Soul Breather (21st Century Sirens Book 1)

by T Stedman

  “Shall we say we can’t go to the presentation?” she asked.

  Reeve spoke up. “We can’t afford not to be there, timing is crucial at the moment.”

  “No, we’ll work through today, even if I just come for a couple of days. I’ll make sure we get you there.” Cash said, and squeezed her.

  “We still have to have something suitable to wear?” Sarah said.

  “Sarah,” Sean said, pulling her back by the arm.

  “No it’s okay,” Tia, said. “We can still go shopping can’t we? There’s not a lot we can do here.”

  “There is no-one to accompany you today.” Cash said, wearily.

  “I can.” Antonio offered. “I won’t be much use.”

  Tia looked at Cash and Sean for permission.

  “Okay,” Cash must have come to the same conclusion as Tia, when he said, “Watch her like a hawk.”

  “Of course,” Antonio said, inclining his head.

  Chapter 30

  Although they were all dog-tired, Tia and Sarah showered and dressed, ready to go out and get something resembling a gown fit for a royal presentation. The wonderful Mrs Ross offered to have baby Ronnie for Sarah, freeing them up to try stuff on.

  Antonio appeared looking like a supermodel. No-one would have believed that he’d been up half the night fighting the fire with everyone else. He was turning out to be a really good guy.

  Tia kissed Cash and Sean goodbye and they jumped into Cash’s old pick-up and set off for Billings.

  Sarah, Tia realised, was quite good fun once you got her away from Sean and responsibility. They all traipsed into every half-decent shop. Antonio always managed to find a comfy chair and rabbit to someone on his mobile phone. Then he would nod or shake his head when either of them came out of the dressing room to parade in whatever outfit they’d tried on.

  Eventually, Sarah went for a lovely black to the floor number with a plunging V at the back. Tia, who really wasn’t a dress person, had found it really hard. But Sarah convinced her that a purple asymmetric sleeveless dress was perfect. “It will match Dante’s ring,” Sarah added.

  Tia told herself that it was nothing more than a PR exercise at the end of the day. Not a show of her undying love for Dante. She didn’t want Jay thinking that – no way.

  ***

  Antonio finished his call as they paid for their dresses. “Let’s get a coffee shall we, and take a well-earned rest? I saw a nice little place just around the corner.”

  Both girls agreed a pick-me-up was just what the doctor ordered and trailed after him to the shop he’d spotted. They flopped into their seats and Antonio got the coffees in.

  As they sat and sipped their drinks, Tia thought how quiet they all were. Everyone’s knackered she guessed. They’d been up most of the night. She was lost in her own thoughts when a familiar voice spoke from next to her. “Hello Tia. Long time, no see.”

  She blinked before turning her head slowly in disbelief. “Marco?”

  He pulled up a chair.

  She looked over at Antonio and Sarah, but their faces were blank and were continuing to drink their coffees as if a friend had just joined them for a lunch date. Everything felt really odd; like a bad dream. “What do you want, Marco?” she said. No point beating around the bush.

  “Nice to see you too …” Marco said, eyebrows raised, as if he was surprised at his reception. When she didn’t say anything further, he continued. “I want you to come with me and pledge to me as king. Then you’ll be free to go on with your life … with Jay isn’t it?”

  “I’ve already pledged to your brother, you know that.”

  “Half-brother. And he’s no longer king, Tia,” he said, blinking slowly with annoyance.

  She swallowed. “That’s a matter of opinion.”

  He grabbed the top of her arm and squeezed it hard; hard enough to make her wince. She looked over at Antonio and Sarah for some kind of back up. Everyone appeared to be frozen in their seats; their eyes looked away, and Sarah was going red. For fuck sake!

  “I could take you by force,” Marco grit into her ear, so other patrons didn’t notice anything was wrong.

  She turned her head to him, squinting in hatred. “You could, but then you’d have to take your chances with me in the tank. How do you rate your chances, Marco?”

  He let go of her arm with a rough push. She rubbed where he’d held her with her other hand.

