Maiden and the Lion

by Lizzie Lynn Lee

  Gabriel noticed her standing awkwardly next to Mr Cold. His lush eyebrow arched an inch. “Bea, right? What are you doing here?”

  She couldn’t help herself, blurting out, “Mr Larousse, may I have a word with you in private?” Bea wanted to kick herself afterwards. Was this wise? Well, too late for bail out anyway.

  Gabriel conversed in a hushed voice with the gentlemen he’d come with. They looked the lawyer type. Brooks Brothers suits. Expensive haircuts. Leather briefcases. Unbearably smug faces. The men headed to the left hall, accompanied by the security guy who had given her a pat-down.

  Gabriel spread a hand towards the door next to the reception desk. “Please.”

  It turned out to be an elegant conference room with a large oval table in the middle and plush leather chairs circling it. There was a fax machine and a copier against one wall, and a laptop perched on the credenza.

  Gabriel closed the door behind him. “Have a seat, Bea. What’s it all about?”

  Bea sat gingerly. Her purse was on her lap, she gripped the strap tightly. “It’s about my boss.”

  Gabriel pulled a chair next to her. “What about Alex?”

  “I’m…” Bea paused. “I’m worried about him.”

  Gabriel narrowed his eyes, searching her face. Then a faint smile hovered on the corner of his lips. “Are you seeing him?”

  Seeing? Yes, she saw him every day at the office. Oh. It took Bea several more seconds to realise what Gabriel had meant. “No, no,” she said quickly. She blushed. “Not like that. He’s my boss.”

  Gabriel’s smile turned into what seemed to be full-blown amusement.

  “Mr Larousse didn’t come to work today. Ms Krueger said he was indisposed. I tried to call Mr Larousse’s cell…”

  “Just call him Alex.”

  Bea gulped. “Alex.” Didn’t sound very polite but whatever. “I tried to call Alex’s cell, but it always went to voicemail.”

  “And you’re worried he might be sick?”

  Gabriel didn’t try to cover the fact he was smiling broadly. Bea had a feeling Gabriel knew she had a crush on his brother.

  “I know he’s not well.”

  “Oh?” Gabriel looked very interested. “How?”

  “I met him last night.”

  “So, you are seeing him.”

  “No. Yes. Not in that way.” A sliver of frustration crept into the base of her skull. “Mr Larousse, last night I saw a man being shot from the bridge. He fell into the river. I swam and pulled him out of the water. It was Alex.”

  The smile instantly vanished from Gabriel’s face. “Alex has been shot?”

  So, Gabriel didn’t know. “Yes. On his chest. He forbade me from calling nine-one-one. He told me to drive him home. I got him into my van. But when I tried to stop his bleeding, he sort of ran away…”

  “What do you mean, ran away?”

  “Uhm. Mr Larousse, I’m not crazy, but Alex turned into…” Bea scratched her head even though she wasn’t itchy. “A lion,” she finished in a small voice. “I’m not crazy, am I?”

  Suddenly, Gabriel became all business. He seized her hand and shook it in a firm grip. “I appreciate you telling me all this, Bea. It’s best if you go home now.”

  “But what about…”

  “I’ll handle this matter.” His tone was firm. He didn’t sound like he wanted to be argued with.

  “O-okay. I’m just…worried.”

  “I know. I assure you, Alex will be happy to know that you’re worried for him.”

  Huh? Oh. As a dedicated employee, of course. “Okay.”

  Gabriel stood. “Are you going to be all right, or shall I have MacGee drive you home?”

  MacGee? Was he talking about Mr Cold? Oh, no, thank you. “I’m fine, sir. I’ve got my van.”

  Gabriel ushered her to the elevator. “I’ll see you in the office.”

  “Good evening, sir.”

  As Bea rode down to the lobby, she couldn’t shake the image of Gabriel being a lion. Were all Larousses lion-shifters? Or was it only Alex? He could have been bitten by a lion during his safari vacation in Africa—or perhaps he had stood too close to the lions’ cage in the Brooklyn Zoo—and it had changed him somehow, allowing his body to transform into a lion at certain times. Like werewolves. Only lions.

