Brutal Prince (Brutal Birthright)

I wish I’d remembered to steal her phone. I figured out her passcode by watching over her shoulder while she entered it—it’s 1799, not hard to remember. But in the craziness of our encounter with Zajac and the election right after, I forgot to look through it.

I should have done it last night while she was sleeping.

Now it’s fucking eating me alive.

I grab my own phone out of my pocket and call Jack. He picks up immediately.

“What’s up, boss?” he says.

“Where are you right now?”

“Ravenswood.”

“Is there a GPS tracker on Nessa’s Jeep?”

“Yeah. Your dad’s got them on all the vehicles.”

I let out a sigh of relief.

“Good. I want you to follow it. Aida’s running errands—I want you to see what she’s doing, where she goes.”

“You got it,” Jack says.

He doesn’t ask why, but I’m sure he can guess.

“Keep me posted. Tell me everything she does. And don’t lose track of her.”

“Understood.”

I hang up the phone.

I don’t feel great about siccing Jack on Aida—especially knowing how she feels about him. But I have to know what she’s doing. I have to know, once and for all, if Aida’s heart belongs to someone else, or if it might be available. Maybe even for me.

I still have to go to City Hall, so I take my father instead. He’s already talking about how we’ll parlay this into a mayoral campaign in a couple of years.

Plus, all the ways we can use the Aldermanship to enrich ourselves in the meantime.

I can barely pay attention to any of it. My hand keeps sneaking back into my pocket, clenching my phone so I can pick it up the moment Jack calls.

After about forty minutes, he texts me to say:

She’s somewhere around Jackson Park. I see the car, but I haven’t found her yet. Looking in the shops and cafes.

I’m strung tighter than a wire.

What’s in Jackson Park? Who is she meeting? I know she’s meeting someone, I can feel it.

My father puts his hand on my shoulder, startling me.

“You don’t look pleased,” he says. “What’s wrong, you don’t like the office?”

“No.” I shake my head. “It’s great.”

“What is it, then?”

I hesitate. My relationship with my father is based off of work. All our conversations center around the family business. Problems we need to fix, deals we need to make, ways we can expand. We don’t talk about personal things. Emotions. Feelings.

Still, I need advice.