Page 26 of Rosabel and the Billionaire Beast

“Dunc, wait?—”

But before he could elaborate, another box popped up on the screen, knocking Adrian’s face out of sight.

“Sorry I’m late,” Grey said. He had brown hair and wore a thick arm band around his wrist and a blue t-shirt with a logo that said Reign Bikes.

“What are you doing here?” Adrian asked.

While he was part of our text threads, Grey Phillips didn’t usually join in on our manly chats. In fact, he wasn’t even really part of the fraternity at all. He’d gotten married young, and he and Bria had three kids they were raising together.

He’d always said he wanted to stay as far from fraternity dealings as he could, but Adrian kept us all in touch.

So the fact that he was on the call now didn’t bode well.

“What’s up?” Adrian asked.

“I’ve got some bad news,” Grey said.

“Then hang up. I’ve already got enough to deal with,” I said.

They all laughed, thinking I was joking.

I wasn’t. Dead serious here.

“Did you guys see the news yet?” Grey asked.

Hawk lifted his phone to his face, tapped it, and read off a random headline. “Some opera singer robbed a bank in Tuscany?”

“No, my brother escaped from jail.”

I choked on my Tic Tac and bent over, coughing to dislodge it.

Maddox voiced the reply screaming in my head. “You’re kidding.”

Back at the frat, Ulrich and Grey Phillips had joined at the same time. As brothers, they’d both signed The Pact at the same time, too, but when Grey had fallen for Bria and wanted out, a few of the older fraters didn’t take that too well.

Ulrich had stuck it out, though. He’d stayed, regardless of what some of the others had done to his younger brother for trying to leave. And apparently, he was reallyreallyobsessed with keeping up that legacy.

“He escaped?” Hawk asked. “But they just convicted him. When did this happen? How?”

“Yesterday,” Grey said. “He was being transferred to the state pen and someone intervened. It was like a scene fromThe Dark Knight. He had some cronies intercept the transfer. They had a rigged plumbing truck smash into the side of the armored prison vehicle. The driver died. Several of the guards were injured. It was a total shoot-up, and Ulrich got away in the melee.”

Good grief. When would this guy give us a break?

“Has he contacted you at all?” Adrian asked.

Grey frowned. Behind him, a small boy peeked over his shoulder, grinned, and waved.

Grey ignored his young son and went on. “No, and I doubt he will. He only does that when he needs money. I’ve helped him out before; but I’ve told him no the last few times. I think he has a new target to get the cash he wants.”

“Us,” I said without giving the reply much thought.

It only made sense, with everything else that had happened. Ulrich had blackmailed Ella’s stepsister Pris and bribed herusing funds he’d embezzled from Wonderland. Then he’d targeted Wonderland itself.

He’d claimed this was about The Pact, and maybe it was. But as I stared at my friends’ faces on the screen, there was another thing that connected us.

Hawk, Adrian, Maddox—even Knox, Hunter, and the Prince of Einvar. Each of us was loaded.

What if that was Ulrich’s angle? What if he was really just after our money? That was a motive I could get around rather than an outdated pledge not to fall in love.

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