“For what purpose?”
Elijah shrugged. “To acquire more territory. Power. Secure a truce. Any number of reasons. I know it’s expected. I already have other families reaching out to me in the hopes of securing an alliance.”
Meiling’s hand tightened on Gedeon’s beneath the table, pressing his palm deeper into her thigh. He felt her shock. She wasn’t the only one. Fyodor and Timur stared at him, just as shocked as Meiling that a man they called friend would consider such a thing.
“They’re just babies,” Timur murmured, scowling.
Elijah nodded. “It’s expected in this business. I’ve had very lucrative offers from families in South America and Europe.”
Meiling shook her head. “How does your wife feel about these offers?”
Elijah shrugged. “I don’t worry her with things like that. She doesn’t need to know crap that will never touch her. No daughters of mine will ever be used for such things. Siena should never have to worry, and neither should the girls. My men know they won’t be used in this manner, and they’ll guard them for me as if they were guarding me.”
Elijah rubbed his forehead and then pushed back the dark hair falling nearly into his eyes. “The biggest problem with having treasures is it makes you vulnerable. An enemy manages to get his hands on them—”
“You call us,” Gedeon interrupted. “It’s what we do.”
Elijah smiled. “I guess it is. And you’re damned fast. Timur said you were ready to go in two hours.”
“Just under two hours,” Timur corrected.
Elijah shook his head. “I detest that those guilty were from my lair and specifically from within my organization. Not the four of them. Their parents. They worked outside the organization. I didn’t recommend Georgi Chaban or, for that matter, Lola Morales, to anyone. If I don’t know them personally or feel they do a good job, I would never vouch for them. Georgi quit every job he’s ever had since he graduated from college. His parents paid for his education and then pulled strings to get him jobs, but he never worked for more than a few weeks before he quit, disgracing his parents. They pay his lease.”
“It must be difficult being the head of a massive organization and trying to know everyone in it so this type of thing doesn’t happen,” Meiling said.
“There’s a hierarchy in place, but I like to know most of those in my employ,” Elijah said. “At least the key people. As I said, these four were not employed by me and never were.”
Meiling pushed at loose strands of her shiny hair escaping. “We couldn’t take the chance that you were involved. The child’s life was at stake. Everything pointed your way, and we only had a very short window of opportunity to rescue her. Gedeon and I believed they were going to kill her in the end rather than return her. She knew who took her and Lola was too bitter.”
“You were right about that,” Timur said. “Jeremiah managed to retrieve the orders Lola had given to Georgi. He tore them up and tossed them into the garbage cans, remember? You marked the cans, Meiling. The moment the okay was given, he searched the cans and was able to retrieve the scraps. We put the scraps together for evidence. Lola instructed him to take pictures, and as soon as they were sent to her father, he was to kill the girl and dispose of her body.”
There was a small silence. Gedeon gripped Meiling’s thigh with hard fingers. “At least she told him to make certain the photographs got to Lilith’s father before Georgi was to kill her. We might have been too late.”
Meiling shook her head. “We would have saved her. It would have been messier, more traumatic for her, but we would have taken her from him.”
“This was supposed to be a simple case of finding who was stealing money,” Gedeon said. “We weren’t told about Lilith until we arrived late at night and were escorted into a private meeting. We found the room bugged. Our client had been systematically drugged. Then the case took a very sinister turn when we discovered Lilith had been taken and her father had paid the ransom more than once.”
“Atwater must have been certain that I was involved,” Elijah said. “I can’t blame him for that. I would have thought the same thing. Did he suspect Lola?”
“No, but Harold did,” Gedeon said. “Female leopards are just as passionate and capable of fury as males are. She believed Atwater was exclusive with her. She believed they were a mated couple, and he would marry her. He selfishly didn’t disabuse her of that notion, because it suited him to have her at his beck and call, until she caught him with a couple of his other women. The passion she felt for him turned completely to hate. She wanted revenge and she planned it out very carefully.”