“That’s a lot of conjecture,” Emma replied after a moment’s pause, “and not much proof. It also doesn’t explain how I’m going to get paid.”
“Mercenary to the end,” I chuckled. “More concerned with your money than learning your father is a murderer.”
“I can’t do anything about my father’s decades-old crimes,” she said with a shrug. “I might not know the specifics of his life, how the family made its money, but I know it’s illegal. Learning he’s a murder doesn’t exactly surprise me. Glad he didn’t kill you too, I guess.”
“Yeah, because you still want the money I owe you,” I grumbled.
My own fault, really. She’d told me exactly what she was when we first met. I’d seen more than enough to confirm a cold, greedy heart beat in her chest. I hadn’t helped the issue with my lies and the kidnapping, no matter how justified I’d been.
“And you still haven’t explained how I’m getting that money,” she said and curled her hand toward me.
“I am The Hunter, the last of my family,” I replied, hands to my side, palms to the sky. “The old agreements that brought the five families together still stands. Your father’s will makes reference to them. When my identity is confirmed, I’ll inherit all of his—”
“You just claimed that my father killed your parents and now you think a piece of paper and an old agreement will be enough to take over?” Emma asked. Her head shook at a glacial pace. “What’s to stop Ewan from finishing up what my father started?”
“That wouldn’t help him,” I said. “Should anything happen to me, my Turner wife inherits everything.”
A glint came to Emma’s eyes. Her lips twisted into a smile before she banished it and pressed them together.
“Before you carry out your own murder plans, remember, I don’t have it yet,” I warned. “You wouldn’t inherit much right now.”
“I can wait,” she replied and leaned back on the couch, eyes closed.
To The Manor Born
Emma
Ifeigned sleep for at least an hour on Ian’s couch. Surprisingly comfortable for his literal trailer hideout, but I pushed that thought away, along with anything else that might have swayed my thinking toward or against my kidnap— no, host. Couldn’t let a little abduction sway my deliberation.
My ‘husband’ had certainly given me enough to process and after upending my entire trip. I didn’t even get a chance to explore Paris. But some of his secrets took the sting out of my missed tourist opportunities. If he took over for my father, as his ‘wife’ I’d clean up. He’d pay all he owed me on top of that.
The benefits, should that be true, went beyond the money. My brother only saw me as our father’s bastard love child, with a foreign stripper, even. He’d never welcome me into the family. My cousins had even warned me about coming back after my father died. I’d find no welcome from my brother. According to Ian, he’d tried to kill my father too.
To help snatch victory from him as he readied to lift a fist in triumph had a smile cracking my mimed asleep face. It only grew when my thoughts turned to future family gatherings. On Ian’s arm, everyone who had looked down their nose at me and Mom would now defer to me. I wouldn’t shove it down their throats, not all the time, not even most. Just when they needed a little reminder of who was in charge.
Those fantasies occupied an embarrassingly long stretch of the final leg of our trip. They expanded and divorced from reality. Only when they included children, a blue-eyed boy with Ian’s chin, an heir to continue our control over the families, did any sense of rationality pull me back.
All of those waking dreams had me staying with Ian. I hadn’t even considered my other options. If Ian died after inheriting, as his wife, I’d be first in line for my own inheritance. From a strictly financial standpoint, that offered the most.
No, it was like a lump sum lottery payment. It gave a high immediate reward, but nothing down the line. Leaving Ian alive allowed him to keep working, building our interests over time. Letting him live was more profitable in the long term than inheriting from him. That was the only reason I’d completely ignored finishing my father’s mission, nothing more.
My father.
Of everything Ian had shared, I wanted to believe the murder accusations the least of all, but I’d just calculated the costs and benefits of killing Ian myself. He’d called me a mercenary earlier. Maybe it was genetic. Had my father performed the same calculations before he’d decided murder was the most profitable choice? Taking control of the entire enterprise must have had his earnings skyrocketing.
I knew so little about my father. That and his almost complete absence from my life helped me idolize him, I knew that. Every annoyance and aggravation my stepfather inflicted helped me build that idol larger and larger. The crying little girl I still remember being once didn’t want to let it tarnish.
The truck carrying us slowed. For the first time since I’d woken, the whole shipping container bounced and shook. I finally opened my eyes.
Ian sat on the edge of the bed, back against the wall. He looked up from his phone when I shifted on the couch.
“The manor’s drive needs a lot of work,” he said, as if that explained it.
“Manor?”
“It’s not much, despite the name. It belonged to my mother’s mother’s family, kept completely separate from the Hunters but nobody’s lived there for a long time. It needs a lot of work.”
Ian still wanted to impress me, still cared about my opinion of him. The manor must have been a dump for him to stomp on my exceptions that much. Too bad. A swanky manor house would have helped sweeten his pot.
