Page 29 of Isabelle’s Forbidden Love

He walked away as quickly as he could without looking as if he was trying to escape. Which he was.

Lydia finished her song, just when Orlando walked by the small, raised platform. He nodded at her while she took a bow, and was about to walk past the stage, when somebody stormed past him and jumped onto it.

He lunged after the well-dressed man, jumping up on the stage too, before the guy could touch Lydia. Orlando yanked him back and the guy lost his balance. A bunch of roses fell to the ground in front of Lydia’s feet.

“What the fuck, man!” the man complained. “I was just giving her flowers.”

Orlando ran his eyes over the guy, checking whether he was armed, when Lydia put her hand on his arm.

“It’s ok, Orlando. You can let him go,” Lydia said, before she turned to the man Orlando was still holding by the shoulders. “Sorry, Ted, but he’s kind of responsible for my safety here.” She bent down to pick up the flowers. “Thanks so much for these.”

Ted freed himself from Orlando’s grip, and lashed him with an annoyed glare.

Orlando simply grunted, before nodding at Lydia. “My mistake.”

If the guy wanted an apology, he would have to wait until hell froze over. He shouldn’t have jumped onto the stage as if he was trying to attack somebody. Served him right. If anybody had to apologize then it was that guy.

Orlando turned away and continued his rounds, not caring what Ted called him behind his back. He was responsible for everybody’s safety at the club, and if that meant that occasionally he picked on the wrong person, so be it.

He cast a glance back to where he’d left Patrick, and saw that the vampire hybrid was looking in the direction of the stage. He’d clearly seen the altercation. Orlando shrugged off his annoyance. Yes, he was on edge. But he could still do his job. In fact, he did his job much better when he was on edge. It meant he was hyper-alert, attuned to anything out of the ordinary. Because somewhere, his enemy was lurking, and he had to be ready for anything at any time.

His cell phone buzzed with a notification. He stepped to one side of the bar and pulled it out from his pocket. The display showed that the camera that covered the front door of his house had picked up a movement. He swiped the screen and tapped on the live feed. Somebody was indeed entering his home. He could see the person clearly.

Fuck!

He had to leave. Now.

Orlando turned to the bar and motioned for Andrew to approach. “If anybody’s looking for me, I had to leave early.”

“All right.”

He rushed to the corridor that led to the back exit. Moments later, the cool night air hit him, and he hurried to his Hummer. When he reached for the door handle, he immediately realized that something was different. The car sat lower than it usually did. His gaze shot to the tires. Both the front tire and the back tire on the driver’s side were flat. He went around the back of the car to look at the other side. There, too, both tires were flat.

“Fuck!”

It was one thing to have one flat tire. But four? That wasn’t a natural occurrence. Somebody had done this on purpose. But he had no time to worry about that now. He had to get home. He tapped on the Vuber app on his cell phone. Vuber was a taxi service that specifically catered to vampires, because all cars were equipped with specially coated windows that didn’t let UV light into the car, thus protecting the precious cargo they carried. They were driven exclusively by trusted humans.

Orlando tapped on the app, and ordered a ride. The wheel spun for a few seconds, then a window popped up. Your driver, Jessica M., is four minutes away.

The four minutes while he waited seemed to last forever. He continued watching the live feed from his home, until finally, his ride was there.

He jumped in. “Evening, Jessica.”

“Good evening, Orlando.”

They’d never met, but the Vuber app had provided his driver with his name and photo so that she knew whom she had to pick up, and where to drive him to. It worked essentially the same way as an Uber or Lyft.

“I’m in a hurry,” he said.

“No problem. There’s not much traffic. We’ll be there shortly.”

While he kept one eye on the live feed, he typed out a message to his mechanic, instructing him to tow his car first thing in the morning and fix the tires, and let him know when the car was ready for pickup. The garage he used wasn’t run by a vampire, but by a human. He could have notified the Scanguards owned-and-operated garage that handled all vehicles of Scanguards personnel, both company cars and private vehicles, but he didn’t want Scanguards to be dragged into this. They would have too many questions. And he didn’t want to have to answer them.

17

When she heard a car approach, Isabelle stared out of the window of the master bedroom on the second floor of Orlando’s house. However, it wasn’t Orlando’s Hummer that now stopped in front of the house, but a dark sedan. Was somebody visiting Orlando? The passenger door opened, and a big man she recognized immediately got out and closed the door. A moment later, the car drove away.

Why had Orlando had somebody drive him home? She watched as he walked up to the front door. A moment later, she heard the key in the lock being turned, and the front door opened. It was closed a moment later. She glanced at the open bedroom door and waited. First, light streamed up from the first floor, then the stairs creaked.