“I think we are all tired. Halloween is always a big thing everywhere.”
I nod. “Maybe you can come and get Susana next time, so she doesn’t have to drive here at night.”
“I’d like that.” He looks at her intently, and she forces a smile before drinking tea.
“Do you have somewhere to spend Halloween tomorrow?” I ask him.
“I was planning to stay at home, watch a few horror movies, and open the door to offer candy to the kids,” he replies.
“That’s adorable,” I shriek with my hands together. “But boring,” I add. “What if you dressed up and attended our themed Halloween party.”
“I might not have a costume. I’m not even sure what’s the theme.”
“Monsters. Any monster, really. Vampire, werewolf, the boogeyman, a mummy—”
“You can even show up as a human. They are monsters too,” Susana states.
“Not all,” Dominic counters. “Though, I agree that the world would be a better place if there were fewer unscrupulous humans.”
I look at the table and see that Richard and I are running low on coffee. I get up and force Susana to stand up. “What if you join Dominic in the kitchen and prepare us more coffee and select a few more cupcakes? I can’t wait to try something else with peanut butter. Do you have some?” I look at Dominic.
“Yes. I have a lot of different cupcakes in the kitchen.” He gets up, and I shove Susana in his direction.
“Show her the kitchen. Richard and I will…” I look at him, watching his phone. Sitting down, I grab Richard’s hand. “I’ll stay here checking the messages with my husband.”
Dominic nods, but he doesn’t let go of Susana’s arm and guides her inside the kitchen.
“You should have wrapped a bow around her before you offered her to him. It would be less conspicuous,” Richard jests without taking his eyes off his phone.
“He can’t win her over if we keep talking, and she stays quiet,” I inform him.
“You know why she’s grumpy.”
“Yes, she horny. Why are you grumpy?”
“I’m horny too.”
I chuckle and roll my eyes. “They are in the kitchen. What can they possibly do?” The sound of pans falling alerts my hearing. “Are they fighting?”
“It sounds more like they are clearing space. I’m sure it goes against several Codes and Regulations by the Public Health Food Safety Program.”
More sounds of utensils clacking and falling on the floor.
I pucker my lips in wow. “I told him to show her the kitchen not to redecorate.”
“I don’t think they are redecorating anything. It’s more like destroying. I hope the cupcakes are safe.”
I laugh at his joke. “You’re funny when you want.” I rub my arms as I listen to the noise. “Should we check on her? Do you think it’s consensual?”
“I just hear her moaning, not screaming.” He focuses his attention on the door. “Let her be. I’m sure she’s hungry.”
I giggle. “Maybe we should step out and give them some privacy.”
Richard frowns at me. “Since when that was a problem for you?”
“Funny. It’s different. It’s between them.” I cross my legs. “Though she acted as if she couldn’t care less about him, and now, she’s jumping his bones.”
“You were just in front of him, and he couldn’t take his eyes of Susana. It was clear that he’s into her.”
I look at Richard. “What do you mean?”
“You’re hotter. At least to me. Susana is a beautiful girl, but she’s dressed like a nun.”
Looking at my cleavage, I fix it and pull the shirt up. “When you say it like that, I’m not sure if I’m not feeling offended right now.”
“Just be glad they like each other. At least, he’s into her. She’s probably just using him for sex.”
I focus my hearing on what’s happening inside the kitchen. “Who do you think started the whole thing?”
“Probably her. I doubt he’d be going for more than a kiss with us here.”
“He doesn’t know we can listen.”
Richard snorts. “A human can listen!”
I cover my mouth while I snicker. “He’s panting hard.”
“She must be milking him for all he has.”
I slap his shoulder. “Stop it. I’ll laugh too loud, and they might lose the momentum.”
“He seems like a good guy. Too bad, she’s going to break his heart and then step on it.”
“You don’t know that.”
“There’ll be plenty of hot guys tomorrow at the party. I’m sure she’ll be over the baker in no time.”
“He’s coming to our party, remember?”
Richard put down his phone and folds his hands on his lap. “Maybe she doesn’t want to see him again after tonight.”
I bite my lower lip. “Damn! There goes my favorite bakery. She won’t come here to order anything else after that.”
Richard purses his lips as he listens. “That was fast. He didn’t endure a lot, did he?”
“I think he’s going for a second round.”
“At least he held on long enough for her to enjoy it first.”
I suck a breath. “Maybe we shouldn’t listen anymore.”
We hear a loud bang, and then something falling on the floor.
We get up.
“This wasn’t foreplay,” Richard voices my fear as we sped inside the kitchen.
We find Susana pulling up her pants with a messy hair and unbuttoned shirt while Dominic is passed out on the floor with his pants around his knees.
“What happened? Did he hurt you?” Richard asks, looking at the pan she used to knock him out.
“Everything was going great until I saw this.” She leans next to him and pulls his shirt down his shoulder, showing us a tattoo.
I look at Richard. “What’s that? Do you know?”
“A hunter’s sigil. Dominic is the enemy,” Richard clarifies.
