“Alejandro Sureda, what the fucking hell are you doing?” The familiar voice froze every muscle in his body.
He looked up at the door. Maggie.
Julianna screamed and scrambled out from under Alex, dragging sheets around her body. “Get out of here! I’m going to call security.”
Maggie stepped in front of the desk, where the phone sat, and from the hallway, a large black semi-automatic weapon came over her shoulder.
Donovan had the gun leveled at Julianna, as he moved into the room. Then, Andrea VonBrandt’s blonde head followed, similarly looking down the barrel of a large gun.
Alex jumped in front of Julianna. “No. Mag, stop this.”
He held his arms wide, with Julianna clawing at his back. “Alex, how do you know these people? What the hell is going on?”
Maggie shook her head and kept coming into the room.
He glanced between Donovan and Andrea. “You’re not going to shoot me.”
“The hell we won’t. Sleeping with the fucking enemy.” Maggie’s jaw tightened. “I should have known.”
“Enemy?” Julianna went slack behind him and over his shoulder, he saw her retreat, pulling the sheets with her.
The movement under his knees unbalanced Alex and he fell forward, off the bed.
Donovan had come around one side and was advancing on Julianna.
Alex scrambled up, trying to get between his barrel and his mate’s head.
“Don’t move, Miss Rossi.” Maggie’s tone was even, disappointed. From the hallway, two more guns appeared, attached to Dani Davis and Hannah Li, followed closely by Niko Lupescu, all out of their hotel uniforms, and clad in black. His heart dropped into his stomach.
Everyone.
They were all aligned against him.
Against Julianna.
He drew in a ragged breath and stepped toward Donovan until the cold barrel of his gun hit Alex in the chest. “You shoot her, and I will tear every single one of you to pieces.”
“I’m calling security.” Julianna pulled the sheets off the bed and began to walk around the edge of the bed, but Andrea met her, gesturing with her gun.
“You move one more step, Rossi, and I’m going to paint these walls with your intestines.” The VonBrandt enforcer had a slight Texas twang that made the threat sound almost benign, but it stopped Alex’s breath.
They really did think she was the enemy.
“Everyone stop.” He stepped in front of Julianna, backing her away from Andrea and Donovan. “She is not the enemy.”
“The hell she isn’t,” Dani spat. “She’s a Rossi.”
“She’s not even his daughter.” Alex pointed at the LA enforcer. “She can’t be. She’s human.”
“Everyone stop talking about me like I’m not in the room,” Julianna yelled in a tone that shook Alex to his core. “Mr. Sureda, if you don’t tell me what is going on, right now, I’m going to have you all thrown in jail.”
His heart sank. He heard the edge in her tone. Her walls had gone right back up, where they had been the first time he met her. Alex turned to find angry tears in the corners of her eyes, and her arms crossed in front of her, holding sheets around her body. He tried to reach for her, and she backed away.
“Your father,” he sighed. “We’re here trying to find your father.”
Her brows wrinkled in a pained echo of the tears. “We?”
He dropped his head. “Yes. This is my team.”
“So… You seduced me to learn more about my father? Or find out where he is? What?” Tears flowed like rain, dropping onto her hands, clutched over her breasts. “No, tell me. I want to give you what you need so you’ll…leave me the hell alone.” Sobs broke up the rhythm of her words, but her face remained strong.
“Let me explain.”
“I don’t want you to explain.” Julianna gripped the sheet tighter. “Well, here’s what I know. My father isn’t here. I don’t have access to any of his information.”
“We know he isn’t here.” Maggie’s tone was still hard, and the other wolves rearranged themselves behind Alex. He could feel them moving, but couldn’t take his eyes off Julianna.
Her back was straight, her chin up, and the tears sailed along unknown pathways, while she seemed otherwise unaffected. “Then you know as much as I know.”
