We’d left Perrie still sound asleep after last night’s romp and I wanted nothing more than to be curled up with her right now.
Every single one of my instincts was screaming at me for being so far away from my omega when her heat was so close. Her strawberry scent practically engulfed any room that she was in now and it was hard for me to focus on anything, let alone trying to figure out who was still trying to frame me for the port explosions.
Jifein Cheng trusted me after reading the files, but I knew that trust only went so far until I found the true culprit.
And now I had one of my branch family head’s homes being lit on fire.
“As far as we know Liam and his son are still inside. Security cameras caught his wife leaving in a dark SUV around an hour ago. We think she might have set the fire.”
Of course it was fucking Yulia. I could have told them that much without even needing the footage.
I couldn’t care fucking less if Liam burnt to a nasty little crisp inside of that house. But his son was a part of my men. Rory was integral to my plans and if we lost him it would be a serious loss.
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I turned to Rhodes. “How long until fire and rescue put this blaze out?”
There were four trucks currently working in tandem to try and douse the fire, but it was clear their goal was to keep the nearby other McMansions from burning down right alongside Liam’s.
Rhodes shrugged, his expression dark. “A couple of hours at best before they can start picking through the wreckage for remains.”
“And we know for a fact Rory is inside?”
“His phone location pinged here a few hours ago and hasn’t moved,” Collum cut in, showing me a tablet with Rory’s personal phone tag. All of my men were required to have their phones tracked by me after the ambush. I wanted to keep an eye on them to make sure they were safe, but also to make sure they weren’t double crossing me with whoever was fucking with us.
Asking them to betray their fathers was no small task, and while most of them were eager to do so, I still couldn’t read minds and would only know their true intentions when the time came.
“Fuck,” I cursed under my breath as I shoved the tablet out of my face and turned away from the blaze.
“It couldn’t have been avoided, man.” Rhodes gave my shoulder a squeeze. “And there isn’t anything more for us to do here.”
Sucking in a deep breath that tasted of smoke, I turned to Collum. “Keep me updated once they get in there.”
Without waiting for the man to answer I turned and yanked the backdoor of the car open and got inside, Rhodes sliding in behind me.
No sooner had the car pulled away from the curb was my phone ringing.
Shuuhei Saito’s name popped on the screen and somehow it filled me with an even heavier sense of dread.
“What do you think he wants?” Rhodes asked as I turned the phone so he could see it too.
“I don’t know,” I said, holding my thumb over the answer button, “But it can’t be anything good.”
I answered the call. “Saito, what can I do for you?”
“I know who has been stirring shit up and that’s not all.” The man sounded pissed, his voice tight as he spoke.
Sucking in a deep breath, I shifted in my seat. Could it be this easy? After months and months of dead ends? “Well, are you going to leave me hanging in suspense?”
“We figured out where Haruto was going the day he went missing.”
I sat up straight. That really was news.
Shuuhei’s man had been the one puzzle piece that didn’t fit into the grand scheme of things. Why had it been him specifically that they had targeted and how had they made a man who Shuuhei swore up and down was loyal go out of his way to get killed?
“I’m listening,” I said, keeping my voice even despite the adrenaline running through my veins.
“He had a woman and a child that he never disclosed to me. The day he went missing he was heading to the secret apartment he kept a city over and that’s where they got him.”
As Shuuhei spoke, things slowly started to line up in my brain. Everything about this was rehearsed, like we were all taking part in some big fucking play.
I thought about the explosions at the ports, the ambushes, the dead men, the fire we were still driving away from and the woman who had potentially set the fire.
All of it seemed so useless now because we’d known for a while that someone was fucking with us, adding new acts to the story that they were weaving like some damned puppet master.
No, I realized as all of the pieces fell into place. They were distracting us.
There was only one person that I knew looked at everyone else like they were toys.
“Did Haruto’s woman happen to be Russian?” I asked, thinking about Yulia and her beginnings as product for Vladimir Volkov.
Silence greeted me before Shuuhei finally answered. “She was.”
Rhodes cursed next to me.
It was the most obvious answer and because of that I’d written it off when thinking about my suspects. Of course it would be Volkov, the man who spent most of his time observing the squabbling between the four other families.
He would look at the discord sown thanks to my marriage to Perrie and use it to his advantage—but to what end?
“And like I said, that’s not all,” Shuuhei continued. “I looked at everything that’s been happening, the ambush, the explosion—all of it—and I realized it seemed awfully familiar.”
