Page 11 of Abduction
Chapter Seven
Josh
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LEANING UP AGAINSTthe heavy stone steps that led up to the law library, I took a bite of the steaming-hot dog I’d just purchased from the vendor down the street. On a cold day like this, I needed something warm to keep me going, and as soon as I’d caught the scent of it on the air, I’d had no choice but to get one.
The case Laurence had given me was leaning up against my feet—I wasn’t bothering to hide it, knowing nobody with any kind of sense would even dare to think about taking it from me. People in this city knew who I was, and they would never dare fuck with me. I was glad I didn’t have to worry about fighting them off, but I supposed it was a plus of the reputation my father had made for me and the family.
The family. I knew we were family, but it was more than that, too—our family name was a business brand in its own right, a chance for us to prove just who we were as people and just what we expected from the world around us. Plenty of people hated us for what we had done, the things we had taken part in over the years, but we had proven ourselves long enough ago now that none of them would have dared fight us on it.
I was looking forward to getting my hands on the painting I had admired at Laurence’s gallery. I had almost been tempted to pay him from the money he had given me, but I figured it would have been a little much to rub it in his face like that. Besides, my father expected it, and I didn’t want to short him on what I had.
It wasn’t as though I didn’t have a generous amount of the family fortune to myself, anyway. My father had taught us the value of money when we were young—he’d grown up without much of it and had sworn a million times over as a younger man he was never going to want for it or let any child of his want for it once he was grown. He had stuck by that as he’d gotten older, making sure we had everything we needed and then some. It would have been easy to raise us spoiled, but he made sure we worked for it, too, even when we were kids, clearing the yard and picking up groceries to earn our keep.
I was glad he had. I’d met other kids of men like him, ones who had assumed everything was there to be handed to them on a plate, and I knew I never wanted to turn out like they did. Just because I had been raised by a father who had already established himself by the time I was born didn’t mean I was just going to give up on trying to build a name for myself, too.
Though what would it have been if it hadn’t been with him? If I hadn’t been part of this family, what could I have achieved, what would I have done? It was something I found myself pondering on sometimes, wondering what might have happened if I’d had to make my own way in the world, but it never lasted long. No point letting it bother me. It was never going to happen. I was here now, I worked for my father, and there was no chance I would be able to step away from the business now I was so closely intertwined with it.
Who would have hired me somewhere else? Wherever I went, it would be with the baggage of my past following me around. Besides, it wasn’t as though I had any particularly applicable skills to put to use, did I? I would need to train from scratch, build a whole new life and persona for myself, and I seriously wasn’t sure if I had it in me. I wasn’t sure if I could do something like that. Wasn’t sure if I could shift things toward a life where I didn’t get everything I asked for, when I asked for it.
“Hey!”
A voice caught my attention, and I glanced around to see who wanted to talk to me. Not many people had the nerve to disturb me, and I was honestly curious to see who it was who had decided it was worth the time.
A woman was coming down the steps behind me, her reddish hair blowing in the slight breeze. She smiled as she arrived next to me.
“Sorry to bug you,” she told me, slightly out of breath. “But I saw you eating a hot dog and—well, I’ve been studying all day, and I’m starving. Where did you get it?”
I paused for a moment, looking her up and down. She had a scarf wrapped around her neck, her hands shoved into the pockets of a heavy jacket, and a bag slung over one shoulder that was bursting with papers and documents. It looked like she was telling the truth—either that, or she was seriously good at staying undercover.
“Sure,” I replied as I finished off the last bite of the dog and wiped my hands on the napkin that came with it. “It’s just around the corner. Follow me.”
She looked a little hesitant after I said that—I supposed most girls knew better than to follow around some random guy they had just met, but the hot dog looked good enough to convince her, and she followed behind me.
“So you study law?” I asked as I nodded back up toward the building she had just come out of. She nodded, grinning.
“Nearly done,” she replied. “Thank God.”
“What kind of law?” I asked casually. “You planning to put the bad guys behind bars when you get the chance?”
“Yeah, something like that,” she replied, flashing me a smile. “If those bad guys are to do with real estate law, that is.”
“Real estate, huh?” I remarked. “Sounds fascinating.”
“It genuinely is!” she exclaimed, laughing. “But it’s also what pays the most. That’s why I got into it in the first place.”
“Yeah, sounds like the kind of thing you’d need to be passionate about to stick with,” I remarked.
“Are you saying it’s boring?”