  Okay, the theory sounded ridiculous.

  And too many unanswered questions right now were driving her insane.

  When Bea shuffled towards where she had parked her van, she suddenly remembered about Alex’s wallet. Luckily, she had hidden it in her bra. She didn’t know why she’d done it, it had just come as an instinct. If Mr Cold had seen it, he probably would have taken it. And the pat-down guy hadn’t discovered it because, well, he hadn’t groped her chest. She would have screamed for sexual harassment if he had.

  Bea pulled the wallet out. She examined the contents and looked around.

  Did Alex have to go through his security people every time he went home?

  Did he have a private life?

  Wouldn’t it be awkward if he brought home some lady friend who had to go through jerks like Mr Cold?

  Hmm.

  And why had she met Gabriel on Alex’s floor? Were they living in the same place? Bea pulled out the contents of Alex’s wallet and placed them on the hood of a nearby sedan. She examined the plastic cards critically. Among his strewn IDs, she saw a plain black card with a silver magnetic swipe. She knew rich and famous people prized their privacy. Like at the office, where the Larousses had their own private elevators, bathrooms and parking spots. It was possible that Alex had his own personal elevator to his apartment.

  If he did, then why had Gabriel gone through the security on the sixtieth floor?

  Maybe it was because he had guests with him?

  Bea scooped everything into her purse but saved the black card and headed to the elevator area. She walked back and forth until she discovered what she was looking for—a secluded wing with an elevator for the building’s VIP residents. She pushed the button and gingerly stepped inside.

  Unlike in any common elevator, she didn’t see a panel with the buttons for the destination. All she saw was an ID reader with a slot similar to an ATM. She fed the card into the slot. The door slid closed as the reader vomited the card out. The elevator hummed quietly as it took her back to the sixtieth floor. Only this time, when the door opened, she didn’t see Mr Cold manning the reception area. She saw an entirely different hallway.

  Alex’s apartment.

  Bea was too chicken to step out and quickly left the building.

  “Mr Alexandre Larousse. It’s a pleasure to see you.”

  The woman, dressed all in black, greeted him by the gate of the maximum security facility. Her name was Sonja Buckhard, the client specialist from Hydra Securities, a high-profile security company Alex planned to hire. Hydra Securities was a rival of Whitewater International, the security agency that he currently used for the firm and on his and his brothers’ personal business. Since Alex suspected the leak had come from higher up within the contracted Whitewater personnel, it was reasonable to hire Whitewater’s competitor to find the blackmailers. Looking for the suspects from a new pair of eyes.

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, too, Ms Buckhard.” Alex shook Sonja’s hand. Her handshake was firm, brimming with confidence. Sonja was in her early forties, with dark eyes, dark hair and pale skin. She looked quite shrewd. He could guess she was ex-military from the way she carried herself.

  “Mr Dahl is waiting for you.” Buckhard issued a visitor’s pass for him. “Also, the team researcher you’d asked for.”

  “Excellent.”

  Three Hydra Securities guards walked in tow as Buckhard escorted Alex towards the meeting room. They descended three stories underground by the elevator. It opened to a sterile, chrome-walled hallway and equally shiny white tiled floor. Alfred Dahl and his team were waiting in the conference room.

  The first order of business was paperwork. Lots of it. Dis
closures. Contracts. Waivers. Information would be treated with the utmost secrecy and failure to do so would result in massive penalties and lawsuits. After they had cleared the paperwork out of the way, Alex pulled a stack of hardcopies from his briefcase. He pushed them towards Alfred Dahl, the head of Hydra Securities. “One of these men is trying to extort us for ten million dollars and has threatened the well-being of a female employee.”

  Dahl opened the folder and examined the suspects’ dossiers with a detached expression. He carefully read each one and seemed to be making a mental note of the suspects. There were fifty-five Whitewater security specialists currently contracted by the firm. Ten of them were granted with Level A clearance, which meant they knew the true nature of the Larousse brothers and the working of the supernatural underground world in Manhattan.

