The Bandit (The Stolen Duet 1)

I got a phone call from Z the moment my feet touched the pavement. “Where are you?” he questioned as soon as I picked up. The urgency in his tone made me tense.

“Leaving the lawyers. What’s up?”

“Dude,” Z blew out. “It’s way more fucked than we thought.”

I stopped dead on the sidewalk and forced the people walking by to move around me. “Tell me.”

“I know who disabled the system and took the book.”

“Well, don’t keep me in unnecessary suspense. Fucking tell me.”* * *I forced myselfnot to go to Mian when I walked through my father’s door and up his stairs. Lucas and Z were in his office bent over Z’s laptop with expressions to kill.

“Are you fucking sure?” I demanded without preamble. Their surprise at my sudden presence was evident.

“I’m sure, man. The IP address belonging to the public library was just a mask. The real IP address was buried among over a million existing addresses. It’s a coded system I don’t recognize. It’s designed so if I figured out the first was a fluke, I’d have to weed through too many to find the real one in time.”

“How did you figure this out?”

“You.”

“Me,” I repeated.

“When Lucas asked why Mian needed a mask for the ball you said—”

“So no one can see what I’m hiding underneath,” I finished.

“When I realized our system had been hacked, I checked the IP address. Using a public computer made enough sense for me not to question it. The person who checked out the computer was a ten-year-old kid in a wheelchair. His parents are dead from the crash that crushed his legs and the grandmother that takes care of him can barely see ten feet in front of her.”

“There’s just one thing that doesn’t make sense. Why would my mom steal the book? She hates the life my father led and between her new husband and me, she's a well-kept woman.”

My phone rang. I was tempted not to answer it until I saw it was my mother calling.

“Son,” she breathed. “How did the meeting with the lawyers go?”

“I inherited everything, Mother.” I couldn’t keep the ice from my tone. “I’m a very rich man.”

“I’m happy to hear it. Shame you won’t be able to spend all that blood money,” a voice that didn’t belong to my mother’s said.

It was Victor’s daughter, Eliana. I knew immediately what this was.

“You made a big mistake taking her.”

“She’s not all I took,” she cackled. “Or don’t you know?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

There was shuffling and then I heard, “Angel?”

No.

There was no fucking way.

I stormed out of the office with Lucas and Z already on my heels. “Don’t bother looking,” Eliana boasted. “You heard for yourself.”

“The only thing I hear is the sound of you screaming while I kill you.”

“I want to make a trade,” she stated confidently. “You can have your mom and girlfriend back alive if you come alone and die like all Knights should.”Chapter Fifty-NineThree can keep a secret…

MIANMy head continuedto throb long after I came to. The last thing I remember before everything went black was the look in my mother’s eyes when she begged me to forget her affair with my father’s best friend.

But that was thirteen years ago.

I stared at the concrete beneath my bound feet and willed myself to remember the moments before I was knocked unconscious. Lucas and Z had disappeared upstairs, leaving me alone, after they claimed my pacing after we returned to Crecia were making them dizzy.

The here and now came back into focus, but then I figured I must have been hallucinating when I heard Bea’s voice. Her voice sounded addled as she asked about a meeting, and then the same feminine voice spoke that I had heard seconds before I was knocked unconscious and brought here. The conversation was one-sided, so I figured out she was on the phone just before said phone was shoved against my ear.

“What the hell are you talking about?” an enraged voice spoke, which I recognized.

“Angel?” The phone was gone before I could say more. Had he set this whole thing up? I tried to lift my head, but it felt too heavy. I was little more than a tomb—dead and hollow.

Had Angel changed his mind about keeping me alive? I needed to tell him what I remembered before it was too late. I knew in my gut my dad didn’t betray and kill Art for his legacy. He killed him for fucking his wife. Art had been the one to betray my dad. Angel would have to see that.

“I’m sorry the accommodations are grossly unpleasant,” she whispered in my ear. “I’m afraid this was your boyfriend’s doing.”

Fear allowed me to finally lift my head. I took in the concrete walls with small windows too high to do me any good. The space was large and mostly empty except the chains that hung from the ceiling. It creeped me out enough to send a chill down my spine.