“You don’t understand, Mag.” Alex whirled on the group. “She’s not protecting him. He is a bastard to her. If you had just given me time—”
“You could have…fucked it out of me?” Julianna’s voice broke. “Nice tactics. Whoever you work for, you should be ashamed of yourselves.”
The air in the bedroom seemed to swell with everyone’s anger, but Alex ached inside. He wanted to punch through a wall. Why hadn’t Maggie just trusted him?
“We never intended for him to have sex with you,” Niko piped up.
Julianna scoffed. “Nicholas. I see you were in on this. And Danielle.” She backed up a few more steps until she was almost against the back wall of the bedroom. “Is there anyone on my staff who isn’t in on this?”
Alex shook his head and faced her. “You don’t understand, Julianna. I truly believe that you don’t know what your father has been doing. You can’t.”
“If she doesn’t know, then why is she protecting him?” Andrea asked.
“She’s not protecting him!” Alex raised his voice, wishing he had the alpha resonance. No one was listening to him. Not Julianna, not Maggie, not the team. No one. “She’s protecting the hotel, the employees. She knows her father is wrapped up in something bad, and she knows about last week, about the penthouse.”
“The penthouse?” Julianna met his eyes. “How do you know about that?”
“We were the ones in the gunfight with your father,” Maggie said, her voice softening a bit. “We lost two of our friends, and your father lost three of his security people.”
A sharp inhale made Alex take a step toward Julianna and reach for her. She sat down, hard, on the bed, and he touched her shoulder. Unexpectedly, she didn’t pull away, just stared at the wall.
“I didn’t know.” She swallowed hard. “I mean, I assumed. But I didn’t know.”
“Didn’t you have to clean it up?” Maggie’s incredulous words were closer and Alex found her almost directly over his shoulder. “We assumed that was why he had his daughter running the hotel—so she could clean up after his messes and protect him.”
Julianna shook her head. “Maybe ten years ago, when I was still his favorite. Maybe that’s what he wanted from me. But…I never would have done anything to help a criminal.”
Alex stroked her shoulder and sat down. Absently, she drew the edge of her sheet over his naked crotch and he took her hand. But her whole body was slack, like the life had gone out of her.
“You’re not a criminal.” He stroked her palm, but got no response. It was almost like she’d checked out of life. “We’re here because some of our family members were taken by your father. Some of them were killed, some were… He’s not a good man, Julianna.”
“I know that.” Her words were so soft, he barely heard them. “I know that.”
“We know he’s doing the same thing on his island that he was doing in Guadalajara thirty years ago.” Maggie knelt beside Alex and put her hand on Julianna’s knee. “If you really aren’t helping him, then we need you to help us.”
The hand he’d been holding stiffened, then retreated.
Julianna hugged herself and nodded, pulling the sheet up and over her shoulders, around her body more completely. “I was always afraid he was doing something truly criminal.” Another tear wound its way down her cheek. “And if he is, then I have a responsibility to my employees to protect them and this hotel as their livelihood. If I can do anything to help you put him in jail, then I will.” She stood and looked Maggie in the eyes.
Alex reached for her, but she evaded his touch, and she followed Maggie out of the bedroom, dragging the sheets behind her like the stoic princess he’d assu
med she was when he first saw her.
The Julianna who sighed beneath him and looked at him with love in her eyes was gone.
He wasn’t sure if he would ever see her again.
Julianna blinked away the tears forming, and hurried from the room, following the tiny woman who’d only moments ago been threatening her life. She sucked in a deep breath and ducked inside the closet as they passed. Helping this woman…these people…Alex’s people was all fine and well, but she wasn’t about to do it naked.
She couldn’t believe it’d all been a lie. He’d been using her to get close to her father. Nothing had been real. It couldn’t have been.
Julianna yanked the tail of the sheet in behind her and turned the lock on the inside of the closet door. A nice little addition she’d added for emergencies.
“Ms. Rossi.” Maggie pounded on the door, her voice acidic and tired.
