Page 63 of His Last Will

He shakes his head. “You didn’t know?”

“No, I was always told I was the daughter of someone who wronged the family and needed to die.” My body is shivering in the chair despite the warehouse being fairly hot in the late spring weather.

“And you were fine with that?”

“No, but I didn’t know anything else,” I huff. Who the fuck would be okay with their father being murdered? But it was all I had ever known.

Jameson shakes out of his apathy. “Well, we will need to prove his story true,” he says under his breath, but loud enough that I can hear. He gestures for a guard to call Alexander, the Ashton of the Cartwrights, if I am assuming correctly, to draw my blood.

We sit in silence until Alexander arrives, carrying a large duffle bag. The man is absolutely tiny, but the look on his face would have me giving him a ten-foot radius. All tattoos, piercings, and slick hair, the man’s anger radiated around him.

Taking a syringe from his bag, he draws my blood, which fills the test tube, and then places it in a sealed baggie, telling Jameson they would have the results in a few hours.

Jameson watches him go, but Alexander doesn’t get halfway out of the room before Jameson tells him to hold up. Turning to me, he says, “Listen, I am going to go with Alexander. You’ll stay here until we get the results…” He trails off like he wants to say more but abruptly turns and follows Alexander out.

Well, I am tied to a metal chair, I can’t imagine where he thinks I will go.

As the warehouse clears out, I am left alone wondering what the actual fuck just happened? I can’t even tell if this was a fever dream brought on by a hallucinogenic in the paralytic that man from the town car stuck in me. In fact, that seems far more likely.

There was no way I could be Jameson Cartwright’s only biological daughter. The heir to the Cartwright fortune, business, and name. My head is splitting, so I shut my eyes and find myself drifting.

CHAPTER

TWENTY-NINE

BRODIE

The glass on my phone shatters as I slam it against the wall, my breath coming out in short gasps, fingernails breaking skin as I crush my fists against the now-dented wall. Sweat drips from my forehead as I work myself up, no longer able to control my rage.

I was done.

Fucking done.

No one was going to touch my girl and get away with it. To drug her and drag her away like a common fucking criminal, kidnapping her outside her own rehearsal dinner. A place where guards should be swarming based on the guest list alone. The incompetent fools.

And Anthony, the bastard I shared DNA with, trying to assert power over Aiden or some shit and causing Ari to be vulnerable in the first place. I might kill him for this.

Screw him. Screw this whole situation. Sitting in this room of computers had given me nothing but a migraine and blue balls. I no longer cared that everyone would find out I was still alive and it would blow up my plan for discretion. I wasn’t making any headway doing this on my own anyway.

What I needed was to get my control back—of the situation, of them. Lack of control was slowly tearing fractures into my sanity. Control was something I coveted, something I needed to function. I was ready to destroy the people who thought they could take it away from me.

This entire situation was turning into a dumpster fire of epic proportions… Which Ashton may have alluded to when I first came up with the idea, but I was stubborn, not thinking it would take more than a few weeks to figure out who put a hit out on me.

A stubborn, dominant, controlling asshole, all my best qualities. But it never seemed to bother them before, so I can’t imagine it will now when I barge back into their lives, making my demands.

And I had a fucking list of them.

I was done watching them fall in love without me. I was done watching from the shadows. They both needed to be in my grasp and under my command.

This was the last straw.

Grabbing my gun, I turn the cameras on to Ashton’s office. Aiden has Ashton pinned to the wall and is currently looking at his phone, but before I can head over there, Aiden pockets his phone and walks out with Gage. Looks like I am following Gage’s car. I swipe the keys to one of the cars and lock the door behind me.

As I walk past Ashton’s office on the way out, I find him sitting with Z between his legs, sewing up a wound in his hand. Z looks up at Ashton with such adoration in his eyes. The poor fucking bastard. I’m not sure I have ever seen someone take to being a patient the way Z has. That man has got to be more messed up than Aiden.

But jealousy eats away at me because I want them to look at me that way.

Slamming open the door to the parking lot, I can’t keep it in. “FUCK!” I scream into the open air, built-up rage pouring out of me. Months of being isolated, with only the occasional visit from Ashton and breaks for some light stalking, have come to an end.