Chapter 9: Hidden Heir: Chapter 9

Brooke falls asleep almost instantly, latched onto my side like she belongs there.

She does belong there.

I gaze at her through the darkness and gently run my fingers down the side of her face. The mark on her cheek will bruise tomorrow. I know all too well what the wound on her shoulder is. I’ve given my fair share over the years, but Brooke isn’t from my world, which leads me to believe there’s someone out there that thinks it’s okay to mark her up and abuse her.

Someone who won’t be living much longer.

Once I’m certain she’s deeply asleep, I gently scoop her up into my arms and carry her back through to my bedroom, where her daughter is fast asleep in my bed. I don’t know anything about children, but something tells me Brooke would much prefer to wake up next to her kid rather than in a strange room by herself. It takes some careful maneuvering, but I’m able to get her into the bed and tuck the blankets over her. With a final kiss on her forehead, I leave the room.

Rik is hurrying up the stairs as I step into the hallway.

“Find anything?”

He shakes his head and hands me a device. “I’ve cloned her phone for you. The car is hers, and we’re tracking its last known movements through the city. We know she crashed into a telephone pole, but it’s a bit harder to track the further into the city we go.”

I nod as I turn on the phone and Brooke’s home screen flashes up at me. In her photo album, there are countless pictures of floral arrangements and her daughter, but none of the mysterious man she turned up with.

“Do we know who he is yet?”

“Nope,” Rik sighs. “No ID on him but he’s high as a fucking kite. Looks like he’s on some good shit, too. You think they’re both on it?”

“No, Brooke is clean. There were no marks on her, not from needles anyway, and she didn’t seem high. Do you think he’s a cigar smoker?” Closing the device, I slide it into my pocket and look at Rik.

Rik shrugs. “Didn’t smell like one so I don’t think so.”

That doesn’t rule him out as being the source of Brooke’s pain but it does take him off the top of the list. “Alright. I want you outside that room. No one goes in, but if she wants out, let her. But you stay with her, understand? Shadow her if you have to. I want eyes on her at all times.”

Rik nods. “Understood,” he says, then moves past me to stand at the bedroom door.

I head downstairs to my office, pausing only to inform a few guards that we won’t be accepting any more visitors of any kind unless I’ve personally invited them. In my office, I pour myself a Vodka, draining it immediately while mulling over the sudden turn of events. My mystery woman turned up on my doorstep, drenched and injured, and then threw herself into my arms. I reason she was merely seeking to distract me. I happily gave in to it because I couldn’t pass up the chance to experience her once more.

She was everything I remembered and then some. But again, why is she here? And after so many years, how did she even find me?

Reclining in my chair, I link her phone to my computer and begin to go through her socials just as my own phone bleeps to life with an incoming call.

“Hello?”

“About time, Boss, I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour.”

Selina used to be one of the best assassins this family had ever seen. She recently had a change of heart, however, and now she’s one of my most trusted bodyguards. It was a change in paperwork only. Selina’s still her own woman with her own agenda, but she’s always around when I need her, sometimes with scary timing. If I didn’t know any better, I’d suspect she has a clone of my phone.

“Sorry, I was busy. What’s up?”

“The Irish,” she sighs. I hear the click of a lighter before the subtle hiss of embers flaring at the end of her cigarette. “Something has them up in arms, something serious. I haven’t seen movement like this since the cartel moved into the city and started acting like kings.”

“The Murphys?”

“Not yet. The big Irish dogs haven’t moved. It’s one of the smaller families that’s kicking up a stink. They’re on the warpath about something but whatever it is, they’re keeping it close to their chest.”

I tap through Brooke’s Instagram, nodding to myself. “Business of smaller rats is rarely our concern,” I murmur. If it was the Murphys, the head of the Irish families, then I’d definitely be concerned, but there is discourse among the smaller families all the time. It’s par for the course in our world. Still, things have been peaceful for a while so I would be a fool to completely disregard it.

“Keep an eye on it, see what you can find out. Can’t hurt for us to stay informed if the Irish are restless.”

“Will do,” Selina replies. “By the way, apologize to Rik for me, I blew up his phone when I couldn’t get ahold of you.”

“I will. That was because of Brooke, by the way.”

“Brooke?”

“You remember the woman from the bar four years ago?”

