I Belong To My Three Forbidden Masters

Chapter 72: Chapter 72

Darius’s pov

My grip on my desk tightened with each second that passed. I pride myself on being calm in every situation but right now, everything seems to be out of my control.

Including my anxiety.

My eyes were glued on the screen.

On the center screen, the GPS tracking feed from my security team’s secondary unit blinked red, they were parked two blocks from an upscale tea house on 4th Avenue.

Below it, the live audio log rolled in text strings, transcribed by automated software:

SUBJECT (BALTHAZAR DRAKE) ENTERED VENUE. CONTACT MADE WITH TARGET (ELENA THORNE). DURATION: 18 MINUTES. SUBJECT DEPARTED.

My fingers hovered over the glass desk pad, my knuckles turning bloodless. I tapped my phone screen, dialing Elena’s number.

It rang three times before it got sent to voicemail. ”You’ve reached Elena Thorne. Please leave a message...”

I have never hated the sound of her voice the way I do now.

I ended the call and dialed again immediately. Line busy. She had rejected it.

”Damn it,” I snarled under my breath, slamming the phone face-down on the leather blotter.

I picked up the secure satellite handset and dialed my head of security. ”Miller. What did he give her?”

”We couldn’t get a mic inside the tea house, sir,” Miller’s voice crackled through the encrypted speaker. ”Too much interference. But he left a manila folder on her table. When Drake walked out, Mrs. Thorne stayed at the table crying for twenty minutes. She just left in her car, sir. She refused to answer her driver’s questions. She’s heading back to the house, but she looks... unhinged.”

A cold, heavy knot tightened in the pit of my stomach.

That bastard had shown her. He had handed her the clinic receipts, the consent signatures, the paper trail showing the five-hundred-thousand-dollar transfer her ex husband and I had orchestrated twenty years ago.

Elena was clueless, naive, and weak, but if she read those Guild ledgers, if she realized I had used her, married her, and engineered her stepson’s life from the moment his heart started beating, she would destroy everything I had spent two decades building.

My entire life, my reputation, my control over the Thorne empire, it was all unraveling because of an arrogant, ancient vampire playing white knight in a glass penthouse.

”Sir?” Miller’s voice cut through the silence. ”Should we intercept Mrs. Thorne’s vehicle?”

”No,” I snapped, standing up so fast my heavy leather chair rolled back into the bookshelf. ”Let her come home. Lock down the estate perimeter. Nobody enters or leaves without my personal authorization.”

”Understood, sir. And Drake?”

”Drake is headed to the university,” I said, pulling my desk drawer open and reaching for the velvet-lined case inside. ”My insider at the university confirmed he’s presiding over a faculty tenure hearing on the east side. He’ll be occupied for at least two hours.”

I opened the velvet case, lifting out the heavy, custom-forged Kimber .45 pistol, sliding a full magazine into the magwell with a sharp, metallic clack.

This was my only window.

If I held Lysander, I held the leverage. Drake couldn’t leak the files to the public without exposing the hybrid himself, and Elena couldn’t move against me if I had her son locked in a secure facility under my control. I didn’t need legal guardianship anymore. I didn’t need courts or proxy signatures. I needed the asset in my hands before Drake returned.

The underground service elevator of Drake’s luxury high-rise was laughably easy to bypass once you paid off the building’s head of facilities fifty thousand dollars in cash.

I stepped out onto the private top-floor corridor, dressed in a dark tactical coat, the heavy weight of the pistol concealed against my ribs. Miller stood behind me, holding a military-grade electronic bypass tool pressed against the penthouse door’s smart lock.

Click-clack.

The heavy steel bolt retracted with a quiet, mechanical thud. The door swung open an inch, revealing the vast, shadow-drenched interior of the living room.

”Stay at the elevator,” I whispered to Miller, drawing the weapon from beneath my coat and flicking the safety off. ”If anyone comes up, kill the power to the shaft.”

I stepped over the threshold, my leather soles making no sound against the dark slate floor. I caught a flash of movement.

I rounded the marble kitchen island, I caught sight of Lysander standing by the side table, his pale fingers frantically tapping the screen of Drake’s secondary house phone. His small, delicate frame was swallowed up by an oversized grey sweater, his dark hair messy, his shoulders trembling in visible panic as he lifted the receiver to his ear.

”Drake, please pick up—” Lysander gasped into the speaker, his voice tight and breathless.

I didn’t give him a second longer. In two long strides, I crossed the distance between us and brought my heavy leather boot down against the side table.

CRACK.

The wooden stand shattered under my weight. The phone was torn violently from his grip, flying across the polished slate and smashing into pieces against the concrete wall.

Lysander let out a sharp, frightened gasp, stumbling backward against the island, his wide, dark eyes locking onto mine in immediate terror.

”Look at you,” I sneered, stepping closer, towering over his slight, delicate frame. My laugh was low, mocking, and full of disgust as I looked down at his trembling hands. ”Still the same weak, pathetic little boy. Did you really think pressing speed dial was going to save you? Drake isn’t here, Lysander. Your master left you all alone.”

He swallowed hard, his chest heaving under the heavy knit sweater, his pale face flushed with panic. But instead of shrinking into the floor like he used to at the estate, his fingers fumbled behind his back, slipping into the pocket of his trousers.

”Get your coat,” I ordered, drawing the .45 and pointing it directly at his sternum. ”We’re leaving. Now.”

”No,” he rasped.

”I didn’t ask,” I snarled, stepping into his space, reaching out a hand to grab his slender collar.

The second my hand closed around his shirt, he pulled his arm from his pocket and swung wildly with a silver letter opener he’d grabbed off the desk, a sharp, slender blade forged from solid silver.

He didn’t hit me with lethal force since he was too small, his weak swing lacking any real power. But the tip of the silver blade sliced deep across my wrist, cutting through my leather glove and opening a jagged line across my flesh.

Pain flared through my hand. ”You little bastard!” I roared, backhanding him with the butt of the heavy pistol.

The impact caught him across the jaw, sending his frail body crashing onto the hard slate floor. The silver letter opener clattered out of his hand, skidding a few feet away.

Lysander gasped, clutching his bruised face, tears of pain welling in his eyes. He looked small, broken, and helpless on the floorboards, bleeding from a split lip. I took a step toward him to haul him up by his hair, his hand shot out across the stone, his fingers desperately scrambling for the fallen silver blade.

He didn’t give up. Weak, trembling, and entirely outmatched, he held the blade up between us with shaking hands, breathing raggedly, staring up at me from the ground with a fierce look.

”Touch me again,” he whimpered, his voice cracking with fear, ”and I’ll cut you.”

I froze, looking down at the dripping silver tip, the blood running down my own wrist,

”I can shoot you before you do that, don’t be stupid.”

He shrugged, ”You can’t shoot me, you need me. Drake is on his way back, if he comes back and meets you here, he will kill you.”

I chuckled, ”Would you let that bastard kill your stepfather?”

His eyes went cold, ”I have no stepfather, you are dead to me.”