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“Buh-bye, loser.” She hangs up, and I roll my eyes.
Noticing a convenient sign for services only two miles away, I keep going and pull in a few minutes later, parking up and cutting the engine. Picking up my phone, I scroll to the file Jem sent and raise an eyebrow at the gorgeous blonde.
“Nice. Could do way worse, Soph. But what is your actual end game here?”
None of this makes any sense whatsoever. Sophia doesn’t make mistakes. So who was she trying to lead here? Me? Seb? Someone else? Her brother’s hundreds of enemies? And what does this woman have to do with any of it? Was Sophia looking for a wife for her dear, darling brother? She sure as shit landed on the one woman who would intrigue our fearless leader more than anyone else on the planet. I may not have spoken to the dick in a decade, but I know him better than anyone. Looks aside, which are exactly his type, this woman is, for lack of a better word, normal. She is the exact opposite of Gideon with his limitless wealth, power over this Secret Society and his machinations of manipulating governments, our own and beyond, into doing his bidding. He is sleek, predatory, ruthless and untouchable. She is his awkward prey that will stumble at the first chase.
Sophia knew what she was doing when she chose this woman to do whatever it is and while the tie to Gideon hasn’t been made in this file, I know. I know that wherever this woman is, Gideon will be right next to her, fascinated by her.
“So, find the woman, find the Don. Simple.”
Yeah, not so much, but I’ll take what I can get.
Setting off again, it’s not long until I’m on the M6, heading into the North of England, where the weather changes again to an incessant downpour where the windscreen wipers on this average, black, mid-sized hatchback struggle to keep up.
“Christ, man. Why? Why do you live here?”
But I know why. Gideon likes the weird weather, and he always found London to be too claustrophobic. Too busy, too commercial, too… everything.
Sticking to the speed limit so as not to draw attention to myself, I settle back and call Jem again.
“Get me everything you can on this Isla Harding. I mean the deep dive stuff. I want to know everything.”
“On it.”
“Oh, and Jem?”
“Yeah?”
“Postpone my meeting with the Mayor on Wednesday. I have a feeling I’m not going to make it.”
“Damn,” she mutters. “That’s really important, Dante. We need his backing for the bill to go through Parliament.”
“Yes, I’m fucking aware of that, Jemima, but this is more important even than that.”
“Fair enough.”
We hang up again, and I askSirito find me a hotel within two miles of Hemsway, which is where I need to start my hunt for our elusive Don.
As it turns out, the only one withintwentymiles of Hemsway is actuallyinHemsway. I didn’t want to arrive there until I had my ducks in a row, but I’m not sleeping rough in this hatchback, so I pull into the car park of thePremier Innand cut the engine. Grabbing my go-bag from the back seat, I open it and pull out a stack of IDs, flicking through until I find a relatively new one. The black Amex attached to this ID is a bit of a red flag, but it’s also an alias that Gideon won’t know about. Possibly. I don’t know how much he has been keeping tabs on me, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say not at all.
Shoving the rest back into the bottom of the bag, I climb out of the hatchback and rush towards the doors of the hotel, getting soaked to the bone and cursing like a sailor.
Moments later, ‘Richard Peterson’ is holed up in his decidedly basic room with room service on the way.
Crossing over to the window to draw the curtains, something catches my eye, and I shake my head, knowing I’ve hit the jackpot.
“Well, well, well. I always knew you had a God-complex, and there you are, in the sky, lording it over this town.”
The castle lights flicker off, but the grounds are bathed in light, casting a foreboding and eerie glow.
Whether Gideon is in residence up there or not remains to be seen. But I’m guessing if Isla is up there, so is he. So now I just need to find out where Isla Harding is and follow the trail straight to my old pal to tell him directly to his face that we have a situation on our hands that both of us knew would come back to bite us hard in the arse one day.
21
SEBASTIAN
Beyond pissed off, I stare out of the window of my penthouse overlooking the city.
