Lia
We sped to the estate as fast as I could push the antique car. By my side, Lincoln tried calling Dad over and over. No answer came.
Max had told me to go to the apartment in the castle, but I didn’t want to sit this out. My baby girl was out there somewhere, and I needed to help.
“We can’t just go back to the apartment,” I spoke into the silence.
“Uh, yes we can. What if they try to grab you, too?” Lincoln replied.
My throat clogged. “Maybe that would be better. They’d take me to wherever they’ve hidden Evie.”
Frustration built in me along with abject fear. The whole drive back, I’d fought tears, wanting nothing more than to dissolve into crying.
But Lincoln was right. Max needed me to be safe, so I’d listen to him.
Miserable, I swung the car over the bridge and into the castle grounds. Trundling around the back to where the high wall provided a defence, I pulled up at my parking spot.
A person stood at the top of the apartment’s steps.
My father adjusted his grip on a bag and knocked on the door. In a kind of a daze, I gestured to Lincoln who still held my phone.
“Tell Max,” I ordered then climbed out. “Dad?” I called.
He turned and spotted me. “Lia, there you are. Apologies, but my phone battery died in the taxi on the way here. I arrived a moment ago.”
I stared stupidly. “How can you just stand there?”
“Whatever do you mean?”
He couldn’t be in the dark about this. Surely if his people were working against him, they’d have made demands. “Where is she?”
“Who?” He squinted. “Is that Lincoln in the car? Where’s Evelyn? Where’s my granddaughter?”
“You don’t know? Someone took her. Felix or Stephen or—”
“Felix, actually,” another voice came from behind me.
I spun around and took a couple of steps backwards.
Stephen approached.
Dad’s assistant hadn’t changed in the couple of years since I’d last seen him. With a crewcut of dark hair and a well-fitting suit, he was the picture of a military diplomat.
Cool and together while I burned.
“What the fuck have you done with my daughter?” I spat.
Stephen’s gaze flicked from me to Dad. “Evelyn is quite well. She’s content to be looked after by Felix.”
“You give her back.” My voice broke on my words.
“No harm will come to the little girl, I assure you of that. We protect children, not hurt them,” Stephen enunciated. But then a deadly stillness came over him. “So long as we are acting for the greater good. Mr Rothschild, may I first say how happy I am to see you looking so well.”
Dad blanched. “Stephen, what’s going on? You took my grandchild?”
Stephen inclined his head, and an explosion of anger rippled through me.
“I swear to God, you will pay for this,” I bit out.
But he only had eyes for my father. For a long moment, the two men stared at each other. Dad showed no emotion, mirroring Stephen’s control.
Some kind of mutual assessment built tension between them, and I tore my focus from one to the other.
Then my father seemed to make a decision. Placing his bag down, he straightened and squared his shoulders. “State your terms.”
Something faint flitted over Stephen’s expression, but he stifled it. “The contract extension.”
“What contract extension?” I asked.
Dad cut his focus to me. “This is what I came to talk to you about today. Recently, the agency which manages my jobs offered me another ten-year contract extension. I refused it.”
“An extremely problematic situation,” Stephen added.
My pulse sped faster. All at once, several things became clear.
Because of this refusal, Stephen had pulled out all the stops to blackmail Dad, taking the most extreme measure he could. Sending Felix to take my daughter. Right now, a group of men and women were combing the estate for them, but we were concealed in this blind spot around the rear of the castle. The high wall providing cover.
Stephen had known exactly where Dad would be.
I’d asked Lincoln to tell Max we found my father, but I could only hope that he’d followed it up with Stephen’s appearance, too.
Yet in a flash, I didn’t want Max and his team to appear. We didn’t have Evie. Stephen was calm in the way of a man who had full control. I remembered Max’s story about the person who’d held him and his sister at gunpoint. Stephen didn’t have a gun, but he might as well have.
If rushed, what might he do?
With my nerves jangling, I peered back at Lincoln. Still in the car, he jabbed a finger in the direction of the front of the castle. Then I caught the slight movement of people creeping around the curved stone wall.
Oh God. As subtly as I could, I shook my head at Lincoln, my eyes wide.
“Lia, please tell Lincoln to exit the car and stand next to you,” Stephen ordered.
A chill washed through me, and I called out to Lincoln, my voice wobbling.
