After the vault, I made it as far as the foyer before chaos descended on me in the form of one very pissed-off Alisa Ortega. “What have you done?”
“Welcome back,” Oren told her dryly.
“What I had to do,” I answered.
Alisa took what was probably supposed to be a calming breath. “You didn’t wait for me to get here because you knew I’d tell you that calling the police was a bad idea.”
“You would have told me that calling the police on Blake was a bad idea,” I countered. “So I didn’t call them on Blake.”
“We have local PD at the gate,” Oren informed me. “Given the circumstances, my men can’t refuse them entrance. I suspect the DPS Special Agents aren’t long behind.”
Alisa kneaded her temples. “I can fix this.”
“It’s not yours to fix,” I told her.
“You have no idea what you’re doing.”
“No,” I replied, staring her down. “You have no idea what I’m doing. There’s a difference.” I didn’t have the time or inclination to explain everything to her. Landon had promised me a two-hour head start, but that was it. Any delay past that and we might lose our opportunity to control the narrative.
If I waited too long, Vincent Blake would have too much time to regroup.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” I told Alisa. “You’ve done a lot for me since the will was read. I know that. But the truth is that Tobias Hawthorne’s fortune will be in my hands very soon.” I didn’t like playing it this way, but I didn’t have a choice. “The only question you have to ask yourself is whether you still want to have a job when that happens.”
Even I wasn’t sure if I was bluffing. There was no way I could do this on my own, and even though I’d doubted her, I trusted Alisa more than I would trust anyone else I could hire next. On the other hand, she was in the habit of treating me like a kid—the same wide-eyed, overwhelmed, never-had-two-nickels-to-rub-together kid I’d been when I’d gotten here.
To take on Vincent Blake, I had to grow up.
“You’d drown without me,” Alisa told me. “And take an empire down with you.”
“So don’t make me do this without you,” I responded.
Fixing her gaze on me with almost frightening precision, Alisa gave a slight nod of her head. Oren cleared his throat.
I turned to face him. “Is this the part where you start talking about duct tape?”
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Is this the part where you threaten my job?”
On the day that Tobias Hawthorne’s will had been read, I’d tried to tell Oren I didn’t need security. He’d calmly replied that I would need security for the rest of my life. It had never been a question of whether he would protect me.
“This isn’t just a job to you,” I told Oren, because I felt like I owed him that much. “It never has been.”
He’d told me months ago that he owed Tobias Hawthorne his life. The old man had given Oren a purpose, dragged him out of a very dark place. His last request to my head of security had been that Oren protect me.
“I thought he’d done something noble,” Oren said quietly, “asking me to take care of you.”
Oren was my constant shadow. He’d heard Tobias Hawthorne’s message. He knew what my purpose was—and that had to have shed new light on his.
“Your boss asked you to run my security. Taking care of me…” My voice hitched. “That was all you.”
Oren gave me the briefest of smiles, then he allowed himself to fall back into bodyguard mode. “What’s the plan, boss?”
I retrieved the Blake family seal from my pocket. “This.” I let it fall into my palm and closed my fingers around it. “We’re going to Blake’s ranch. I’m going to use this to get past the gates. And I’m going in alone.”
“I have a professional obligation to tell you that I don’t like this plan.”
I gave Oren a sympathetic look. “Would you like it more if I told you that I’ll be doing a press conference right outside his gates so that the whole world knows I’m inside?”
Vincent Blake couldn’t touch me with the paparazzi watching.
“You going to put a stop to this, Oren?” Nash ambled toward us, clearly having overheard our exchange. “Because if you don’t, I will.”
As if drawn by the chaos, Xander chose that moment to pop in, too.
“This doesn’t concern you,” I told Nash.
“Nice try, kid.” Nash’s tone never advertised the fact that he was pulling rank, but no matter how casual the delivery, it was always one hundred percent clear when that was what he was doing. “This ain’t happening.”
Nash didn’t care that I was eighteen, that I owned the House, that I wasn’t actually his sister, or that I would put up one hell of a fight if he tried to stop me.
“You can’t protect the four of us forever,” I told him.
“I can damn well try. You don’t want to test me on this one, darlin’.”
I glanced at Jameson, who was well-acquainted with the pitfalls of testing Nash. Jameson met my gaze, then glanced at Xander.
“Flying leopard?” Jameson murmured.
“Hidden mongoose!” Xander replied, and an instant later, they were crashing into Nash in a truly impressive synchronized flying tackle.
In a one-on-one fight, Nash could take either one of them. But it was hard to get the upper hand when you had one brother on your torso and another pinning your legs and feet.
“We should go,” I told Oren. Nash was cursing up a storm behind us. Xander began serenading him with a brotherly limerick.
“Oren!” Nash hollered.
My head of security didn’t so much as hint at any amusement he might have felt. “Sorry, Nash. I know better than to get in the middle of a Hawthorne brawl.”
“Alisa—” Nash started to say, but I interjected.
“I want you with me,” I told my lawyer. “You’ll wait with Oren, right outside.”
Nash must have smelled defeat because he stopped trying to dislodge Xander from his feet. “Kid?” he called. “You sure as hell better play dirty.”
