Page 109 of A Queen and HER Bad Boy
“Yes… daddy mentioned working with their survey teams recently. They want extraction equipment from us.”
“For the drilling!” The pieces were finally clicking into place, and the disgust of discovering his captors’ motive heightened the need to discover their identity. His father wasn’t lying. This was all real!
“Yes, the offshore reserves.” And he could hear movement on her end, voices in the background. “Look, those people are extremely dangerous—ruthless killers who won’t hesitate to eliminate obstacles. I wouldn’t cross them. Just give them what they want and get your sister back as soon as you can.”
Was she serious right now? Obviously, she had no idea what they were asking for. “I can’t do that… they want Bris dead.”
Silence stretched across the connection before she finally spoke, her voice strangely flat. “Maybe they won’t actually harm her.”
“You said it yourself—they’re killers.”
“Come on! It’s your sister’s life! You’ve got to find some way of working with them. Do you think Bris would really blame you for thinking about Gena? She loves her too.”
What was she saying? Alarm crept through him as he heard the change in Charisse’s voice, the casual way she dismissed the danger to Bris, while trying to make him panic for Gena. A darker, more suspicious thought began taking root. “How exactly did your father get involved with these people in the first place?”
“Just business connections…” She began to hedge, her usually clear voice turning careful. “You know how it is. People come out of the woodwork with questionable projects.”
“And your father just happened to know they were cold-blooded killers?”
“Word travels fast in our circles!” Her impatience was showing now, along with something else. Panic? “I… I spoke too harshly. Bris might be a spoiled princess, and I wish that she hadn’t gotten in the way of what we had, but that shouldn’t be a death sentence. When I think about what her father did to your family…” Her voice cracked… and he’d known enough catty women to recognize manufactured emotion. “I’m sorry! I’m justso worried about Gena, and about you! I don’t want either of you hurt.”
He’d been so blind! She might as well have whacked him on the side of the head with a frying pan for how much she’d taken him by surprise. There was far more here than casual business connections. His growing suspicions crystallized into cold certainty, but he forced himself to stay calm, to put his best acting skills to use. He needed just the right amount of trust in his voice, the perfect note of desperation—the same techniques he’d used when he’d worked for the Myrdons.
“Charisse, listen to me. I can only talk for so long before they catch me with this phone…” Someone truly innocent would have asked for more info, but Charisse just listened with breathless anticipation. “If your father has any influence on these people, I need him to get Gena’s location. I’ll figure out the rest from there.”
She gasped. “Achilles, wait! Don’t hang up. I’ll do what I can, but it won’t be easy. Don’t do anything reckless, okay? Just play nice, and we’ll get you out of this.”
He let out a dry laugh that sounded hollow even to his own ears. “You do this for me, and I’ll give your father exclusive drilling rights on Aeaea for fifty years.”
The eager intake of breath on the other end told him everything he needed to know. The Oshears weren’t just connected to this conspiracy—they were the coldblooded titans bankrolling it. Phoenix was their hired gun, and Charisse had been playing him from the very beginning.
His wife’s life was hanging by a thread, and the woman he’d once trusted had her hand on the scissors.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Theinterceptedmessagewaspractically a death warrant for their attackers!
Bris clutched to the paper and raced through the labyrinthine corridors in search of her father-in-law. The ancient stone passages stretched endlessly before her, each archway and chamber a reminder of gladiators who’d once faced impossibleodds in these very halls. How fitting that she now found herself trapped in her own deadly arena.
Nestor had directed her to find O Skia in the old training quarters before finally agreeing to leave to contact Clysta.
Please let our plan to rescue Gena not come too late!
Bris was in a nightmare of endless chambers and wrong turns, each corridor looking identical to the last. Her thoughts looped as chaotically as this maze—Aggie lurked in the belly of these prisons like some mythological minotaur, ready to devour Tirreoy the moment he was freed. Did the Myrdons truly intend to place him on the throne, or would they use Achilles as their puppet ruler? Either way, they would tear apart everything she and Achilles had fought to protect. She couldn’t let that happen to her people.
Desperately following Nestor’s directions, she finally heard voices echoing from a chamber ahead. She slowed her pace, straining to listen as O Skia’s commanding voice cut through the stone air.
“Has anyone located Gena yet?” His tone carried the authority of a military commander sharpened with the desperation of a terrified father.
Another man responded with heavy reluctance. “Sir, we’ve confirmed that her assigned bodyguard is a known operative—Dominique is just one of his covers. We know him as Diamond Medes, an assassin with ties to international mercenary networks.”
O Skia’s anguished shout echoed through the tunnel where she was. Bris rounded the corner in time to see his usually implacable face a mottled canvas of deathly white and burning rage. “This is personal, make no mistake,” he snarled. “They plan to use my daughter to squeeze out every last bit of our island’s riches.”
And what would they force Achilles to do? He’d break for Gena, shatter like a cheap china doll—she’d seen for herself the fierce protectiveness he had for his sister. But what about O Skia? She didn’t know him well enough to predict his next move. He’d already “sacrificed” his family once for his cause; would he do it again? Would Clysta allow it?
The General turned rigid when he spotted her. He stood in his rebel headquarters converted from these ruins into something modern with computers and harsh lighting. This numb rage icing her father-in-law’s expression was something she’d witnessed in her own father during his darkest moments. The walls were closing in like a tomb around her. “Where is my son?” he demanded.
“He surrendered himself… to keep me safe,” her voice cracked at the memory of Achilles’s sacrifice for love. It was the same kind of devotion his father might’ve felt when he’d thought sacrificing his family would save them.
