Page 13 of Bent Out of Shade
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Well,shit. I nodded, mostly to compose my thoughts. Please don’t let his fiancée be one of Zev’s vamps. Things were so strained between Zev and Tatiana that there was no way we could encroach on his territory without getting his permission, even to investigate this case. “Are they a vampire?”
“No. She’s Sapien.”
Not a search for a wayward vampire bride, and thus of no concern to BatKian. My shoulders descended a notch. But only a notch. “May I ask your intentions once she’s found?”
His brow furrowed. “I’m going to marry her.”
His genuine confusion over the question eased my fears that he wanted her located to enact vengeance. Much as I really didn’t want to ask the follow-up, I had to. “Could she have gone missing of her own volition?”
It was a woman’s prerogative, after all.
“No.” His fangs descended, his eyes blazing red, and I flinched, calculating how fast I could tip my chair into the shadows and escape. The vampire wrestled his anger under control, his fangs retracting first and his irises flipping between red and brown before settling into their regular chocolate color. “I’m not used to being questioned.”
I almost snorted. I’d never have guessed.
“We’ve kept our relationship secret for a number of reasons,” he said.
“A vampire marrying a Sapien is unusual,” I conceded, “but it’s not illegal. Even if you were planning to turn her, that’s permitted.” Much to my disgust.
“Bree has no desire to stop being human. Not now, at least. Maybe in the far-off future she’ll choose differently…” His gaze went soft and his hand flitted to his left ring finger.
I gentled my tone. “You love her a great deal and I’ll do everything I can to find her, but I need more details. Why else did you keep the relationship secret? Would your public persona as a club owner be problematic for friends or family?”
“Bree doesn’t have any family and very few close friends. They don’t know that I’m a vampire, but they are aware of our relationship and that I’m a businessman from Vegas.” He shook his head. “She’s in a job that is rife with conflict. I expect someone in her professional life has come after her.”
This was getting more interesting by the moment because my first assumption was that a fellow vampire had gone after her as Vincenzo’s weak link. “Do you have any enemies who would strike at you through Bree?”
He broke the arm off his chair like he was snapping a pencil in half. “She is not missing because of me.”
I bowed my head so he didn’t see my eye roll. Typical arrogant vampire, refusing to entertain that he might be at fault. “Apologies. I didn’t mean to suggest that was the case. However—”
He growled and I quickly changed the topic.
“What does Bree do?” I checked in on Emmett, but he was as well as could be for a giant paperweight. I just had to hope that Vincenzo made good on his word and restored him.
“She’s a lawyer. You might know her as Sabrina Mayhew.”
“Fuck me!” I clapped my hand over my mouth at my impropriety, my eyes wide and my heart hammering. “I, uh, mean, Sabrina is your fiancée? But she was all over the news two days ago when the verdict came out.”
“She nailed that pendejo.” The pride in his voice was unmistakable.
“Did Paxton Craig have magic?”
“No.”
“Is that why you contacted Tatiana instead of a fixer here in Vegas? Sabrina lives in Vancouver and we give you the home turf advantage?”
“That and because very few of the older generation of machers have survived to Tatiana’s age. It speaks to a certain…” He drew his brows together as if searching for the right word. “Resiliency.”
No kidding. A macher was the Yiddish word for both a big shot and a fixer. It was a testament to Tatiana’s skill and intelligence that she’d hadn’t merely survived, she was still in the magic fixer game.
“When was the last time you spoke with Sabrina?” I said.
“After the trial’s end,” he said. “Bree was taking her staff out for dinner and drinks Friday night in thanks, then she was supposed to fly here yesterday for our private ceremony. There’s no way she would have missed it.” He held my gaze a beat too long as if daring me to refute that point. Not being suicidal, I didn’t. “I’m unable to get hold of her now.”
“Assuming she wasn’t in an accident—”