Seven
Once we tied Dominic, we brought him to the mansion, where we kept him inside Richard’s panic room. He had one built with access through his office. It would protect us in case of invasion so that what happened in the past didn’t happen again. I only found out about it when we needed a place to put the sneaky hunter that tried to infiltrate our home. Now we needed answers.
For the next thirty minutes, Richard tortures him, putting his head inside a bucket of water, while asking the same two questions:
“How many of you are there? How were you planning to infiltrate and kill us?”
Dominic endures it without opening his mouth. He doesn’t even speak to curse us.
“This is pointless,” Simon says behind my back. His arms are around my waist as I try not to pity the fool who wanted to kill my family. It was them or us. Victoria knew that.
“I’m really not comfortable with this,” Antoine says. “Just kill him, and let’s cancel the party.”
“We need information,” Richard says.
“Electrocute him,” Susana suggests.
Dominic glances at her.
“That’s cold, Susy,” I whisper. “You were just banging him a few minutes ago.”
Her cheeks turn red. “What does that have to do with anything? He was using me to get to you. He’s a dog that needs to be put down before his kind destroys our family.”
“At least I’m no traitor to our race,” Dominic spits.
Susana grins. “Witches might look human, but we are far from human. Your kind also hunts my kind.”
“I’m not what you think I am,” he assures.
“The sigil on your shoulder tells me otherwise,” Richard states. “If you don’t want to talk, maybe we should go back to your bakery and find out where your staff lives. Hunters never arrive at a town alone. I’m sure your staff is part of your killing party. We just need to find them, kill them, and end the threat.”
Dominic glares at him with gritted teeth. “My staff has
nothing to do with this, monster! Leave them alone.”
“You know I can’t trust a word you say, don’t you?” Richard whispers as if he’s talking to a child. “A good hunter is a dead hunter.”
“You, above all, should know that. You killed many of us. Even the ones that weren’t guilty of slaying your family.”
“It seems Richard’s reputation precedes him,” Antoine jests before serenely adding, “Then you should know not to lie to him, hunter.”
“I’m not a hunter,” he claims, trying to shove Richard back.
He grabs him harder. “What are you then?”
“I’m a baker—”
Richard forces his head into the bucket.
“Wait, wait,” Dominic shouts.
“Speak,” Richard orders with the hunter’s nose touching the water.
“I’m a hired gun, a mercenary. I don’t serve a house.”
“You have a house sigil tattooed on your shoulder.”
“I was born into a hunter family. My father’s the leader of a house, but I rejected my legacy and decided to live on my own terms. I bake my stuff, save a few people, and catch a few rogues in my spare time.”
“We aren’t rogues,” Richard informs him. “In case you haven’t noticed, we are part of a family and a Vampire Court. Why would you come after us?”
“He’s been here for months,” Susana reminds us. “Did he know who we were? Why didn’t he attack sooner?”
“I was paid to watch and report. Killing you wasn’t my orders for tomorrow.”
“What were your orders?” I ask.
He looks at me. “Spare my life, and I’ll tell you.”
“Why would you tell us anything?” Antoine asks. “He’s a hunter. We can’t trust him.”
“I’m not a hunter!” he insists. “I’m a mercenary, and I don’t live by a stupid code. I don’t want to lose my life to keep the name of my employer a secret. If you promise to spare my life and let me go, I’ll give you all the information you need to track down whoever hired me and the others to crash your party.”
“Others?” I ask. “What others? More friends of yours?”
He shakes his head. “Others have been hired. I don’t know how they are planning to infiltrate, but tomorrow...there’s going to be a bloodbath.”
Richard lets him go and drops him on the floor. “We need to talk and decide what to do with him.” He looks at Susana. “Stay here with him and kick him if he tries to escape.”
She nods and grins at Dominic. “Just try me and see if I don’t hit you again.”
He frowns. “I thought we had something special going on.”
She folds her arms. “Fuck you.”
He sits down after moving around. “Are you saying that we didn’t share a moment, and you’re not voting to keep me alive?” He pouts. “You just broke my heart.”
“Be glad that’s the only thing that I broke.”
Closing the door, we leave the noise behind it. I look at Richard, Simon, and Antoine’s serious faces.
“We need to resolve this the fastest way we can,” Richard says.
“I agree with that. As much as I think we should kill him, if he has information about what’s going to happen tomorrow, we need to know,” Simon reckons.
“We should cancel the party. It’s too dangerous if hunters or mercenaries know where we are and are planning to infiltrate,” Antoine comments.
Richard muses as he rubs his chin. “If they are planning to attack during the party, that means we aren’t the main targets. They want to create chaos and kill key members of our Vampire Court.”
“Not just from our Vampire Court, others are joining us from important families,” Antoine reminds him.
“If Dominic was hired by someone, doesn’t that mean that person isn’t human or a hunter? Hunters do their own dirty work. They don’t hire mercenaries,” I share my mind, based on what I know from Victoria’s life experiences. “We should vote, and then someone replaces Susana so she can also vote.”
“If the majority wins, we don’t need her vote,” Simon speaks. “I normally vote to kill whoever tries to harm us, but, in this case, I vote that we bargain his life in return for the information he says he has.”
I raise my hand. “I agree.”
