Own Me (The Wolf Hotel, #5)

“I knew she’d want to have a say on things, but I didn’t think she’d have our whole wedding planned before our plane landed. And all this? This was supposed to be Jed’s and my wedding. She’s just swapped out the grooms.” Which is especially surprising, given Mama was convinced Henry was the devil himself walking the earth until only recently.

“I am definitely not Fuckface,” Henry grumbles.

I hold up my phone to show Henry the picture of Mama’s wedding dress, pulled from storage and hanging in my bedroom in Greenbank. “Ready to be sized for me.”

He frowns. “Is that a bow?”

“One of several.”

He shakes his head. “Rethinking city hall yet?”

I groan.

Sullivan whistles before flashing a gap-toothed grin. “Gotta say, I thought my mother was demanding, but sounds like you’ve got your work cut out for you, Ms. Mitchell.”

I falter at his use of my name. I’ve never met this man, though I know Henry replaced the guards who let Scott into the penthouse. But then I remind myself that everyone in Wolf Tower’s security staff knows who I am. They’re paid to. “She’s going to ruin our wedding.”

“No, she isn’t.” Henry wraps his hand around my nape, his thumb drawing small, calming circles against my skin. “It’s your wedding. Tell her thanks, but no thanks.”

“If only it were that easy.”

The elevator approaches the lobby level and Henry’s chest rises, the only sign that the media attention bothers him. “No reporters inside, right?”

“None, sir. But your niece has been waiting for you for hours.”

Henry’s face screws up. “My niece. I don’t have—”

The elevator doors open with a ding, and another massive security guard waits outside to escort us to our penthouse elevator.

Henry’s still wearing that look of confusion when Sullivan gestures toward a girl of maybe sixteen sitting on a bench. “Are you saying she’s not related to you, sir?”

Henry’s mouth opens, but he falters on his answer.

The girl looks up, sees Henry, and jumps out of her seat, smoothing her hands over lengthy ash brown hair as she glances around her. Perhaps searching for an escape? She looks like any regular teenager, with blue jeans and an oversized gray hoodie and scuffed black and white Chucks.

“Sir, if she’s falsely impersonating your niece, we should get you—”

“It’s okay.” Henry waves Sullivan off, his face unreadable as he approaches her. “Hello. Who are you?”

She takes a deep, shaky breath as she meets his gaze.

There’s something so familiar about her. I can’t quite place it, though. Have I met her before?

“You told people you’re my niece. I only have one brother that I’m aware of. Are you saying Scott Wolf was your father?”

She clears her throat but doesn’t speak.

Henry crosses his arms, waiting for an answer. As if she weren’t already nervous enough, he will make it tenfold worse.

There’s a scuffle at the entrance. A photographer has managed to slide past the doorman and is in the lobby, snapping pictures of us as security guards close in. The distraction gives the girl time to bolt. In seconds, she’s running, ducking around bodies and out the door as we’re ushered to the elevator.





“She had to be, what, sixteen? Seventeen at most?”

“Or younger. It’s hard to tell sometimes.”

Henry stares up at the ceiling, the silky bedsheet pooled around his waist. “Scott would’ve had to be in his first or second year of college when she was born. He never mentioned anything to me about a daughter.”

“Would he, though? You guys weren’t close.”

“He didn’t hate me quite so much back then.” His lips twist. “Unless he didn’t know about her. That would explain why there’s no mention of her in his will. He was a fucking degenerate, but even he would leave something behind for his daughter. I have to believe that much about him.”

Henry’s mind has been spinning over the mystery girl since we got back to the safety of our home. We have no information to go on other than the name she gave to security when they asked her why she was loitering. Violet, she said it was, but who knows if that’s true. Henry demanded the security footage. We watched as the girl sat in the lobby for four hours, her foot tapping the marble floor, her fingernails probably bitten down to the quick for how often they ended up between her teeth. She got up and headed for the door at least a dozen times before returning to her seat, as if struggling with her decision to come here in the first place.

“The way she was dressed … You don’t think she was homeless, do you?”

I chuckle. “No, she’s just a teenager.”

“She looked scared.”

“A lot was going on. Security guards, reporters. And it’s you she was coming to see.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means.” The indomitable Henry Wolf, who fills a room just by stepping into it.

He smirks because he does know.

“Maybe she’ll come back.” I press my lips against Henry’s shoulder.

“I could send her picture to Dyson to see what he can dig up.” He makes a sound, as if disagreeing with his idea. “Likely nothing, unless she’s a criminal.”

“If she’s Scott’s daughter, then it’s in her blood,” I mutter, but then mentally chastise myself. It’s not her fault she got the short end as far as fathers go.

He snorts, but the frown marring his handsome face won’t relent. “Why would she come here?”





CHAPTER 3





I wake to my phone vibrating on the nightstand. I paw for it—torn between answering the call and shutting it off.

“My dear Abigail! Congratulations!” Margo’s seductive Parisian accent curls around my eardrum.

“Hmm? For what?” I blink at the alarm clock. Nine a.m., which means it’s midafternoon in Paris.

“Your engagement to Henry has made Page Six!”

The way she says Henry’s name—the H silent—always makes me smile. “Already?”

“Oui. I am sending it to you now. Un moment.”

With a soft, sleepy moan, I roll onto my back and stretch. The other side of the bed is empty. I’m not surprised that Henry is already up and gone. He was tossing and turning all night. I doubt he got any sleep. Still, it disappoints me. I didn’t get enough time alone with him before rejoining reality.

My phone jolts with an incoming text and I read the headline:

Exclusive: Henry Wolf Survives Alaskan Mine Collapse and Proposes to His Assistant

“Ugh. Ex-assistant!” Several screenshots appear and they’re full of pictures of the two of us—some as recent as last night, through the glass of Wolf Tower’s lobby doors—and others taken weeks ago at William Wolf’s funeral. There’s even one of us from that dreaded night of Wolf Cove’s grand opening in early summer when I was so sure Henry was cheating on me.

“Does it say how they found out?” They’ve made a point of drawing a red circle around my hand with an added arrow pointing at my left ring finger, but it’s impossible to see the ring.

“How they always find out. ‘An anonymous source close to the family.’”

That could be anyone from a fellow churchgoer to Lucy from the feed store with the way my mother’s lips have surely been flapping since yesterday morning. “What else does it say?”

“That you are to marry in that barn of yours.”