Arriving on his level, she walked out of the elevator and toward the living room, surprised to find Hunter standing over by the floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the city. He turned around, and when he saw it was her, a sneer formed on his lips right before he downed the rest of the amber liquid in the glass he held. He’d clearly arrived after she’d gone to Tempest’s place, and who knew how many glasses of alcohol he’d already consumed, but judging by the resentful look he cast Arabella’s way, things didn’t bode well for her.
This Wilder sibling wasn’t as benevolent or compassionate as his sister had just been. No, there was loathing in his eyes as he raked his contemptuous gaze down the length of her, then back up again.
“Ahhh, Maddux’s kept woman,” he said caustically as he set his empty glass on the living room table and slowly strolled toward where she was standing, stopping a few feet away. “What is it about you that’s gotten under my brother’s skin? That he’d so carelessly throw away fucking years of planning for a woman he should despise just as much as her father?”
The anger in his voice was palpable, and Arabella lifted her chin and held her ground. “Whatever my father did, I had no part of.”
“No, of course you didn’t,” he drawled in a patronizing tone, close enough now that she could smell the alcohol on his breath. “But that doesn’t change the fact that you’re Theodore’s blood, and you’re probably just as conniving as your father and you’re trying to mess with my brother’s head. But make no mistake, Arabella Cole. You’re nothing more than a harlot to him. A whore that he’s going to get tired of, and then he’ll get his shit together and finish what your father started and drag both Gavin and Theodore down to the depths of hell, where they fucking belong.”
Arabella’s hands clutched into fists at her sides at Hunter’s derogatory remark, and keeping her own temper in check took effort. “Even though you deserve to be slapped across the face for your rude comment about me, I’m going to let it slide because you’re clearly drunk and angry.”
“Why the fuck shouldn’t I be angry?” he yelled, loud and belligerent. “Your goddamn father killed our parents.”
Arabella gasped, feeling as though all the oxygen had suddenly been sucked out of the room. Shock kept her entire body rooted to the spot, and she prayed that somehow, someway, she’d misheard Hunter. “What did you say?”
“I said, your prick of a father killed my mother and father,” he said, his voice calmer but no less harsh. “All because he was so fucking greedy he extorted monthly payments from small businesses like my parents’ diner. And when they were so tapped out financially and couldn’t pay what Theodore demanded, he decided to teach them a lesson that cost both of them their lives.”
The horrifying image that Hunter painted in Arabella’s mind caused hot tears to fill her eyes. “You have to be mistaken,” she rasped. She didn’t want to believe it. She was beginning to think her father was capable of many illegal and criminal activities, but murder? She was having a difficult time wrapping her mind around the possibility, but if it was true, then oh, God . . .
A sob escaped her throat, her heart felt as though it was splintering in two, and all she could think was that she had to confront her father, face-to-face. She desperately needed straight answers. No more evading her questions. No more lies. She had to look in his eyes and know if he was really capable of ending two innocent people’s lives.
She spun around and rushed toward the elevator.
“Where are you going?” Hunter demanded.
He sounded so much like Maddux in that moment—authoritative and as though his voice alone ought to halt her in her tracks. But unlike his brother’s commands, Hunter’s brusque tone did nothing to dissuade Arabella. She had no loyalty to Hunter, and wasn’t this what he wanted? Her out of his brother’s life?
“I’m going to find out the truth from my father,” she said, her voice a shredded wreck. “I need to hear it from him because I can’t believe he’d do something so horrific.” Or rather, she didn’t want to believe it, but the churning in her stomach was not a good omen.
“Arabella, stop
,” Hunter said, more forcefully this time.
She ignored him, her gaze going to the numbers above the elevator doors that indicated that someone was using the lift and heading to the upper floors. Feeling unsettled and anxious and upset, she decided she wasn’t going to wait around for the elevator to arrive when there was an alternate route that would get her to the lobby, then out to the main street, much quicker. And from there, once she was out of the building, she’d either catch a cab or call an Uber to take her to her father’s place in the city.
Hearing Hunter’s footsteps behind her and not wanting to give him the chance to stop her from leaving, she darted down the side hallway and pushed out the emergency exit door that led to a stairwell. His string of curses hit her ears just as the door slammed shut behind her and she raced down the spiral of stairs until she burst free into the lobby, ran out the main doors of the building, and headed down the street toward the next block.
Once and for all, Arabella wasn’t going to let up on her father until she knew everything, even if it was painful for her to hear—and dear God, she was expecting the worst. Because when her relationship with her father flashed through her mind, she realized she’d spent so many years away from home in boarding school and college. What did she really know about him, his business, and what he did outside of the idyllic home life he’d created for the two of them?
She hadn’t known about her father’s gambling addiction or the astronomical debt he’d accumulated, or the fact that he’d willingly signed all his assets over to what had been the equivalent of a loan shark. They’d been living a lie and she hadn’t even known, and the possibility that her father was cold and calculating enough to extort money from small businesses—as Hunter had claimed—to possibly feed his gambling issue or fund their lavish lifestyle made her nauseous.
Cars drove along the street, but there were no cabs to hail. Keeping a fast walk, she unlocked her phone and pressed on the Uber app to request a ride, and right before she completed the process, a black Mercedes with tinted windows came to a stop a few feet ahead of her along the curb. The back door opened right in front of where she was walking, and before she could skirt around it, a man she didn’t recognize stepped out, grabbed her arm, and yanked her back into the vehicle with him.
It all happened so fast she didn’t even have time to scream. But she did hear Maddux yell her name right before the door slammed shut and the car merged back into the flow of traffic, leaving her sitting next to a scary-looking man with a jagged scar slashed across his face, and ice-cold fear running through her veins.
Chapter 19
Considering the outstanding way his meeting in the city had gone with ethical law enforcement officials, Maddux ought to be in a fucking fantastic mood. Instead, as he parked his car in his designated spot in the underground parking structure and headed into the lobby of his building, dread settled like a ten-ton weight on his chest because his elation was coming at the steep cost of ripping Arabella’s entire world apart.
But there was no stopping the wheels that had been set in motion for what was going to take place tomorrow, and as much as he’d come to care for Arabella—more than he’d ever believed was possible—he’d already disappointed his brother and sister once, and letting them down again wasn’t an option. He’d promised them both that he’d make things right, and he refused to let this golden opportunity slip through his fingers when Theodore and Gavin deserved to rot in hell.
Or in this case, in prison. Possibly, for the rest of their lives.
Maddux wearily scrubbed a hand along the light scrape of beard covering his jawline, honestly wishing that he’d met Arabella under better, more normal circumstances, instead of taking her in exchange for her father’s debt. Maybe things would have ended up differently for them, but he’d never know and he wouldn’t dwell on the recent past. What was done was done, and after he sat down with her tonight and revealed what was going to happen to her father tomorrow, she was going to hate his fucking guts and never want to see him again. He was sure of it.
It was time he told Arabella everything so she understood his reasons for going to the lengths he had to bring Theodore to his knees. Securing her father’s debt and assets had only been a small preview to Theodore’s destruction. What no one else knew, not even his brother or sister, was that Maddux had spent years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in resources trying to build a solid case against Theodore and Gavin for their criminal activities.
What he hadn’t expected was all the corrupt political representatives and law enforcement agents who had road blocked Maddux’s many attempts to get the duo arrested . . . because as Maddux had uncovered, the case against Theodore and Gavin was much bigger than just the two of them. With a whole lot of insistent digging, he’d learned that Addingwell Financial—where they and many others were “employed”—was actually a front for organized crime.