I threw him a look that said “are you fuckin’ kidding me?” then blinked at him a long moment. “You weren’t answering my calls, because I,” I drawled slowly, “hurt your feelings.”
Julius narrowed his eyes at me before turning back to the road. A while later, he spoke. “Okay, so Aslan is feeding Ling info.” He looked in the rearview mirror to look at Happy. “That’s the only thing that makes sense. The question is, why?”
It was obvious.
Happy reluctantly uttered, “Because they’re a thing.”
“Because they’re a thing,” Julius repeated, sighing under his breath.
Ling was suicidal if she thought The Dragons would look past this transgression.
No. They’d have her head on a platter.
Maybe that was the smartest way around our problem, to let her destroy herself.
“Okay.” I looked out the window of the moving car. “Let’s go have a word with the Turk.”
The house was a fortress. It was huge, imposing, and they had security to match Alcatraz. But we had something they didn’t.
Happy.
From the backseat, he typed quickly on the laptop. “Give me a sec.” He kept typing. “They’ve got two consecutive systems running at the same time. It’s confusing.” His fingers moved fast along the keyboard. “Okay, I’m getting there now.” The sounds of buttons clicking was doing my head in. “One more command and—” He hit Enter. “—they’re offline.” He looked from me to Julius. “Let’s go. I don’t know how long till they realize and send someone to fix what I fucked up.”
Pulling the hood over my head, I stepped out of the car and opened the app Happy installed on my phone. I pointed it to the three-door garage and hit the button. One of the doors began to rise, and I turned back to Happy, my face solemn. “Fuck me.”
Happy simply lifted a brow and grinned.
The man knew his shit.
The right technology in the wrong hands was a dangerous thing.
We all moved inside and I hit the button again, closing the door behind us. There was a door at the back of the wide-open space, and when I made it there, I gently put my hand to the knob and tried to twist, but it had no give. It was locked. Julius lifted his hand and tapped lightly next to the keypad attached to the door. I stepped back as Happy moved in, opened the plastic casing, and fiddled with the wires. Moments later, the red light turned green, and when Happy tried the knob, it turned.
We were in.
The moment the door opened, a feminine voice called out, “I thought you said you were going to be late?” We moved down the hall, weapons drawn, and she went on with, “Well, I just started season three of Game of Thrones. Come watch with me.” She chuckled. “I swear to God, Az, this stuff is so screwe—” When she came into view, her head jolted in shock, her wide eyes darted between the three of us, and she whispered, “Oh.”
The young woman in the wheelchair was overly thin, her big brown eyes wide with fear, her long black hair pulled into a low ponytail. She wore a thick sweater and had a blanket pulled over her lap. Her full lips parted in distress, as she spoke quietly, “Are you going to kill me?”
I felt like an asshole. She was clearly unwell. But that wasn’t my problem. “I don’t know yet.” I stepped closer to her, my tone gentle. “That depends on your husband.”
Surprisingly, she held my stare with the strength of the queen she was. “Well,” she sighed. “He’s not going to be home till late.” She used her hands to spin the wheelchair around and started to move slowly. “So, come on in, I guess.”
We followed closely behind her, and when she made it into the cozy-looking family room, she settled herself in front of the heater, taking in its warmth, rubbing her legs and wincing. She looked back and swept an arm out toward the sofa. “Sit.”
Before I sat, I went to her and held out my hand. “Phone.”
Looking up at me with those haunting eyes, she pulled her cell out from under the blanket, and I saw the Messages screen was opened and the single word written there was Help. Luckily, she hadn’t sent it yet. My eyes narrowed on her and she shrugged, appearing mildly sheepish. “Can’t blame me for trying.”
No, I couldn’t.
While Happy and Julius sat on the sofa with their guns out, I pulled up a stool from the breakfast bar and sat by the frail-looking woman. She watched me closely, and I uttered, “You probably don’t remember me—”
But she cut me off with a matter-of-fact, “I remember you.”
Okay. Good.
That was good.
Then she knew what I was capable of.
We didn’t speak for a while after that, but when the hour mark passed, I was getting bored of waiting. When I saw the woman’s eyes blink slowly, tiredly, I cleared my throat. The second her weary eyes settled on me, I uttered, “What’s wrong with you?”
The words weren’t cruel, just curious.
She smiled sadly. “Multiple Sclerosis.”
I sighed in sympathy, shaking my head lightly. “Sorry.”
“That’s okay.” She grinned, but it was so strained it came out a grimace. “Maybe you’ll put me out of my misery tonight.”
No, I wouldn’t. “Yeah, maybe.”
Another hour and I was ready to ask the now sleeping woman if she had a deck of cards or checkers or some-fuckin’-thing—anything, to help pass the time.
That was when the garage door opened and heavy footfalls approached. “Asya?” Before he entered, she stirred, blinking through sleep. He called out, “The fucking servers are offline again.” He sounded frustrated. “I swear to God, tatl?m. I’ve had it with this monitoring bullshit. It’s like I’m paying them to dick me arou—”
When he stepped into the family room, his eyes settled on me sitting by his wife, and when he saw the groggy state of her, he lunged. “You prick.” He rushed forward, and Happy and Julius stood, pointing their weapons at him. Panting, Aslan had the good sense to put his hands up and take a step back. He looked at me, his nostrils flaring in anger. He spoke through gritted teeth, “She’s ill.”
I used the barrel of my gun to scratch my temple. “I can see that.” I looked back at Asya, who was now looking at her husband with wide, apologetic eyes, and I turned back to him. “I’ve been a perfect gentleman, haven’t I, Asya?”
The vein in Aslan’s temple bulged as his face screwed up and he threw a pointed finger at me. He hissed out, “You don’t speak her name!”
He clearly loved this woman. What the fuck was he doing with Ling?
I chanced a look at the woman.
The only thing that made sense was that he wasn’t getting sex at home.
My lips thinned.
Bad choices led to bad circumstances, and he was stuck now. I hoped Ling was worth it.
“I’m fine,” said the woman beside me. “He hasn’t done anything, a?k?m.” She blinked at me, swallowing hard. “Not yet.”
Relief washed over Aslan and he tried to calm himself. He looked between the three of us vigilantly, taking in his position, his surroundings. His impending doom. “Why are you here?”
“You know why, Sadik.” My tone low, I uttered, “I’m here about a woman.”
Aslan looked confused.
“A woman who up until a couple weeks ago thought I was dead.”
The fucking Turk started to catch on.
“A deadly viper,” I explained. “A Dragon who came to my home in the middle of the night, made a threatening gesture to my woman, and put a target on her pretty little head.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he uttered, but his narrowed eyes spoke volumes.
He was willing to talk, but not in front of his wife.
Well, fuck him.
I never did play by the rules. Had he forgotten who I was?
The throne belonged to someone else, but we all knew if I wanted it back, all I had to do was claim it as mine.