And on implants.
… El was pretty sure that Annabel spent every single day since those divorce papers had arrived on her doorstep trying to come up with a way to seize El’s half of the fortune, if only so that she could continue to live her lavish lifestyle and spite her daughter at the same time, despite the fact that as things stood currently, it sounded like El’s father was going to give her mother a far more than healthy settlement to deal with the fact that he had most certainly violated the zero infidelity clause of their arrangement, and Annabel had proof of it.
After all, El’s mother hadn't insisted on installing security cameras in every inch of their family home for no reason.She was more than certain that her mother had gone to such lengths just in case a situation like this arose, in which case she could safely ensure that she would get over half of her husband's fortune, leaving El’s father to have to sell off his private holdings after divorce proceedings were done to repay himself.
But El supposed, as she shook her head and dismissed the notification for her adoptive mother’s text message on her phone, that wasn't exactly her business.Playing pretend for the night, however, was.
“Mother’s Day?”Marcus remarked with a raised brow as El allowed herself to drop on top of him in the bed, very obviously coming to his own conclusions as to why she was as upset as she was.Thankfully, she was talking to Marcus, who always seemed to know the right thing to say.“You don't have to go,” Marcus said, largely, she guessed, because he knew that was what she wanted to hear.But they both knew that it wasn't true.
“If I don't go, she'll probably put out a warning to the FBI or something that I'm missing again,” El dismissed, wrinkling her nose and shaking her head at the very thought.It would be far too easy for Annabel to suggest that one of her other mates had abducted her, in which case, just because of her last name, the FBI would very obviously go out of the way to find her.“It's fine.I'll just go and have dinner, speak as little as possible, and then leave at the first opportunity,” El said, naturally assuming that everything would go as it always did.
Annabel would greet her sons, holding them close and treating them like they were kings, and then, for the most part, ignore her, except to jab an insult or five in her direction and dismiss her daughter with a roll of her eyes.If anything, that was all that El could ask for because so long as Annabel dismissed her in such a way, she wasn't taking a closer look at her and criticizing her in other ways as well.
Annabel was one of those people that it was best to keep your distance from.And if you weren’t capable of keeping your distance from her, largely because of unfortunate circumstances that had forced you to be in the woman’s presence, then it was best to keep your mouth shut and your eyes averted so that she wouldn’t pick on you too much.
El had learned a lot in her time with her mother, she supposed, as she sunk into Marcus’s side and fought back the urge to groan.So long as she let her brothers take the lead, then she would be out of there in no time.Besides, she wouldn't be alone this time.Ryan would be coming with her.The best thing she had ever done was establish him as her husband.At least, since she did that, her mother was not trying to match her up with anyone anymore, and she had someone to be her ally during events like this.
Little did El know, the way things were looking, it was all going to go to hell that night.
Chapter7
All things considered, from a conceptual standpoint, it sounded like tonight was going to be the easiest night of Shawn’s life.Especially when you consider that for much of his life, he had been running security at the house that he was determined to break into that night.If anything, the idea sounded easy enough, or at least he supposed it sounded easy enough to Trip, who was the one who proposed it from beside him in the booth, having made up his mind from the moment that he saw El’s adoptive mothers name on the forms in front of them.
But the problem with said concept was that, unfortunately, Trip didn't know what the fuck he was talking about.He had no idea what a difficult situation this would be.He didn't know how seriously the family took security.Shawn could count on his hands the number of attempted robberies that had so much as made it to the front lawn—and they’d only made it to the front lawn, no further, largely because going any further would likely result in one’s immediate and rather untimely death.
Therefore, he wasn't exactly excited to be breaking into the home of his old employer.But he didn't have a choice anymore.From the moment that his mate was threatened, he was thrust back into this world that he didn't want to be a part of to begin with.
And so, there Shawn was, doing his best to remember every detail of the floor plan of his former employer’s home, a year after he’d last been allowed to case the joint.Never before had he really considered the idea that he could possibly be doing such a thing because Annabel, El’s typically harebrained mother, was capable of being any sort of threat to the girl, but he supposed that, when it came to danger, it was the ones that you least expected that you should be the most afraid of.