  “No matter,” he said. “I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do this.”

  She felt a sharp scratch on the side of her neck. She had time to look at Sarah, then Antonio and everything faded to black.

  ***

  Dante’s lawyers had earned their money and unfrozen the fortune which had been allocated to him from his mother on her death.

  The bid for the Bonaci Corporation had crumbled when Jay and Dante joined forces and fought back by doing exactly the same thing with Dubonnetti Industries, which put Dante firmly back at the helm.

  The crisis meant that Dante and Jay had spent a precious couple of days together, almost like the old days. Dante had accepted bodyguards as part of his new station in life and took them as seriously as Dante could. But his juvenile side made an appearance whenever he and Jay challenged them to sparring sessions to tune up their fighting skills, which was constantly, much to the annoyance of their lawyers and accountants, buttoned up in their stiff collars and expectations.

  The night they saved their companies they got really pissed together, just like old times. They made the guards join them; even though they were supposed to go back to Ireland to get ready for the presentation and for Dante to greet his guests the next day. Jay insisted they spend the night at The Bluebell, which Dante thought was a grand idea.

  The night ended with them both sitting on bar stools at 4.30 a.m. like they’d done so many times before. The two guards clapped them on the back and said they’d had enough and were turning in, to which they were called lightweights.

  When they were alone, Dante broke the silence. “Have you spoken to Tia since you’ve been here, Jay?” he said, looking into his drink.

  “No, I’ve been busy. And no, I’m not going to talk about it Dante.”

  Dante held up his hands in mock surrender. “Okay, okay. I was just gonna say that I couldn’t blame you for wanting to do it again, is all.”

  “You spoke to her?” Jay said, looking sideways at his friend, with half-closed suspicious eyes.

  “Yes … but I guessed anyway. It wasn’t hard.”

  Jay turned to face him on his bar stool, interested all of a sudden. “When did you speak to her? You’ve been with me the whole time.”

  “This morning … in bed. It was a psychic thing, like the time I spoke to you when you were sick.” Dante couldn’t stop the grin creeping across his face as he said it and tried to hide it by taking a sip of his drink.

  “You bastard!” Jay said, who read the situation bang on, and slowly shook his head. And Dante knew he had and found it all the more funny. “What?” he said, in all innocence.

  “I should fucking drop you where you stand, you fucker!”

  That made Dante roar with laughter and he put his arm around his old friend’s shoulders. “What do you expect when you leave her unattended?”

  A barrage of expletives left Jay’s lips, which tickled Dante all the more with their increasing baseness.

  He was still laughing and holding his stomach when he answered his phone. His face dropped immediately. “We’ll leave right away … call the Guard in New York. We’ll meet them there.” He ended the call and picked up his money and keys off the bar.

  “What?” Jay asked, getting off his stool ready to go.

  “She’s gone Jay … she’s fucking gone.” He was already walking out into the foyer, and ringing the two guards.

  ***

  As they sped through the empty early morning streets on the way to the airport, Jay simmered. Dante swore to himself as thoughts came to him.

  “Antoni
o was supposed to have been minding her. Fucking Antonio! What’s he gonna do?” Dante ranted, looking at Jay in exasperation. “They were out buying bloody frocks for the presentation.”

  “There was a fire you say?” Jay said.

  Dante nodded absently.

  “Do you know what I’m starting to think?”

  “What?” Dante said, looking at him.

  “This whole thing, Keenan going, me getting called here, Antonio turning up, the barn catching alight… it was all to get her alone and unguarded.”

  “Yeah,” Dante thought about it. “Everyone picked off one by one … It was weird how the takeover just crumbled like that.”

  “Mm, it had served its purpose.”

  They both nodded and sighed.

  “What exactly did Antonio say?” Jay asked.

  Dante relayed the version of the events, as told by Antonio of what happened in the coffee shop.

  “What I don’t get is the other two?” Jay said, shaking his head. “Doesn’t add up.”

  “Antonio reckoned that Marco wasn’t interested in them.”

