I set my glass aside and stood, needing to move, and walked to the tall window with its sparkling view of Detroit. At first, my own reflection bounced back at me, then I focused on the building across the street, lit up in the dark.
How long had Jolyn known about shifters? Was it recent knowledge, or had she known from before she worked for me? Wasthatthe reason she applied for the job?
I crossed my arms, not really seeing what was in front of me, remembering how Jolyn looked when I woke up in their converted warehouse. Beautiful as always, but haggard, stressed. Too much weight on her shoulders. She hadn’t wanted me to leave, citing her brother as the reason. Because she knew I was a shifter?
I rubbed my jaw, replaying our conversation. I’d been purposefully harsh. She’d betrayed me, hurt me, and I thought she’d deserved it. A sick sensation swam in my stomach. Emerson Mahn was the one using those collars. If she’d come to work for me, thieved because of her brother… What had she shouted?
You grew up with me and my brother, and you were totally clueless. Just like everyone else in that town.
“Bloody hell,” I whispered, my breath fogging the window. What else had Mahn made her do?
I closed my eyes. I’d basically called Jolyn her brother’s whore without realizing it.
And she meant to bring him down. All those weapons I’d seen…
A person needs decent headquarters when they’re trying to take down an empire.
Whatever she’d done in the past, she was in mortal danger now. Maybe she had been her whole life and no one ever knew it. I’d rarely seen her father, and knew her mother had been in a wheelchair most of Jolyn’s childhood. They’d lived in one of those houses with a maid, a cook, and a gardener. With her mother being a mentally impaired quadriplegic, and her father never home, what kind of life had she led at the mercy of someone like Emerson Mahn?
I owed her an apology—for the things I’d said to her and assuming the worst. She’d told me not everything between us was a lie, and maybe I could believe her now. I’d fallen in love with her for her quiet fierceness, her gentleness toward the weak, and her sharp wit. When we’d been together, I’d never felt more whole. If she felt a fraction of that…
Turning away from the window, I found Walker and Kane staring at me with furrowed brows. Before they could voice the questions in their eyes, I asked Walker, “How did Mahn pick you up in the first place?”
With a long exhale, he leaned forward and pressed his elbows against his knees. “After you sent me to find Jolyn, I stumbled across this warehouse her brother owned, but it was through another company and, I don’t know, it got my spidey senses tingling, so I went to investigate.” He shook his head. “The place was guarded like a prison with all the barbwire. I knew there was no way I could get inside without being seen. Not as I was, anyway. I needed gear. I was about to leave, when along comes Sabrina, pretty as you please and smelling as good as sin, and before I could get her out, we were jumped by three cougar shifters. Sabrina got away for the time being, but they shot me full of drugs, knocking me out, and shipped me to Alaska in a crate.”
I closed my eyes.Son of a bitch.I’d sent him there. “I’m sorry,” I said, meeting his gaze square on.
“It wasn’t your fault. Not really,” Walker said, his voice gentler. “You didn’t make the sick fuck employ shifters to hurt people.”
I shook my head, not accepting the rationalization.
Walker went on. “I don’t know how he was able to do it. Mahn controlled them with these chips in the back of their necks.” He rubbed his own reflexively. “Those collars they put on us… You’d almost beg to die they could make it hurt so bad.” His hand dropped into his lap. “From the sounds of it, Kane took care of the one cougar at his cabin, and a few others of Mahn’s shifters. Sabrina killed another one when we escaped the compound, and my old team killed the last. There’s always a chance Mahn has more of those brainwashed fuckers up his sleeve somewhere, but at least the three who’d attacked us are gone.”
That was a lot of bodies my friends were responsible for. Would legal repercussions follow? If they did, I’d spend as much of my money as was required to get them clear of it. They didn’t deserve punishment for defending themselves and running for their lives.
“Clyborne is going to send a team to take out that place.” Walker’s voice might have been quiet, but there was steel in it.
“Which place?”
“Where they picked me up.”
That was good. It meant no one else would fall victim if they went poking around. “When?”
“I don’t know. Soon. Tonight or tomorrow.”
Before he could say anything further, the sound of jostling at the door to the suite grabbed our attention. Both Walker and Kane were on their feet, heading to their mates in the next instant. The sisters had their arms slung around each other, bumping into the door frame when they tried to enter at the same time. They were a matching set of opposites, one blonde, the other a brunette, but both beautiful.
Laughing, the sisters headed toward their men. It had only been minutes since we’d all been together, but from the way my friends pulled their women to them, you’d think days had passed.
Two newly mated couples.I rubbed my knuckles over my jaw. I should have gotten them their own floor.
“These suites are amazing, Landon,” Brooke said to me from the circle of Kane’s arms. “Thanks for arranging them.”
“My pleasure.”
On the other side of the coffee table, Walker pulled Sabrina down with him onto the sofa, cradling her in his lap, his hand on her ass. With her wavy brown hair spilling over his chest, she tucked her head under his chin and hugged his torso.
I’d only just met her, but she seemed a serious sort, a contradiction to her more free-spirited sister. Maybe it was what she’d suffered at the hands of a madman that made her so stoic. I could hardly blame her.