  Among the ten people, Alex trusted three of them with his life. Todd Johnston, the head of the firm’s security. George Danielson was practically Alex’s shadow. And Harris Jay Wyatt, the man in charge of Gabriel’s personal bodyguards. The three of them knew the Larousses like Alex knew the back of his hand. Alex couldn’t think of a reason why they would want to blackmail him for ten million dollars. Last year, the firm had paid twice that amount to Johnston, Danielson, and Wyatt in salaries and bonuses. Alex needed Alfred Dahl and his team to clear the three trusted security specialists before he could move on to identify the blackmailer.

  “What is the nature of the extortion?” Dahl asked.

  Alex explained everything. Dahl’s face didn’t show the slightest emotion when Alex admitted he and his brothers weren’t mere humans.

  “How did the blackmailer contact you?”

  “Letters, then phone calls. The third letter was delivered in a postal box by a courier. I was contacted by phone to transfer the sum into an offshore account. I traced the call and got an address. I followed the man from that address and we had an altercation.”

  “And you fell into the river.”

  “That is correct.”

  “Who had security access to your personal computer and files?”

  “My brothers.”

  “How about Mr Johnston, Danielson, and Wyatt?”

  “None of them have access to our personal files. Only work related in the office.”

  “Could they have hacked it?”

  “They were former special forces. Handpicked selectively by the Whitewater expert recruiter. Johnston, Danielson and Wyatt are better at hacking bodies than hacking computers. Besides, they don’t have the motive to extort us.”

  “Ten million dollars is a lucrative amount of money, Mr Larousse.”

  “True. But they are paid beyond well. My brother doesn’t hesitate to buy out the loyalty of his men with a high price tag.”

  “What about your other employees?”

  “The administrative people don’t have access to the security. Not even the IT department. Our programme runs on a separate platform. Whitewater originally designed it, but after they handed it to us, we modified the accesses and the protocols. My brother Renaud implemented his software design on the platform. It’s a cutting-edge system. It has to be an inside job to be able hack it. I want you to find out who it is.”

  Dahl made notes with his tablet. His team did the same on theirs.

  “What about the young lady…” Dahl glanced at his notes. “Beatrice Summer. Did she receive any form of protection after the blackmailer implied she would come to harm in the event you refuse to cooperate?”

  It just occurred to him that he should have put a personal detail on Bea after he had received the threat. But he suspected one of his own men as the blackmailer and the personal detail would do more harm than good, raising unnecessary attention. Bea didn’t know he was secretly attracted to her. “I transferred her from a mail room clerk to my receptionist. She doesn’t know anything about this. I prefer to keep her in the dark.”

  Dahl jotted down more notes. “What is the nature of your relationship with Ms Summer?”

  Alex stiffened. “She is a person of my interest.”

  “How big an interest?”

  He was uncomfortable with the question but neither could he avoid it. “Enough to be used as leverage.”

  “I suggest you consider putting her under a personal detail. We would be happy to provide you with such a service. A team of two would suffice, with twelve-hour shifts to observe her safety.”

  Alex considered for a second. “Let’s do it. Covert monitoring only. I don’t want to alarm her.”

  “That can certainly be arranged.”

  Alex wrapped up the meeting with a few more details. He checked his phone when he was at the parking lot. Gabriel had left him a message at his private number—the one he only shared with his brothers. Gabe only said it was urgent. Alex called him right away. “What’s up?”

  “You okay?” Gabe asked.

  “Of course I am.”

  “Did you get shot last night?”

  Alex frowned. “Did Cat tell you that?”

  “Cat knows? And she didn’t tell me?”

  Ah, shit. “I told her not to. I crashed in her office last night. Meant to tell you after I confirmed a few things.”

  “I see.”

  “How did you find out?”

  “Your new receptionist was looking for you in your apartment. She was worried. It’s kind of cute. I didn’t know you could actually make a lady worried.”

  “Bea?”

  “Yeah. Beatrice.”

  Alex swore.

