There was a heavy pause on the other end of the line and I could almost hear gears grinding in the woman’s head as she tried to decide whether to trust me or not.
“Fine. But these better be good.”
“I guarantee they are probably the most interesting thing you’ll see all year.”
There was a snort on the other end of the line. “I don’t know, Keane, this season of the Bachelor has had me on the edge of my seat.”
There was another long silence before the woman sighed. “You really have no sense of humor, do you? I feel bad for your wife.”
“Just read the damn files once you get them and call me back. They’ll self delete and fry whatever you read it on, so I suggest maybe finding an old laptop to view them.”
“Fine.”
We hung up and my next call was to my IT guy who spent most of his time in his little basement office. He was on the younger side, but I’d never met anyone as good with computers as he was.
“Finneas. I need you to send what we’ve gathered about the incidents over to Jifein Cheng.”
“You want me to send that stuff over to the Chinese, boss?” came the younger man’s usual nervous cadence whenever he spoke to me on the phone.
The sounds of fake gunshots and explosions filled the speaker of the phone and I held it away from my ear with a frown. “Are you playing video games during your work hours?”
The sound cut off abruptly. “N-no absolutely not, sir. I would never. I was just… uh…”
He apparently couldn’t think of a good enough excuse because he changed the subject. “Are you sure you want me to send that over, sir? You told me it was of the utmost importance that we keep it all safe.”
His words echoed my own worries about looping the Chinese in, but if I didn’t send it I knew that I would have Jifein’s men at my doorstep within twenty-four hours and the war that I was desperately trying to avoid would be here.
“Yes. Send it with one of those bomb things you keep telling me about.” I couldn’t pretend to even understand how it worked, but he’d shown it to me about six months ago and it had fried my laptop in less than sixty seconds.
“My wipers? Do they know that it will kill whatever they are viewing the files on after the timer is up?”
“They do.”
“Oh, well, all right then that’s good. Just send me the address of who you want me to send it to and I’ll get that right over to them.”
“Thank you,” I said with a sigh, my shoulders releasing the tension that I hadn’t even realized had been gathering ever since my phone rang twenty minutes ago. “Also: no more video games on the clock.”
“Yes, boss!” Finneas squeaked before the line clicked off, leaving me with a nasty headache and silence.
“Rhodes!” I called, forgetting for a moment that it was his day to take Perrie to school.
One glance at the clock told me that she must be in her photography class right about now and I was once again regretting that our morning in bed couldn’t have ended with me in between her legs while I watched her wrap her plump little lips around Rhodes’ cock again.
It had become a favorite position of mine ever since we came together that night in the hotel and I was starting to wish that I really was some random bird farmer somewhere far away with nothing better to do than be with my pack.
Rubbing my temples to try and ward off the impending migraine, I called the next person on my mental list. “Oona.”
The housekeeper had been hovering worriedly all morning ever since she brought me news of the explosions, so it didn’t surprise me when she stepped through the doors of my study within seconds. “Yes, Master Edison?”
“I need you to get me a report on what each of the older members have been up to in the past forty-eight hours. Do it your usual way.”
Oona, while being a fine housekeeper and a permanent fixture in the Keane Mansion for over thirty years, was also well versed in many other things. Namely espionage.
The employees who worked in the other households were mostly hand picked by her without the branch heads even knowing about it.
“Of course, anything I should be looking for in particular?”
“Strange phone calls, meetings, and the usual indicators of plans going on behind the scenes. I need to know if they’ve had any contact with the other four families too.”
I knew that there was legitimate business happening between my people and those of the other families, but there had to be something off. A thread I could pull to unravel all of the bullshit and figure out just who was fucking with me.
Oona nodded, folding her hands in front of her as she seemed to be making a mental checklist. “I’ll get right on it, sir.”
“Thank you.” I slumped into my chair and squeezed my eyes shut, trying to sort through all of the new information I’d learned, categorizing it and turning it over in my head like a Rubik’s cube that I couldn’t make match up.
“Sir?” Oona’s voice cut through my mental puzzlement and I realized she hadn’t left yet.
Opening my eyes, I found her standing just on the other side of my desk.
“I know it isn’t my place, but may I offer some advice?”
Oona was never one to overstep her boundaries, but seeing as she’d been the one to take care of me in place of my mother, I never minded. “You know you can.”
“Your father, may he rest in peace, lost a lot of his power during his time as the head of the Keane clan. It was something your grandfather warned him against, but after the war, in order to rebuild the family, he made many concessions to the heads of the branch families allowing them to grow in power.”
“I know that,” I told her with a frown. “What’s your point?”
Oona’s lips twisted, like she wasn’t sure she wanted to say her next words. “You have at least one young man from each of the branch families who is loyal to you. Wouldn’t it make sense to push for them to take over their families seeing as the youngest branch head is pushing sixty-five?”