And also that there were signs.
Signs that he couldn't admit to anyone, not even Trip, as he sat across from him in the booth in the middle of the restaurant, his mind silently working out details from times long gone past that he knew he should have forgotten.Details that came from his brief, unfortunate period as Annabel's lover.A moment when he was nothing more than a tool for her to use against her husband in response to his cheating ways.
Back then, Shawn didn’t even know how far back the slight went or how much Annabel wanted to spite her husband, but now he had an idea.
He could scarcely even begin to explain to himself the never-ending desire that he felt for El just about all the time now, and that was being someone in the know about shifters and mates and all of that.He couldn't imagine how her father would have handled that, if he would have even begun to approach the topic with his wife, or if he would have just left her out in the cold.
In some ways, Shawn felt bad for Annabel.He always had.Mentally, he'd built her up to be the sort of woman who wished that she had a romantic relationship, largely because he'd met far too many housewives who were of the sort.Women who watched their husbands cheat with their secretaries and everyone that they could get their hands on turned a blind eye because they wanted to believe that, at the end of the day, he truly loved them.But as time went on, and the uglier side of Annabel's soul began to reveal itself to Shawn, he realized that that wasn't exactly the case.
Annabel had never deluded herself into believing that she could love her husband.Their relationship was just one of convenience, the type of relationship that rich people fell into every day.She wasn't an optimist; she wasn't a pessimist, but she was a realist.And being a realist meant that, at the end of the day, her only job was to stay married to him.An easy enough job when you had a husband who had his whole reputation on the line every other day.
Logically, it only made sense for someone to assume that her husband refusing to look at her in any real sort of way had worn her down, leading Annabel down a path that eventually led to her discovering exactly why it was that her husband was so besotted with the beautiful Persia, and then eventually discover what exactly Persia and her obvious offspring were.But that was if you looked at things in a typical way and if you didn't take into account every little detail about Annabel.
Shawn, unfortunately, knew Annabel.And he knew her well.
After he could still remember the sink of his cock into her heat, the way that she moaned in the overdramatic row of her head.Long enough that he could realize that every single one of these gestures was planned out, fabricated.It was all an act, one to get him to lower his guard, if only so that she could get what she wanted from him.At the time, he had assumed that what she wanted was to further spite her husband, but it was becoming more and more clear by the minute that that wasn't exactly her plan.What she wanted was to force him to let his guard down because, at the end of the day, Annabel was no blushing bride, she was no doe-eyed darling, and she most definitely was not any sort of clueless housewife.
“Annabel’s a hunter,” Shawn concluded at the dinner table and then proceeded to make his point known by bringing out the evidence.Or at least what evidence he could remember.
It was a tale as old as time, one echoed through the shadows of history again and again, residing in the background of the story of just about every shady political organization.
A beautiful girl from good breeding appears seemingly out of nowhere at just the right time, the time when the heir to a large fortune or a strong political alliance comes of age and is known to be looking for a bride.She's beautiful, she's charming, and everyone loves her, or at least everyone that matters.Scarcely, if ever, does her husband blink more than twice at her.
She plays the part perfectly, settling into high society and becoming the typical bride, gushing yet not overly complimentary towards her husband, whatever it is that he'd want, but that wouldn't raise suspicion.It was the ones who were stupid enough to pretend to be consumed with lust for their husbands that ended up meeting an untimely end, and as it had become more than apparent, Annabel was not in any way, shape, or form stupid.She was, in fact, a cunning strategist, one who had played everyone from the very beginning, sinking into an influential family with little or no questions asked and then fitting perfectly into the lives of high society socialites to the point where her name was uttered on the board of every single major alliance.
She was a hunter, and she had played them all.
Shawn had, of course, heard of such things but had never been close enough to any major hunter families to know whether or not it was true.Rumors spread of young women trained to acquire more wealth and connections for hunter clans, making it easier for them to do their jobs and connect to more resources—but those young women were from larger, more storied hunting families.The kind that had practically bred them for such a purpose from the very beginning.
