused her fits that profile either.
“The board hired a good team of fixers; they have PIs, the works. But I’ve taken a different approach.” Markus hesitates. “I gave Mrs. Hunt a call.”
Holy shit.
“Morgan?” I check with a wince. “Camden won’t like that one bit.”
To my knowledge, she’s about to pop; the kid is due sometimes in May, in the next few weeks.
“What Camden doesn’t know doesn’t hurt me.” Markus shrugs indifferently. “And being knocked up doesn’t affect her ability to type.”
In other words, he went behind her husband’s back. No wonder. I only heard second-hand accounts, but according to Rhys, Cam is protective as fuck, barely allowing her to lift a finger, even more so the last few months. He didn’t even let her fly back here for Roman’s birthday.
“Anyway, she’s on it. She says only a damn good hacker could have managed that. Our target has several servers bouncing all over the place. I think she called the codingrefined.”
Sarah’s not a hacker; nothing in her history suggests she might have any knowledge about it. And her ex-abuser fits the profile even less. I feel like I’m missing something—someone—big here. Someone that relates to both Sarahandus.
“Why do you care so much?” Magnus grunts at Markus, clearly put out. “It’s not like you to give a shit unless you benefit.”
Markus’s shifting eyes flash pure green. “Daisy is on the video.”
That’s all there is to it. Whoever it was, they threatened his woman. There might not have been a shot of her face, but that doesn’t matter to him. Any threat to her must be eradicated.
“And I called you because so was Riley. You’re still getting divorced soon, right?” my brother asks lightly, smirking.
“That’s it,” Magnus snarls, strolling to the cabinet holding several precious bibelots.
I’m not surprised to see him retrieve his saber, and toss a second one at our little brother.
“I hope you’re prepared to bleed.”
Markus grins like the psycho he is. Magnus might be a literal fencing Olympian, but he follows rules, never striking when he’s not supposed to. Markus doesn’t play. He’s quite happy to throw a punch in the middle of a bout.
Rather than attempting to stop the inevitable, I roll my eyes as I lean back.
I can count on one hand the number of times when we meet that don’t end in a fight. And yeah, more often than not, it’s those two. And they pretty much send each other to the hospital on a monthly basis.