Linc slowly exited the car. Stephen watched as he joined me. I couldn’t see the people moving now, so I could only hope that he’d passed on the message.
“Stephen,” I squeaked out. “I’ve known you since I was a little girl. Dad saved your life once. He gave you your whole career. You can’t treat us like this. Please, give me back my daughter. She’s going to be scared.”
Stephen’s eye twitched. “You’re only strengthening my case, Aurelia. The changes you have brought to your father’s life made this happen. He needed stability in order to keep doing God’s work, yet you disrupted that. The moment you said to me on the phone that your father was considering retirement, I had to act.”
I recoiled. “Don’t try—”
“I will dictate how this goes down,” Stephen interrupted. “Mr Rothschild will sign the contract extension. It is multi-government and unbreakable. Non-Western nations won’t care how or why it was signed. You and he will return to your previous lives and continue the lifestyle you have been living for the past twenty years. Once the contract is signed and you are in transit, Evelyn will be returned to you safely.”
The chill in my blood turned to a slow freeze. Not only was he forcing Dad’s hand, but he was ripping mine from Max’s, too.
“We can’t go back to the life we had,” I tried to reason. “Evie has a family here.”
“That has been taken care of. You will not be obliged to bring her here. Custody cannot be proved, therefore there is no legal requirement constraining you.”
“What are you talking about? She needs her father. I need him, too.”
“Irrelevant,” Stephen said over me. “The solicitors have passed on the information to the would-be father, and the case will be dropped. Likewise, you will give up the idea of university and stop encouraging your father to settle in any one place. You will stay together as a family. Mr Rothschild, sir, with your daughter and granddaughter at your side, you will be content and able to continue unimpeded.”
I clamped down on my tears, only imagining how he’d instructed our solicitors. He was delusional, crazy.
And he had my daughter. I had no idea how far he’d go to enforce this plan.
My father shifted his position. The whole time we’d been talking, he’d been undoubtedly considering strategies for defusing this situation. It was what he did. Why he was the expert. I had faith that he’d solve this. I had to believe he could.
“Stephen, when I trained you, it was with a mind that one day you would be able to carry out the same work that I do.”
“Irrelevant, sir. My skills are lesser than yours.” He clapped once, dismissing the tactic. “Your transport will be arriving in a moment. You will sign this contract then get into the car. You are outmanoeuvred. The people you have lying in wait are irrelevant.”
Pure determination shone from him, and it was all too clear he believed himself in the right.
My father had saved his life. Therefore, Dad needed to keep doing the same job so he could save other people’s lives. No one else would have to suffer what Stephen had in his childhood.
Which meant I had no choice but to go with my father.
Stephen produced a tablet and tapped the screen. “Let me make it clear, this contract ties you to carry out the same work for the next decade. Once signed, you will not be able to retract your decision. As a resource, you will be exploited as seen fit by the agency. Now come down and sign your name.”
Too many alternatives crashed through me, but choice was not among them. I’d go with Dad but plan to return here with Evie later. But what if Stephen prevented that? What if I was locked up in some apartment in a city in Europe for the next decade?
And I could only imagine how Stephen knew about the DNA issue. Either my father told him, or more likely he’d been listening in the whole time, like he’d so obviously been tracking us, too.
If Max knew that was out there, he’d be so badly hurt.
“Now, sir,” Stephen demanded.
My father took a step. I held my breath.
Then in a heartbeat, the door to the apartment burst open and Max snatched my father with his arm around his throat and yanked him back inside. The door slammed, and the two vanished.
I yelped in fear and clutched Lincoln.
Stephen tsked and lifted his phone.
“Stop right there,” another voice ordered.
Max strode around the curved castle wall.
I did a double take, clueing myself in on which twin was which. Both wore jeans and a plain T-shirt, but I’d felt nothing for the man who’d clearly entered the apartment from the castle door.
The Max in front of me spared a glance my way, and his eye contact scalded. This was my Max. No doubt about it.
He strode until he was a few feet away from Stephen.
“What you’ve done is irrelevant,” Dad’s former assistant announced. Yet anxiety crept into his tone.
“Is it now? We have control of your asset, ye have control of ours. The question is, what lengths are ye willing to go to to protect yours?” Max moved closer until he was eyeballing Stephen. “Because if ye think ye can take my woman and my child from me and walk away breathing, ye are very much mistaken.”