She dragged a breath in between the sobs and gathered what little control she had left. “I’m going to get dressed, unless you’d rather I parade across the hotel lobby in a fucking bed sheet.” Julianna curled her fingers into her palm until her nails bit into the skin. “I’ll meet you in the lobby outside the room in a few minutes. Tell them all to leave. I’ll help you, just get out of my hotel room.”
“I can’t leave you, Ms. Rossi.”
“Get out!” The scream left her throat before she could choke it back. Her body slid down the length of the door and she curled up on the floor. The tears she’d been holding released, burning trails down her cheeks and pooling on the cold marble floor.
Feet shuffled outside the door and Alex’s voice rumbled something incoherent before he leaned against the door.
She knew it was him. Something in her could feel his nearness. Sobs shook her. She’d let him matter. She’d let herself care.
“They are leaving, Julianna,” he said slowly. “I’m so sor—”
“Get out, Alex!” She wept through the words.
The warmth that followed wherever he was left with the sound of his receding footsteps.
Julianna was alone. For a brief moment, she’d let herself believe that she might not have to be alone forever. Her father ruined everything, even when he wasn’t present for the collapse.
She cried a little longer. Until the tears slowed and sobs that shook her core subsided. Then she picked herself up off the floor and slid into one of the sexy little dresses she’d packed. It was black and had a high neck, probably the most form-fitting item she owned, but at least it kept her cleavage out of sight. She could change as soon as she got back to her apartment suite. For now, it would have to suffice.
Julianna slipped into a pair of black stilettos, ran her fingers through her unruly curls, and then unlocked the closet door. She pushed it open, half-way expecting—maybe hoping—Alex would still be standing there.
He wasn’t. It was better that he’d done as she asked. Easier.
Her heels clicked on the floor as she walked slowly to the suite main entrance. Taking a deep breath, she opened the door and stepped into the small lobby with seven strangers.
At least the guns were in their big, black bags, and no longer pointed at her. Alex stood the furthest away. His eyes were pained and his face was drawn tight. When he tried to move toward her, the large blond waiter she’d hired this week, Nicholas—they’d called him Niko—stepped out to block his advance.
In a way, Julianna was thankful they were keeping him at a distance. She couldn’t deal with him in close proximity right now. Just being in the same room with him made her heart hurt.
She wanted him.
Still. After all this. All the lies.
Maggie jabbed the elevator button, and a few moments later a set of doors slid open. Everyone moved for the bay.
“Just you.” Julianna pointed to Maggie. She was armed, but the handgun was well hidden beneath a short leather coat. “The rest of you need to figure out how to not disrupt my hotel with your presence.”
Maggie waved off the others and entered the elevator with Julianna. “Head back to the room and get the handguns. Then meet us in the hallway outside her room.”
Julianna’s eyes widened. “How do you know where my suite is? Nevermind,” she said, rolling her eyes. “I suppose you know everything about me.”
The doors closed and the woman turned to face her. “Everything except where you keep that damn tablet.”
Julianna’s lips curved upward. She couldn’t help it. At least she’d managed to outwit these people in one thing.
“Where is it?”
“In my suite.”
“We searched from top to bottom.”
They’d been in her home. In her things.
Alex had been inside her…literally. “You know, you could’ve just asked.” Julianna sighed and leaned against the cold steel wall of the elevator. It rumbled as it dropped from floor to floor.
“You’re his daughter. Why would we have asked you to help us take him down?” Maggie crossed her arms and huffed. “If Alex had just kept it in his pants and found the damn tablet the first night, we wouldn’t be in this mess.”
“Alex would never have found the tablet.”
Maggie’s eyes narrowed to slits.
The level of distrust was obvious, but the disrespect was intolerable.