  “Right. Fuck,” Gabriel chided. “She also saw you turning lion. Have you done any damage control in this matter?”

  “I’m not going to bribe her.”

  “Then bed her.”

  Alex swore again.

  “No, it’s a different kind of fuck.” Gabriel’s tone was drenched with sarcasm. “Seriously, Alex. I’ve never seen you acting this funny about a woman. Anything I should know about?”

  “Not now, Gabe. I’m not ready.”

  “Well. I expect a full explanation from you tomorrow afternoon. Ren is coming from London tonight. Let’s say, lunch at Four Seasons? I’ll have Ms Krueger reserve a table.”

  “Sounds good to me.”

  “Don’t be late.”

  Alex disconnected and pocketed his phone. He hadn’t expected Bea to come to his apartment looking for him. He must have made her really worried. He should have thought about that, considering she had saved him last night.

  Bea was worried.

  He bit his smile. He wasn’t blind. He had found out that Bea harboured an interest in him after he had promoted her to his receptionist. Only, he hadn’t made any move. The threat of the blackmailer was still hanging over his head, forcing him to weigh his every move with extra care. It was best if he didn’t do anything that could be used against him until he sorted this matter out.

  He drove out of the parking lot and to the gate. The guards opened it for him. As he hit the pedal, heading into the main street, he was thinking of giving Bea a visit tonight. They needed to talk.

  Chapter Three

  At a quarter to ten at night, with a few exceptions of the gym rats and the workers, the gym was practically empty. Bea came in and did a ten-minute exercise on the treadmill so nobody would suspect she was using the membership just for bathroom business, then headed for a shower. She took a long one until her skin became pink from the hot water. She lathered generously with her favourite rose-scented soap to wash away the fatigue and grime of the day. She thought of going back to her office building parking lot and sleeping there tonight. She had been avoiding the office because she didn’t want anyone from work knowing she was homeless and had been camping in her van. After what had happened over the past couple of days, she didn’t care so much anymore. She needed a good night’s sleep. Today, she had been unravelling at work. Plus, the matter with her boss didn’t help. Bea just wanted to drive and park in a quiet, dark corner and curl up on the back seat, snoozing it off. If she was well-re
sted, she should be able to think clearly.

  After buying gas, lunch and paying for a parking ticket, she only had seventeen dollars and seventy cents left. Her payday was on the fifteenth, five days from now. She should watch her money carefully. Maybe she shouldn’t drive far away from the office so she wouldn’t burn money on tolls and gas. And maybe she should just eat cookies from the vending machine instead of grabbing lunch from the deli. Anything to survive until she received her paycheque.

  And this time, she would have the full amount of the money she’d earned for herself. No more sharing it with her drunken father. Her father had lived on disability cheques since he’d been injured from construction work years ago. He’d become a bitter man ever since her mother had died and everything had pretty much gone downhill from there.

  Her father blew his money on booze. They wouldn’t have been able to pay the bills or buy groceries if she hadn’t got a job and chipped in. She didn’t mind doing that. Her father was the only one she had left in the world. She loved him, even though he was a mean drunk and hadn’t been a father to her ever since she had turned ten. Lately, his violence had escalated from shouting to a beating when she hadn’t give him booze money. The final straw had come when he’d swindled her meagre savings. Bea had planned to use the money to return to college, but her father had a new pill habit to feed. He was addicted to painkillers, aside from his alcoholism. They had had a fight and it had ended up with him, high as kite, chasing her across the lawn with a baseball bat, cursing every obscenity known to mankind. That was when Bea had realised she couldn’t live like that anymore.

  One day, he might have slipped and she could have ended up in the county morgue.

  While the cops had arrested him for assault, she had packed all her belongings and had driven away in her van. If she had stayed, nothing would have ever changed. In the following twenty-four hours, her father would have called her from jail, begging to bail him out and promising to change his behaviour, and she would’ve been riddled with guilt until she had done what he had asked. Things would have returned to normal for a couple of days until the addiction would have kicked in and her father had got hold of some booze. Then the vicious cycle would have started all over again.