  “Did he say it was Marco who’s got her?”

  “He’s not sure.”

  “He’s back at the ranch right?”

  “Yeah, Cash and Sean have him.”

  Hatred didn’t even cover the look that crossed and settled on Jay’s face. His deathly white pallor was even scarier than when he went red and quiet. Fuck!

  ***

  When Dante and Jay arrived at the ranch it was early morning and the place was a hive of activity. People had been arriving all through the night from various locations. The kitchen was filled with huge guards making themselves cups of coffee and sandwiches as they squeezed through from the back door.

  They shook hands with Cash and Sean as they walked into the large living room, which was just as crowded. It had now become centre of operations.

  They noticed Keenan and a small beautiful girl with him. She had dark hair, similar colour eyes to Tia, and was very striking. She looked nervous and averted her eyes from everyone. Dante and Jay walked over to him. “Tia’s sister?” Dante said, straight away, smiling at her.

  “I thought it was safer to bring her with me.”

  Dante agreed.

  Keenan introduced her formally to Dante and then to Jay. She gave an unsure smile and got behind the cover of Keenan’s body.

  “No change?” Jay asked discretely.

  Keenan shook his head.

  “You can tell she’s her sister though, can’t you?”

  They all agreed.

  “What’s the plan?” Keenan asked.

  “We think they planned to take her all along.” Jay said.

  Keenan nodded. “Distractions? Makes sense.”

  “Where’s my brother?” Dante called to Cash, a little way off from him, in the throng of people.”

  “I’ll go get him.” And he went up the stairs. He came back in a few moments. “He’s gone.” And held out his empty arms.

  Dante looked at Jay. “He was in on it.” They said simultaneously.

  Dante motioned for Sean to come over. “Where is your woman? Has anyone spoken to her yet?”

  “Yes.” Sean said. “She’s very shaken up though.”

  “Do you mind if we have a quick word with her?

  “Come on, I’ll take you to her.”

  They followed Sean up the wooden staircase, and along the corridor of bedrooms. Sean knocked quietly on the door to their room. He put his head around the door jam and called her quietly to come outside, so as not to wake the baby. She looked like she’d been crying.

  Jay took the lead after looking askance at Dante, who nodded. She didn’t know Dante that well, so it made sense that a familiar person had a go. Besides, he wouldn’t put it past Dante to try to shake it out of her.

  “I just need to ask you a couple of questions Sarah, okay?” he said, gently.

  She nodded and dabbed her eyes with a tissue.

  “Whose idea was it to go shopping?”

  “Tia’s.” She sniffed.

  “Okay. Did Antonio volunteer to take you?”

  “Yes. Everyone was busy because of the fire. And Cash said we still had to go to the presentation.”

  “What about the coffee shop. Who picked that?”

  “Antonio.”

  He looked at Dante. “What happened when Marco turned up?”

  She explained everything they already knew, up to the point when someone came up to Tia and then she collapsed.

  “What I don’t get is why you both sat there and didn’t do anything?” Dante butted in.

  Sarah’s face puckered ready to cry again, “I’m so sorry … Antonio whispered to me to sit quiet, and said Marco would just talk to her and then go.”

  Sean pulled Sarah into his arms and looked daggers at Dante. “That’s enough. You can see how upset she is.”

  Dante turned away in exasperation.

  Jay continued softly. “What do you think happened, Sarah?”

  She sniffed. “It looked like she was injected in the neck with something.” She looked nervously at Dante.

  “The people who were with Marco. What did they look like?” Jay said.

  “They looked military. Definitely. I’d know them a mile off,” she said, straightening up.

  “Thanks Sarah.” Jay nodded at Sean, who took her back along the landing to their room.

  “What do you think?” Jay asked Dante.

  “It sounds as though, he asked her to pledge to him, and when she said no, he went to a plan B …handing her over to the Human authorities.”

  “Why would he do that? What’s in it for him?”

  “Fucks us up. Takes her out of the game?”

