Page 46 of Reluctant Heir

I check the time. One minute after eleven at night.

I grunt.Tap. Tap. Tap.

“I don’t like this.”

“We don’t have to like it to do it,” I bark, and he shuts the hell up. “We need answers, and this is the only way I know to get them.”

“We could stake out Blue Light, where Fernando was the other night.”

“Like the men would come back to hang out. No, they specifically had a reason to be there and knew who they were looking for. I need to find out who is behind this and if anyone else has been hit between the Heywood families. Have you heard anything from your side?”

Geo goes quiet. I know he doesn’t talk to his father much, but I thought if they had been hit, too, they might have reached out for information.

“No,” he says curtly, and I drop it. Some things are better left unsaid.

I check my watch again and growl. Five minutes late.

“This isn’t a fucking game,” I say as headlights hit our car. “Finally.”

The identical SUVs stop, and Geo flashes his lights, letting them know it’s safe. I watch as their doors open, and then I open mine. I’m wearing my guns and bulletproof vest. I don’t trust these men as far as I can throw them. Just the fact that they all arrived together means they were probably in a meeting beforehand. Without me.

Motherfuckers.

I’m starting to feel like it’s very possible the hit could’ve been ordered by one of them. The only thing they could’ve found out is about my meeting with the next generation of family bosses. And if that’s the case, we are fucked.

My foot hits the dirt, and I straighten my suit jacket as I stand to my full height, facing the other four as they arrange themselves in a line, their men around them.

“This is a friendly meeting,” I say, holding my hands out, and they do the same.

“Why here? Why not at your house?” Antonio asks.

I can’t tell them I don’t trust them. They know I don’t. I doubt any of them trust each other, but to say it out loud would be a death wish right now. They probably want nothing more than to kill me. The only thing saving me is my father’s name and being the only male heir.

Who would’ve thought he’d be the reason I was alive right now?

“I needed neutral ground. One of my men was attacked last night.” I watch their faces and don’t see any signs of guilt. But that means shit here. “I’m deciding what needs to be done.”

“It’s hardly anything to go to war over,” William says, a chuckle making his stomach shake.

I have to stop my top lip from curling in disgust. He’s the picture of overindulgence. And gluttonous in more ways than one.

“I have to agree,” Antonio says, shaking his head. “It hardly seems like something to concern yourself with. Men in our profession have run-ins with unseemly sort all the time.”

I almost feel like they are talking down to me, treating me like a child.

Geriatric pricks.

“I would usually agree with you; however, they delivered a warning that has me pausing.”

“A warning?” Vincent asks, his lanky body the stiffest of all the men. I wonder if he ever relaxes.

“They told him, ‘Tell them we know.’ But we can’t figure out what they are referring to.”

The four men glance among themselves, and I press my lips into a thin line. They are keeping something from me. I fucking knew it.

“This didn’t come from us,” Paul says, and I raise an eyebrow toward him. “But until you are the boss of your family, you aren’t privy to the more sensitive information that we have.”

“You are telling me, I can’t know about something that fucking affects my family until I’m married and stick my dick in her?” I snarl at them, and they are unaffected, unmoved by my outburst.

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