Chapter Twenty-Two
Samuel
Samuel walked out of his home for the first time in a little over a week. Brianna was doing okay, and Morganna had promised to look after her. The men he’d hired and had trained by the ex-military men were now stationed around the grounds just in case anything happened.
He’d assigned the ex-military men on more productive tasks, like tracking down all of Adrien’s holdings and staking out the various homes he’d managed to acquire without his knowledge. Several of them had been purchased while their parents were still living and he’d still had access to his trust. When his parents had died, he’d found out that Adrien had practically drained the trust to nothing, so he’d put him on an allowance. He’d figured controlling the money would control Adrien. Apparently, Adrien had other sources of income though and he’d been hard pressed to figure out what they were.
He wouldn’t be leaving now, but had a meeting to get to.
The car was brought around for him by Michael, his personal mechanic, and he got in and drove out of the grounds.
This would be the first time he’d been out in public since Camila was kidnapped. He was dressed simply so as not to attract too much attention. He could only hope no one recognized him and got in his way. The whole thing that went down with his family had, luckily, not made it into the news yet. That would have been too annoying to deal with in the current situation. It must have caused a disturbance, though, so it was impossible that no one had noticed it.
Before someone leaked this out to the public, they had to have Camila found and Adrien caught. He wasn’t worried about his brother, or really even about protecting his family’s reputation. However, after this whole issue with Adrien was taken care of, he wanted to leave the option for his sister to continue trying to come out of her shell without the stigma of her brothers having bad reputations.
Because of Adrien, he knew his own reputation wasn’t good, there was plenty of noise about him being a bastard online, but that could be easily taken care of when the time came to clean things up.
Kidnapping and murder weren’t nearly as easy to hide away.
Samuel was heading to a bar to meet with two of the mercs he’d hired over the dark web. They were working separately, and according to Vernon, they were considered two of the best in the business. Samuel didn’t know what they wanted to tell him, it had been so long and still, no one had any solid leads on Adrien. He’d hoped that they would have been found by now. But these guys had information and they wanted to give it straight to him, so he could decide if it went to the police or not.
Where could that bastard have gone,he thought to himself, gritting the wheel tightly.
He had his men looking everywhere he knew Adrien could have gone. Samuel owned several residences himself besides the main house on the family estate. He knew Adrien had leased spaces for himself in the city when he wanted to stay off of Samuel’s radar while getting up to his usual nonsense. Samuel couldn’t monitor all of them, or know all of the people Adrien surrounded himself with. He should have paid more attention.
Adrien had to have had someone who helped him from the outside. Someone close to him, someone with access to the money Adrien had managed to hide from him, but the police couldn’t find them, or track the people who kept sending Adrien the burner phones while he was in prison. Without the visitor logs, it was near impossible.
He had to hope one of these men would have an idea on how Adrien was able to plan all of this from prison, or where he was, or what his plans were.
He must have thought this out really thoroughly if it’s this difficult to track him down.
Samuel felt like he didn’t know his own brother. But just because it was difficult, didn’t mean it was impossible. Nothing was impossible.
He pulled his car into a parking spot close to the bar the mercs had mentioned. From appearances, it was a former military hang out. Lots of crew cuts and rough looking characters who seemed to be drowning their nightmares in alcohol.
He knew they should have arrived earlier than him, so when he walked into the bar, he started looking around for the two of them. They knew each other, so he expected to find them sitting together.
There.
He hadn't met them in person yet, but their photos were very clear in his text messages, so he knew what they looked like, which pretty much resembled every other fucker in the bar, but they’d said they’d be wearing camo jackets and black tee shirts. Samuel headed for them when, out of nowhere, he felt hands catch onto his biceps.
Immediately, he tensed. He turned around, about to attack whoever it was and shove them off him, when he saw it was a woman he’d never met before. She was dressed in a body hugging, strapless red dress that had a low neckline, showing off her ample cleavage, and a slit down the side of her leg. She was holding onto him with small, soft-looking hands and giving him a sultry smile.
A lot of men would find her attractive, but Samuel found himself wondering where she’d come from. He stared down at her in confusion.
“Hello there, handsome,” she said, pressing her chest to his arm. “Are you here alone? I could keep you company if you’d like.”
She… was hitting on him. The concept seemed too foreign to him right then. It wasn’t the first time a woman had hit on him, though he didn’t go out to places often. Aside from work purposes, the most he’d ever gone out was with Camila. And looking at this woman, he knew she was just looking for a hook up. He had to wonder if she was a hooker, but he wouldn’t ever ask.
Besides, with how tense everything in him was, this woman could have gotten hurt and perhaps all she really wanted was for him to buy her a drink and maybe take her home at the end of the night.
I am way too tense,he realized. This is taking a lot out of me.
For the first time, he wondered if what the mercs had to tell him was something he’d be able to handle.
“I’m sorry,” he said solemnly to the woman. “But do you mind releasing me? I’m afraid I’m already taken.”
“Oh,” she said with a disappointed pout. “That’s too bad.”