Page 19 of Off Limits Billionaire

I opened the AirTag app and showed him the clock was sitting at Heathrow. “It looks like it arrived. It’s not moving anymore. We should get it in the air immediately.”

The drive to Heathrow was fairly quick. The airport’s security guard let us drive through a private entrance onto the VIP section after Marcus flashed his credentials. Only, something felt off. Marcus noticed it too.

“Hey, we’re going to Hangar 11. Make a U-turn and head back toward the security post, then hang a left.” Marcus barked the orders at the driver, but he didn’t deviate from his route. We were driven into a different hangar, where armed men pointed their guns at the car.

My heart raced and I wasn’t sure whether to scream or pass out. What was happening?

“Marcus?!”

“It’s okay, Ana.” He tapped my hand before squeezing it. “I’ll get us out of this and then you can yell at me the entire flight home. Just sit tight.”

The driver got out, circled around to Marcus’s door, and opened it. There were three men, from what I could tell, that held guns pointed at him as if he were some sort of criminal. For all I knew, maybe he'd pissed off someone else the last time he was in London.

Was this the warning my grandparents and Paul were trying to tell me about? Is this why they didn’t want me working with an Adler?

Before I could ask anything, Marcus slammed the door behind him to keep me inside, telling the men surrounding us, “Just leave her out of this.”

“We want your boss,” the driver told him.

Marcus shook his head. “You have the wrong person. I don’t have a boss.”

“Grab the girl!” the driver shouted and a man pointing a gun at my door moved to open it.

“You don’t have to touch me, I can get out on my own,” I told him with rebellion tearing through me. It’s the only thing I thought to do. Anger helped me push fear out of the way. Still, the gunman gripped me by the elbow and ushered me around the car to stand beside Marcus.

The minute we were in arm’s reach Marcus clenched his fist and squared his shoulders as if he were ready to throw a punch when he started talking. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I swear you have the wrong person. What’s this about?”

The driver began to speak and that’s when I recognized him.

My nudging Marcus obnoxiously got everyone’s attention as I shouted, “He’s the other bidder! From the auction! He was the one distracting Scarface while we placed the winning bid!”

The driver narrowed his gaze at us. “This is the last time—bring us to your boss and we’ll let the police come arrest you. They can offer you protection for giving him up.”

Marcus’s face wore as much confusion as I’m sure rode mine. “Seriously, we don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Your boss! Your boss!” the driver shouted repeatedly.

“It doesn’t matter how many times you yell it, it’s not going to change the fact that neither of us have a boss,” I told him. “Unless you count my grandpa Augie, but he’s 80. I barely take orders from him, but if you want to speak to him, I can get him on the phone. Although, I don’t know how much use an 80 year old horologist will be to you.”

I reached for my phone, which triggered a chain reaction of every man cocking their weapons and aiming them at us. I stopped searching my pockets and put my hands up in surrender.

Marcus put himself between the guns and myself, my back pressing against the side of the taxi. A few seconds passed and I found myself grabbing him by the back of his shirt, my body trembling from fear and adrenaline.

“We’re going to be okay,” Marcus whispered to me. It didn’t help me, but the fact that he was eerily calm did.

“Is that you Adler?” a deep voice bellowed from off in the distance. “At ease men!”

I heard footsteps approaching and suddenly the tension in Marcus’s body seemed to release as a man came closer, wearing all black tactical gear. Now that I took my eyes off the barrels of their weapons, I noticed they were all in tactical gear. Everyone except the driver.

Marcus moved from in front of me and stood beside me as the man shook his hand. “Viper, what the fuck, man!?”

The man Marcus called Viper was around the same height, except his hair was a deep brown and his eyes were a shade of olive green. Viper waved his arms up and down to tell his men to lower their weapons.

“My apologies to you and your wife. I wasn’t aware that you were the one detained until I arrived a few minutes ago,” Viper told us, but that still didn’t give me any comfort. I wanted to leave.

“That means we can go, then?” I asked both of them.

Viper nodded, but Marcus shook his head. “What the hell is going on? This is the third time today we’ve been cornered by some henchman.”

---