Juniper chuckled. “Yep, Bastian too. It’s… chilling.”
We turned towards Bryn. He’d been silent, not saying a thing since our initial greeting. His brown eyes looking at us, amused. “We don’t have business types.”
“Doesn’t Koa own all of Brooklyn?” Aratiri said, frowning. “I’m pretty sure I’ve tried to buy like eight buildings from him and he just gives me this ‘I’ll eat your face’ look before Calix tells him he’s such a good boy.” He rolled his eyes.
Bryn laughed. “Okay, yes. Koa owns some shit. But we don’t see business Koa at home.”
“Leave work at work?” I asked, tilting my head.
He looked at me, a half-smile on his lips. “Something like that.”
“Koa is a Little, and he’s Little basically from the moment he walks in the door,” Nephele said. “Unless there are others around, anyway.”
“Oh!” I said, trying to remember Koa from the get together. I’m sure I saw him, but for the life of me, I couldn’t remember what he looked like right now. I couldn’t picture him.
“Calix is Koa’s Daddy,” Nephele explained, “and really the only one who cares for Koa.”
“Not true,” Bryn said. “We all care for Koa. He’s just not our… Little, I guess.”
“I meant caretaker, Bryn. I’m not questioning your love for him at all,” Neph said.
Bryn frowned, nodding. He turned away from the conversation, focusing on Kohara again. I raised a brow before looking at Neph. He smiled, shrugging. I had more questions, especially with Bryn’s response, but I thought it best not to ask right now. It was very obvious that he was through.
A phone rang, and I turned back to the table in time to see Wayne answer his cell. There must have been something in the way he sucked a breath that had the whole room quieting while he listened to whoever spoke on the other end.
Kohara turned from the window, watching Wayne. His lips pursed.
“Thanks. Let us know,” Wayne said, setting his phone down as the screen turned dark.
“What is it?” Kohara asked, pulling the phone from his ear and staring at Wayne patiently.
Wayne shook his head. “A family was just abducted. An entire harem.” He looked at Kohara. “Of humans.”
I was sure my expression matched everyone else’s. The unsettled silence felt like a heartbeat, pulsing with each second that passed. And then everyone was talking at once.
“Are we sure they’re all humans?”
“How do we know it was Silence?”
“What would they want with humans?”
“Where?”
“How long ago?”
“Anyone else?”
“Are there any ties to The Harem Project aside from their meetings?”
The questions buzzed around in my head, but for some reason, all I could picture was my sister. I didn’t know how it happened. Nor was anyone willing to tell me. All I knew for certain was that she’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. But a feeling in my gut said that Essen had somehow gotten in the way of something like this. She’s been protecting someone. Because that’s the kind of thing my sister would do.
I had no reason for this sudden revelation and nothing to base it on. In reality, I was probably way off. Maybe she’d simply walked in front of a car that one of their agents was driving.
“Hadley?” Nephele murmured, his lips brushing the shell of my ear.
The room came back to me as I took a deep breath. Questions were still being thrown out, but it didn’t sound like anyone was trying to answer right now. I blinked around, seeing the stress, grief, and panic that filled the room. Phones were out as people talked into them while still talking into the room.
I brushed a hand over my face and looked back at Neph. He had his hair pulled back into an elastic, his perfectly manicured beard soft and shiny under the lights of the conference room. His stormy eyes looked at me with concern.