Richard nods, and Antoine grumbles an agreement.
“That’s settled then. The baker lives,” I say.
“If we promise to spare his life, we need to live by our word. We aren’t barbarians,” Richard warns.
Antoine raises his hand before we can enter the room.
Arching an eyebrow, Richard asks, “What?”
“I’m still confused about how you found out that our baker is a hunter.”
I sum up. “Susana was banging him in his kitchen when she saw his sigil, knocked him out, and we brought him here.”
“Oh!”
“That wasn’t very smart of him.” Simon snickers.
Richard explains, “I don’t think he knew she was a witch and would recognize his sigil. It’s not a well-known house and not even from this country. They are from Canada.”
“She must have seen it before to know it,” I share.
He nods. “We’ll ask her after we make a deal with the hunter and find out if we have to cancel the party or not.”
Eight
Some nights are long for the right reasons, and some are long for the wrong reasons. This night has been exhausting, and when the sun was peeking behind the mountains, I fell asleep rocking Sammy in his crib after breastfeeding him.
Susana had been long sleeping in an armchair not far from mine. Meanwhile, my knights were in Richard’s office with Dominic, analyzing the information that the mercenary had provided for them.
A knock on the door wakes me up. “Yes?”
Mrs. Fable comes inside. “I’m sorry, mistress. A young man is calling the landline. He’s looking for his boss.”
I yawn. “Who’s his boss?”
“Dominic, the baker. It seems. They say that he was going out with Miss Susana and you. They arrived at the bakery, and there was a mess. They tried to call their boss’s phone, but no one is answering. His staff is worried and unsure if they should call the police or if their boss is just sleeping somewhere with a hangover.”
“I vote for the hangover,” I grumble as I rub my temples.
“Is he alive?” Mrs. Fable wonders.
“Yes. He’s fine. Didn’t you see Richard and the others in the office?”
“There was no one there when I searched.”
I get up and stretch my arms. “Tell his employees that their boss is fine and told them to keep working. He’ll be there in an hour. I hope.”
Lowering her head, Mrs. Fable leaves the nursery room and disappears in the corridor. Meanwhile, I search for my phone to call Richard and learn what they found out.
“We should have covered our tracks before bringing the hunter here,” Susana says from her seat.
I startle and look at her with my hand on my chest. “Did we wake you?”
“It’s fine. I’ve slept enough.” She gets up and fixes her clothes and hair. “We need to take measures to protect ourselves and our guests.” She peeks at the crib. “Sammy is still asleep. You should ask Mrs. Fable to pack a few of his things and take him away from here.”
I look at my baby. “Do you believe it’s not safe.”
“Even if we cancel the party, it won’t be safe. They know where we live. They’ll come for us.”
The door opens, and Richard steps inside. “It’s okay. We’ll be ready for them, but it’s wiser to take the kid away during the party. He can come back tomorrow once we’re all safe again.”
Dominic peeks from behind Richard and waves at Susana. “Good morning!”
Her face turns sour. “What the hell is he doing here?”
“His information checked out, and we are now in a position to discover the enemy and neutralize him before he attacks us,” Richard explained.
&
nbsp; “I’m on your side now. You don’t need to hate me anymore,” Dominic says with a cheerful grin.
Susana looks at me. “Are you sure I can’t kill him?”
I chuckle. “He’s the one stalking you. You decide.”
She glares at him.
He raises his hands. “I made a deal with Richard. He said he spared my life. He’s paying me to help you.”
“I made no deal to save your life,” Susana assures him.
Dominic grabs Richard’s shoulders and uses him as a shield. “You said we were good. Don’t let her harm me.”
“She’s small and cute, what can she do to hurt a big guy like you?” Richard asks him.
He frowns and lets go of Richard. “You’re right.”
Susana shoves Dominic aside and stomps down the corridor. The baker runs after her. “Hey. We should talk about yesterday. And the other times we met. Like…”
“Shut up!”
Ignoring their altercation, Richard narrows the distance between us and grabs my hands. “Get the kid ready. Kiss him goodbye and join us in our master bedroom. I’ll tell you everything you need to know.”
“Is it bad?”
“It could have become a tragedy if we didn’t find out in time.” He kisses my forehead and then my lips. “Nothing will happen to you or the baby.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you either. Just cancel the party. I don’t care about the stupid party anymore. I just want us safe.”
“We’ll be safe. I promise you.” He kisses my lips again. “Don’t you trust your knights, my queen?”
I nod. “I do. But I don’t want anything bad to happen to you.”
“I’ve informed the Sovereign about what’s going on. We can’t cancel the party. She’s sending more men to join us so we can capture our enemies. We need to punish whoever goes against us to stop future insurgencies. As we speak, someone is tracking down the bank account that paid Dominic. We hope to find other payments so we can track the other hired mercenaries and have pictures of them.” His arms hold me tight against him. “Dominic’s men were going to infiltrate with their cake delivery system. We are almost positive that it’s the catering company that will be the other point of entry. Still, we aren’t sure if we won’t have fake guests or someone impersonating lesser-known members of our Court.”
Wicked Souls: A Limited Edition Reverse Harem Romance Collection Page 190