“Hello?”
“Oh, my god, Leo!” I say.
“What’s wrong?” His voice is tense. “Where are you? What happened?”
“Nothing’s wrong. I just went a bit further away than I thought and I’m stuck in traffic. I’ll be there soon. Don’t freak out, okay. Everything is fine.”
I hear him move the phone away from his face. “Luke. She’s on the call. She’s okay.”
Luke says something I can’t make out.
There’s a pause on the other end of the line before Leo speaks again. “You know you’re in trouble, don’t you?”
I also pause, though not for the same reason.
“Yes,” I say eventually. “I’m going to be there soon though, I promise. We’re just on the bridge.”
“We will be at the hospital,” Leo says. “Call again if anything else happens.”
“I will.”
CHAPTER 22
Aiden
“I didn’t think I would see you so soon, not once you went to ground,” Eric says. He has a smirk on his face, an expression of unearned triumph.
“Trying to kill us all for the simple sin of not allowing you to steal our bride and use her as a pawn was a temperamental mistake,” I tell him. “A hail of bullets may as well have been a temper tantrum on your part. And for what? To make an enemy of us?”
“You have a lot of enemies right now,” Eric says. “BP was popular. He did a lot of things for a lot of people.”
“He did nothing that anybody should miss,” I say. “And you know it.”
Eric gives a casual shrug. “Have you come here to kill me?”
I have the very strange feeling that he would not mind if I had. Men in my line of work find themselves tired after a time. Fighting multiple battles on multiple fronts that never end,knowing that an assassin’s bullet, or blade, or perhaps poisoned cream cake is never all that far away takes a toll on the strongest of souls. Even those who enjoy doing battle and take glee in evil start to tire after a time.
I see the weariness in Eric’s soul, as I soften my gaze and let my natural charisma do the work. This man wants me. My brothers believe it is a sexual thing, but I don’t think so. I think it’s deeper than that. Eric does not want to fuck me. He wants to be commanded.
His will to dominate is not as strong as I first imagined. His attempts on our lives have been flaccid, in a manner of speaking. Sprays of bullets, screeching tires, kidnappings. We took them seriously because we lost Teddy, and we are afraid of losing Ella. Leo’s gunshot wound is not from Eric. It’s from Luke.
“I don’t intend to be that merciful,” I say.
“Oh?” He smiles, and I sense his excitement.
“No,” I say. “You see, Eric, I have been making moves of my own. The armed squads are fine if you are doing business in a lawless state, but fortunately for me, the laws of finance and commerce are still being enforced in most of the civilized world, even if no others are.”
“And?”
I pull a small packet of papers out of my pocket. They’re ceremonial really. The real deeds and such are committed electronically. But this will help get the point across.
I hand it to Eric.
He opens them and shuffles through them.
“What’s this?”
“These are controlling shares in all your operations. For the last few weeks, I have been buying seats on the boards of companies, big and small, all of which operate under your umbrella.”
