“A tray will be fine, Conrad.” I hated eating in the large formal dining room. It was cold and unfeeling. It was also ridiculous to sit there all by myself at a table that could seat twenty people. “I’ll be in my office.”
“Very good, sir.”
I didn’t start breathing again until the butler walked away. I was never going to get used to having servants. They did everything for me, which was a tad bit creepy. I had drawn the line at being bathed. I was perfectly capable of doing that all on my own.
I knew Councilman James had probably employed people to do that because the system was already in place by the time I took over last week, which made me wonder what else he might have done. I was still unraveling it all.
I was pretty sure I was going to be unraveling the things the former councilman had done for a long time to come. He had been a pig. I had always thought so, but now I was positive, and the proof was in the lavish estate I now currently lived in.
I really hoped the council found someone to replace me soon. This was not my idea of heaven. Far from it.
Of course, my idea of heaven had just driven away, so…
Speaking of unraveling…I wheeled myself down the hallway to my new office. I still had my computer lab in the basement, but now I did a majority of my work in Councilman James’s former office. I would have preferred my office, but this one seemed more appropriate at the moment.
The stack of files on my desk made me want to turn around and go the other way. I swear it grew taller every single day. It felt as if every issue, disagreement, and feud in the panther world had been lodged with me since I took over a couple of weeks ago.
It kind of made me wonder what Councilman James had been doing all this time. I mean, besides embezzling funds from his assassins and bribing government officials and politicians.
God, the guy was such an ass.
I wheeled myself around the large oak desk and grabbed the file on top of the pile. Most of the requests that seemed to be coming in were merely disputes of one sort or another. Teenagers shifting and running through the street, neighbors threatening to eat each other’s cats, crap like that.
I took those ones and set them in one pile. The ones that were less of a dispute and more concerning, I stacked in a second pile. And then there were the ones that I knew needed my immediate attention, the ones where someone’s life could be in danger, whether from another shifter or a human. It was a larger pile than I would have thought.
Which again, made me wonder what Councilman James had been doing all this time. The man had been in charge for decades. Granted, his father had been in charge when shifters were revealed to the human world fifty years ago, but James had still been around.
I glanced up when I heard a knock at my office door. “Come.”
Conrad stepped inside with a tray in his hand. “Your dinner, Master Sinclair.”
“Oh, thank you, Conrad.” I frowned as I glanced at my desk. Pretty much every surface was covered. “Um…here.” I moved some papers out of the way, hoping I didn’t mess up my system as I cleared a section of my desk. “You can put it here.”
“Very good, sir.” Conrad set the tray down on the space I had cleared. “Will there be anything else, sir?”
“No, that’s all, Conrad. Thank you.”
Conrad gave me a stiff nod before turning toward the door. He paused in the doorway and glanced back at me. “Forgive my impertinence, sir, but you need to eat. You are going to be no good to us if you grow weak from lack of nutrition.”
I smiled because I knew Conrad was speaking outside his comfort zone. The man had never been anything but the very definition of a classically trained butler. If I remember correctly, someone said he had actually been trained in England.
“I’ll eat, Conrad. Promise.”
“Very good, sir.”
And just like that, the man was gone.
I chuckled, shaking my head. Conrad had been around for a very long time. He pretty much knew everything that happened under the roof of the estate manor. He was totally devoted to whoever ruled the house.
That was an unfortunate part of his training.
His devotion was absolute. Whoever was councilman of the panthers made the rules. Their secrets became Conrad’s secrets, and he held them close to his chest until the next councilman came into play.
I had been learning all sorts of interesting things.
I reached for one of the sandwiches on the tray as I flipped open the next file, and then took a bite. Oh, tuna. I grimaced as I swallowed down the bite in my mouth and put the sandwich back down on the tray. I was not a fan of tuna. I supposed tuna was kind of a mainstay for panther shifters, but I was not a panther.
I hated tuna.
