Page 90 of Reckless Seduction
Shit. That isn’t good.
“I didn’t just come here to tell you my story, Bailey,” he assures me darkly. “I come to show you exactly what happens to those who double-cross me.”
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small cattle prod.
Well, shit.
“So,” he smirks, his eyes lighting up, “let’s begin.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
It wasn’t meantto be this way.
She was supposed to be a means to an end.
Nothing else.
We’d have our fun with her and hand her over. That had been the plan we discussed without Father the night we found out she was a Crowe.
Then she took our hearts.
All of them.
Even our father developed a softness for her. But still, the plan didn’t waiver.
Not until we learned who she really is.
We’ve been wondering how Crowe has managed to keep Eriksen under his thumb and now we know.
Bailey.
What we don’t know is how Crowe managed to get his hands on her.
Bridgett is still pulling the pieces together.
None of us could have known that Crowe wasn’t her real father or that he already had plans in motion to sell her. His original plan had been to hand her over to be groomed before being put on the auction block. Us involving her in our schemeand then outing her moved up his timeline. Something that made her ex-fiancé, Drew, livid.
Ex-fiancé.
That word doesn’t fit when she was fucking sold to him.
“Goddamn it!”
We’d been lucky that Crowe believed us when we informed him that we were looking at backing his presidential bid. He’d been skeptical at first, especially since getting in bed with him means putting our hands into the skin trade. Something we’ve always been fiercely against. However, Kiernan has managed to sell him on the fact that we are looking at expanding the business once our father hands over the reins to the kingdom next year.
And the greedy sucker bought it.
“Calm down, brother,” Kiernan huffs from across the room.
“Don’t tell me to calm the fuck down,” I roar at him from my seat. “It’s your fault she is in this position in the first place. If you hadn’t insisted we go through with the fucking plan, she would be here and not God knows where.”
Kiernan looks thoroughly chastised. “We’ll find her,” he assures me with a confidence I don’t have. Because we haven’t found her yet.
Everything is coming up empty.
I scoff. “And if we don’t?” I ask. “Crowe is watching us closely. Too closely. If he thinks we’re going after Bailey, it’s over. We need to take him down, or else he could easily give the order to Lina before we can get to her.”
“Vas has men on both Crowe and Lina,” Kiernan assures me. “We just need one of them to slip up enough to get the information we need. Bridgett is putting together everything we need to ruin Crowe at the speech he is giving next week, announcing his presidential bid.”