He pointed at the apartment. “Right now, my men have your idol tied up. My comms line to them is open, as I’m sure yours is, so if ye don’t play ball, we’ll start removing body parts.”
Stephen’s lips flattened, but he didn’t answer.
Max moved closer still, his muscles bunched and his unrelenting stare menacing. “Ye thought ye had this under control, but ye forgot one thing. In fucking with my family, with the people I love, ye turned me into a desperate man. Maddock, left hand.”
From the apartment and echoed over Max’s pocketed phone, a crunch sounded then a bloodcurdling scream rang out.
Terror struck me dumb. I could only stare.
Without looking my way, Max addressed me. “Lia, is your dad right or left-handed?”
“Right,” I breathed.
Max hummed. “Lucky. Now you’ve got one chance to keep his other hand. Next, we move on to his tongue. See how effective a negotiator he is when he can’t speak.”
Red streaks crept up Stephen’s neck. “You wouldn’t do that to Aurelia’s father.”
That menacing stare turned deadly. “Why wouldn’t I? The man means nothing to me. He offered me a bribe to never see my child again. He’s scum.”
“But—”
“But nothing. Ye have my daughter. There are no lengths to which I won’t go.”
“Exactly, I have your daughter.”
Max grinned evenly. “And if ye touch her hair on her head, old Rothschild in there will be so be busy being dead, he’ll never work again.”
I didn’t like this game. Not at all. But trading Dad for Evie… I didn’t even need to consider it.
“Maddock,” Max said again, directing his voice at his phone.
“Stop,” Stephen snapped. This time, his tone showed his panic.
I wondered if he’d even considered Evie’s father in this, beyond rejecting him from being in our lives, or simply focused his manipulation on Dad and me.
Max paused. “Our goals aren’t that different. I want my family, ye want Rothschild. We can both have what we want.”
“He won’t go without them,” Stephen bit out. “We attempted the separation before but to no avail.”
My blood rushed my ears. “When I was pregnant,” I interrupted. “It was you. You invented my relative.”
The old assistant sliced his attention my way. “Mr Rothschild was talking about quitting then. We knew if the baby’s father wanted the child, you would settle here, and your father would follow. He can’t do global work from some dead-end town in the middle of nowhere. There was no option. We used a stand-in to represent a long-dead relative and with excellent results. Despite that, the same problem is happening again, Aurelia. You can end this. You know how important he is. How vital his work. I sent you records of his successes, but that is the tip of the iceberg. He is a miracle worker. A saint.”
Stephen’s level of animation grew. “You have the choice between rejecting or standing with your father. I assume Mr McRae will listen to your decision?”
He eyeballed Max who took a half step backwards and gave a swift nod.
“What are you talking about?” I half whispered.
Stephen tilted his head. “Send in the car.”
A large car with blacked-out windows backed around the corner of the castle. At a guess, I’d say it was bulletproof and made for the type of government officials Dad worked for. Now, it was here to take us away.
Along with it, members of Max’s family stole closer, their expressions fierce but movements cautious.
All gazes fell to me.
Stephen spoke again. “Whatever she chooses, we will abide by. If she wants to see her father again, you will release him, and they will get into the car and be driven away. If she doesn’t, he will leave alone.”
“I want my daughter,” I growled.
“You will have her,” Stephen agreed. “But your father will be leaving. You either go with him or send him away with your blessing.”
Everyone waited on me.
In a heartbeat, the conflict had flipped to put me in the centre. Either way, I had to betray someone I loved.
Two years ago, I’d been faced with the decision whether to choose Max or not. Ever since then, I’d been living a lie. A half life where I’d loved and celebrated my daughter but grieved the love I’d lost.
I’d hated, and I’d been wrong.
I’d been persuaded, and it had broken me.
It hadn’t escaped me that, within that time, Max had been a hostage once during his sister’s kidnapping. He’d described himself as not being in the centre of that scene, but he was now. Here. He was the centre of my universe and Evie’s, too.
Whatever side I landed on, it would be with pain in my heart. Either I went with Dad and could be sure he was safe and well. Or I could abandon him for the life I desperately wanted for myself.
Then came the clincher. If I took that second choice and followed my heart, after all I’d put him through, how could Max ever forgive me?