“The woman from the— oh! The mysterious best fuck of your life, woman? The only person I’ve ever seen the big bad Russian wolf pine for?”

“Yeah,” I snort. “She’s here.”

“You serious?”

“Yes. She just turned up with some guy and a kid.”

“And you let her in?”

“Of course I fucking did.”

“You better have someone checking her out,” Selina warns. “If you get assassinated because you were obsessing over pussy, I’ll kill you.”

“I got this, trust me,” I reply, chuckling. “But thanks for the concern.” My phone bleeps and a glance at the screen makes my chest tighten. “I gotta go.”

“See ya.”

Selina hangs up and I immediately connect to my father’s incoming call. “Sir?” Instinct makes me straighten in the chair, and I glance at the clock. It’s the middle of the night and I can’t fathom why he’s calling.

“Leontiy, you need to get to the distribution center,” he barks down the line. “The shipment from Canada arrived early and I need it verified.”

“Understood. I’ll leave right away.”

“Good,” my father barks. “And remember, this shipment will clear us for April, so make sure everything is pristine.”

“I will.”

Dawn breaks as I stride into the warehouse and meet one of our men in charge of carrying our product across the border. He greets me with a tired smile born from hours of driving on the road, then motions for me to follow him up a set of metal stairs to the catwalks above.

“Any trouble getting across?” I ask, taking the offered clipboard once we reach the top.

“Nah, smooth sailing,” he replies. “Like always.”

“Any losses on the road?”

“Nope, all in the same condition as when I left.”

“Any faults?”

“One, but we dealt with it at the border and it’s all sorted.”

“Alright.” I flip back and forth through the various sheets detailing everything about the shipment in code. It all looks good on paper so I wave my hand up. Whoever was keeping an eye out leaps into action, the sound of metal locks echoing around the warehouse. Down below on the warehouse floor, several containers are hauled open by men from the family, and the product stumbles out one after the other.

“One hundred and thirty-six women,” says the man next to me, “and eighty men.”

I barely glance at the naked shivering people who stumble out of the containers and are herded into small enclosures for further inspection. From up here, they look like ants milling about below. No one has any bite left in them—that was worked out long before they were shipped here—and we pride ourselves in making sure that obedience is locked in before they are sold.

“Which one was faulty?” I ask, scrawling my signature on the paper.

“That one.” He points down to one of the men huddling near a corner. He’s curled in on himself and looks smaller than the rest. “He was sick a lot before we crossed over.”

“Alright.” I hand the clipboard back and sigh, rubbing at the back of my neck. “Get them all tattooed and marked and get a doctor in for the faulty one. If it’ll cost us to fix him just get rid of him. The rest, if they pass inspection, will be paid for in full.”

“Understood. This makes us even for the lost container, correct?”

I fix him with a level stare and watch as he slowly edges away from me. “You mean the container from Europe that fell into the ocean during transit?” I ask quietly. Such a loss was a brutal blow to us six months ago, and it forced us to reevaluate how we transported people across international waters. But with this shipment the money we lost has been replaced, and trust is slowly being rebuilt.

“Yes,” I say eventually, and the man visibly relaxes. “But if it ever happens again, it’ll be you and your crew at the bottom of the ocean.”

“I know,” he nods sheepishly, clutching the clipboard to his chest.

My phone buzzing takes my attention, and I glance down to read a message from Rik. Brooke and her mystery man are awake.

“I have things to take care of,” I say, patting the man on the shoulder as I pass. “Make sure this lot has moved on by midday.”

I leave him to it, trusting in his crew’s ability to get the stock where they need to be, and head back to the estate. Normally I’d stay longer and do a closer check of the product, but we have enough checks in place along the route to ensure that only the best, healthiest people move on to be sold. I’ve made a lot of changes since I came into power, but the main one is making sure people don’t stay in the same place longer than twelve hours. We don’t need anyone thinking they can make a run for it.

But Brooke is more of a pressing concern for me right now. I have a lot of questions that need answering. They swirl around my mind as I finally arrive home and seek her out in the kitchen.

She stands with her back to me, her hair scooped to the side over one shoulder, her attention on her child. She’s dressed in jeans and a loose flannel, and my heart squeezes at the sight of her, but I know I have to hold myself back.

I need answers.

“Brooke?”

She tenses up like a board and slowly glances over her shoulder. “Hi.”

“You owe me some answers.”