“You are despicable. You come into my home. My business. My personal life and wreck it, for what? I’m sorry my father is an asshole. On some level, I’ve always lived with his unreasonable narcissistic tendencies. He’s a multi-millionaire who tries to control every aspect of my life he can and I don’t need anyone else telling me how things should be.” She took a step toward the small woman and glared down at her. Gun or not, Julianna was through being intimidated. “I’m sorry for your friends who died in my father’s penthouse. It took every favor I was owed to contain the situation. And that is the only reason I’m still in charge of this hotel. Because I can contain his messes. If he didn’t need me, I’m quite sure I would be fish food within the week.”
The corners of Maggie’s lips curved upward. “I see why Alex likes you.”
“Goddammit! Don’t you get it? If he so much a gets a hint that you are looking for him, he’ll take it out on me. On the staff. We will suffer for your carelessness.”
“That’s why we need to do this before he comes back from his little island hideaway. We can’t be in this hotel when he arrives. He’ll know we’re here the second he steps through the door.”
Deep breath. The elevator stopped at the lobby level and Julianna stepped off first with Maggie keeping pace as soon as they turned the corner out of the lobby.
Everything she’d heard upstairs in the room was starting to filter through her mind. She’d been so shocked by it all when it was happening, she hadn’t really processed what they’d said. But Maggie had mentioned Guadalajara thirty years ago and that he was doing it again.
Doing what again? She’d been born thirty years ago in Guadalajara. And they’d said she wasn’t her father’s daughter.
That she was human. Why wouldn’t she be human?
She’d missed something. Or they were certifiable and this whole thing was a joke. Except the blood in her father’s suite was not a joke. And she’d paid dearly to make sure no one knew anything about it. If they hadn’t been there, they wouldn’t know.
Julianna pressed the button for an elevator in the main tower lobby. One of four opened immediately and they climbed on with several other guests. The ride was silent.
After the last guest got off at floor twelve, she used her keycard to request level thirteen. The top three floors of both towers were limited access.
The doors opened again on her floor, and she walked down the hallway and let them both into her room. She locked the door again behind her and pointed to the living room seating. “It’s in the coffee table.”
“In?”
“Yes.” She crossed the room and knelt beside the table. Reaching beneath the maze of driftwood, Julianna pr
essed the button that released a hidden drawer.
“Damn.”
Maggie’s awe made her feel some satisfaction. “I always turn it off, too. So even a scanner wouldn’t have picked it up.” She pulled the tablet from the drawer and sat on the couch. After turning it on and inputting her personal passcode, she handed it to Maggie. “I’m not sure what you think you’re going to do with this. But here it is.”
“There are security feeds running in this hotel that don’t have camera’s assigned to them. At least not cameras on this property. We’re hoping he has feeds on the island that will give us an idea of what we’re going up against.”
“I’ve never seen anything like that.”
“You wouldn’t. Direct access is only going to be available in the security room on the penthouse level.”
“How do you know it’s there?”
“We tracked the lines.”
“I don’t have access to his floor except when he grants it. I certainly can’t make keys to his rooms without him granting access.”
“You don’t have to,” Maggie said. “I can get in with your tablet. I can hack it and make the key card for that door.”
Air rushed from Julianna’s lungs. This was real. All of it was real. “Who are you people?”
“We’re here to stop him.” Maggie looked up from the tablet screen. “You’re either with us or against us.”
“How do I know you didn’t all lie to me?”
“You vetted Alex. You hired Dani and Niko and Andrea as staff. We didn’t lie about our identities.”
“Fair enough.” Julianna sighed. Maggie was right. She’d done extensive backgrounds on most of the group. There wasn’t much of a reason for the rest of them to be lying. “I have to change clothes.”
Maggie nodded and Julianna slipped out of the room. She needed distance from this mess, but that probably wasn’t going to happen until they got what they wanted and got out of the hotel. The faster the better. Her father would be back any day now. He rarely stayed away more than three or four days at a time.
She closed her bedroom door and stripped out of the sexy black satin. Kicking off the four-inch stilettos, she wandered into her closet and found a plain black suit and white blouse.
Seducing a Wolf: Moonbound Series, Book Five Page 7