  “Or, to make a deal. What if they have one already?” Jay asked.

  “I think it’s time we got Alfonzo to use his government contacts. It’s time I met my long-lost father.”

  ***

  Alfonzo arranged a rare slot with Duke Ormond Delissi, Dante’s father and ambassador for the Atlantean Nation. But in order to meet, Dante had to go down to Washington DC. That’s what had brought him to this brooding state whilst sitting on his private plane.

  The occasion of meeting his father should have been a momentous one, but all Dante could think of was getting information on getting Tia back. He also felt a certain amount of resentment towards the man who had left him to deal with the shit, Dubonnetti, all his fucking life; and not to forget, leaving his mother to marry someone with his bastard child.

  He made his way to the arranged meeting place immediately on landing. They were due to meet at the Smithsonian Museum. Jay had offered to go with him but he thought this was something he should do on his own. Plus, he could do with leaving him and Keenan in Montana in case any news was received up there. Today he just took two guards with him, so looking inconspicuous between the exhibits, with him looking like he did and flanked with two six feet six vampires, was nigh on impossible.

  He asked them to hang back while he looked at the exhibits of African art at the place he’d been told to go to. He killed some time by allowing his mind to reach out like he’d done so many times to see if he could contact Tia telepathically, but he got nothing. He was sure she must be unconscious.

  “The ceramics are beautiful are they not?” A deep Italian voice rumbled to the left of him.

  Dante stole a sideways glance at the stranger. “They are.” And he turned squarely to look straight at his father.

  The man in front of him had the overall appearance of a distinguished aristocrat. His look from his lively mahogany eyes was direct and confident. In fact they looked like they’d seen many things so nothing troubled him much. His hair was peppered grey and slightly long and wavy to his shoulders. He was tall and slim, dressed in a navy blue conservative suit with a beige raincoat over the top. He had a smart cane held in one of his gloved hands.

  He allowed Dante the few moments to study him, as if he knew that he needed
to process any genetic similarities, or not as the case may be. “Hello at last, Dante.” And he held out his hand to him.

  Dante took his hand, and shook it. He didn’t feel like he expected to feel. In fact he didn’t feel much at all. Maybe it was because all he’d ever known was Dubonnetti. Perhaps if he’d known about Delissi from childhood, this meeting would have held more import than it did.

  “I am Ormond. Ormond Delissi. Perhaps we could walk awhile,” he said quietly, in his beautiful accent.

  Dante walked in step with him.

  “I hear from my friend and cousin, Alfonzo, that you are experiencing troublesome times?”

  Dante nodded. He could have said, my whole life has been fucking troublesome times, but he kept shtum. He honestly couldn’t think of anything constructive to say.

  Ormond broke the uncomfortable silence. “I want you to know, Dante, that I loved your mother very much. She was the love of my life.”

  Dante just raised his eyebrows and looked at him.

  “We are all earmarked for different things in our Atlantean lives. Mine was to be a diplomat and help ensure our place in the Human world. Secret service was my destiny, Dante. Marriage therefore, even to such a rare beauty as your mother, was out of the question. She had already been promised to Christian, my first cousin.

  His father was obviously an excellent reader of people. “You want me to get to the point of the visit?”

  Dante had stopped walking. “Do you know I am married?”

  “I know everything. It is my place to know.”

  “Then you know she has been taken?”

  Ormond took a piece of paper out of his inside breast pocket and passed it to Dante. “There is the name of the military base I believe she was taken to, and a map of the layout. You must be there at 0600 tomorrow. There will be a ten minute lapse in security in the route on the map marked in red.”

  Dante nodded and put the piece of paper in his pocket.

  “This is the one opportunity Dante. She will be moved soon, and I may not be able to locate her after that.”

  “I understand. Thank you.” And he meant it. This was the only time he’d called on his father for help and he’d come through for him.

  “One more thing,” Ormond said, touching Dante gently on the arm. “I can’t be sure, but there have been whispers of someone else … someone other than your wife. There may be two held captive.”