One cannot steal what’s already stolen.
ANGEL
Present
I sent Mian and Caylen home with Lucas and Z while I met with family lawyers to settle the estate.
Home.
It was easy to think Mian’s home was with me and hard to remember it wasn’t.
“Per the will, you are the sole heir of the Knight estate…” I tuned the lawyers out as they droned on with their legal garble. I would inherit a whole bunch of money, a big house, produce an heir, and not fuck it up. Yada yada…
My mind was stuck on my stepfather. Victor couldn’t keep his eyes off of Mian during the funeral and reception. I wanted to confront him, but there were too many eyes and ears around. I was confident the confrontation would have led to death. Instead, I hid Mian before Victor could get to her and decided against telling her anything to keep her from freaking out. It didn’t help that my mom had chosen that moment to discover Mian’s attendance. Luckily, Lucas had intercepted before I could.
Time dragged. but when the jargon finally stopped, I signed some papers, and they promised to be in touch. I didn’t waste time leaving the offices. My struggle to not put a bullet in Victor didn’t keep from me sensing Mian’s uneasiness when I sent her home. During the meeting, I had to force myself to ignore the demand in the pit of my stomach to go to her. As I jogged down the steps, I replayed what had happened between us upstairs. Nothing we said could have completely drained the color from her face. Something was up.
I got a phone call from Z the moment my feet touched the pavement. “Where are you?” he questioned as soon as I picked up. The urgency in his tone made me tense.
“Leaving the lawyers. What’s up?”
“Dude,” Z blew out. “It’s way more fucked than we thought.”
I stopped dead on the sidewalk and forced the people walking by to move around me. “Tell me.”
“I know who disabled the system and took the book.”
“Well, don’t keep me in unnecessary suspense. Fucking tell me.”
* * *
I forced myself not to go to Mian when I walked through my father’s door and up his stairs. Lucas and Z were in his office bent over Z’s laptop with expressions to kill.
“Are you fucking sure?” I demanded without preamble. Their surprise at my sudden presence was evident.
“I’m sure, man. The IP address belonging to the public library was just a mask. The real IP address was buried among over a million existing addresses. It’s a coded system I don’t recognize. It’s designed so if I figured out the first was a fluke, I’d have to weed through too many to find the real one in time.”
“How did you figure this out?”
“You.”
“Me,” I repeated.
“When Lucas asked why Mian needed a mask for the ball you said—”
“So no one can see what I’m hiding underneath,” I finished.
“When I realized our system had been hacked, I checked the IP address. Using a public computer made enough sense for me not to question it. The person who checked out the computer was a ten-year-old kid in a wheelchair. His parents are dead from the crash that crushed his legs and the grandmother that takes care of him can barely see ten feet in front of her.”
“There’s just one thing that doesn’t make sense. Why would my mom steal the book? She hates the life my father led and between her new husband and me, she's a well-kept woman.”
My phone rang. I was tempted not to answer it until I saw it was my mother calling.
“Son,” she breathed. “How did the meeting with the lawyers go?”
“I inherited everything, Mother.” I couldn’t keep the ice from my tone. “I’m a very rich man.”
“I’m happy to hear it. Shame you won’t be able to spend all that blood money,” a voice that didn’t belong to my mother’s said.
It was Victor’s daughter, Eliana. I knew immediately what this was.
“You made a big mistake taking her.”
“She’s not all I took,” she cackled. “Or don’t you know?”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
There was shuffling and then I heard, “Angel?”
No.
There was no fucking way.
I stormed out of the office with Lucas and Z already on my heels. “Don’t bother looking,” Eliana boasted. “You heard for yourself.”
“The only thing I hear is the sound of you screaming while I kill you.”
“I want to make a trade,” she stated confidently. “You can have your mom and girlfriend back alive if you come alone and die like all Knights should.”