Furever Loyal

by Riley Storm

  “Come, approach,” the Queen said as the others sitting in chairs on either side of her got up and left as well.

  She swallowed nervously but did as she was told. It felt like a scene out of a movie, a historical drama of some sort. The commoner approaches the Queen and tells a tale of treason and plotting, and in the end, someone would shout “Off with their head!”

  Haley snorted quietly, attempting to ground herself in reality.

  This was precisely when the man bent down and snatched something up from the ground that she hadn’t noticed earlier. He moved quickly, shielding it from her view, but not before she caught a flash of metal stained with red. It was a dagger, she realized.

  And it had blood on it.

  What the hell have I just walked into?

  She came to a halt several steps away from the throne, for lack of a better word, her attention torn away from the Queen as the giant of a man passed her by. His head turned as he walked, keeping his vision locked on her.

  She could see the sharp lines of his chin, visible under the weathered but freshly-shaven skin of his cheeks and jaw. This was a man who often kept his beard longer. Haley had no idea how she knew, but something about the way being clean shaven didn’t suit him made it obvious. Her mind conjured up a short, neatly-trimmed beard, and immediately decided it worked better.

  “Hi,” he said quietly, not slowing.

  “Hey,” she said back, hating how breathless and scared she sounded.

  His lip quirked in what might have been a tiny smile, and then he was gone, taking his leg-sized biceps and what she imagined was a taut posterior out the door.

  The heavy steel panels came together with a boom. The room was sealed now, leaving only her, the Queen and four—no, six—guards, she corrected. She noted the four around the throne and two more in the shadows behind it.

  And probably others I’m not aware of. She really does take this whole Queen business to the maximum.

  The swords and armor had to be ceremonial, but the grim visages on each of the guards had her wondering about the truth of that thought. They certainly screamed bodyguard to her, and they wore the armor with ease.

  Doesn’t matter. You’re here for one reason, then you can leave.

  “You found my traitor,” the Queen asked softly.

  “I…don’t know. We found something, but it will be up to you to judge just what that is,” she said, taking a tablet out from the satchel worn over one shoulder and flicking on the screen.

  “Show me.” Kaelyn got up and came to Haley’s side, peering at the screen.

  “We were reviewing every account, every transaction, for the entire month leading up to the date the money was taken,” she said, pointing at the sheet. “This is one person’s account. It didn’t trigger anything in our initial month-end work, because the numbers added up. But upon further investigation, we noticed some discrepancies, and after some digging, we found a transaction that shouldn’t belong.”

  “So, you found the traitor.” The Queen was looking at her now, not the sheet, her eyes the dark green of a deep jungle plant.

  “I…don’t know,” Haley admitted, reluctant to term anyone a traitor.

  “Explain.”

  “The money didn’t come from your account. It came from an outside source.” Haley bit her lip but then continued. “It certainly would appear to be, but I can’t say for certain it’s the same money.”

  Kaelyn, the Queen, chewed on that bit of information for a minute, then nodded. “The name. What is the name on the account?”

  “Uhh.” Her brain went blank and she was forced to pull up the files momentarily. “A Kincaid Ursa,” she said, reading the name at the top.

  The Queen went still. “You’re positive?” she asked, her voice no more than a whisper.

  “Yes. I don’t understand.”

  Fingers flashed and a guard stepped forward. “Bring Kincaid back here, will you?”

  The guard slapped a mailed hand to his chest. “Yes, my Queen!”

  The regal woman stepped back to her throne, looking troubled. “Quietly.”

  Without another word, the guard dashed off, disappearing into a passageway that seemed to appear out of the wall. Haley watched him go, then shuffled slightly as she waited in the silence. The Queen wasn’t speaking, lost in her thoughts. It couldn’t feel good to be told that one of your own had conspired to take your spot on the board, attempting to oust her from the company. That had to weigh heavily on the woman.

  A minute later, the guard reappeared with someone—she assumed it to be this Kincaid—in tow.

  Haley had to muffle a gasp. It was the man who’d been standing on the floor. The one who’d passed her on his way out. That was Kincaid? He was the one who had robbed the company? She glared angrily at him. How dare this asshole treat someone like Kaelyn like that?

  “You called for me, my Queen?”

  Oh shit. Too late, Haley realized she was about to be dragged into the middle of it. The fear for her own safety overwhelmed her anger at the hulking brute of a man, forcing her to shift sideways, closer to one of the guards who was also big, tall and covered in bulging muscles. She wanted to be close to him, just in case things went…wrong.

  “Kincaid. You stand accused of theft and treasonous behavior against your House. What do you have to say for yourself?” The Queen turned and sat as she spoke, spine straight against the back of the chair, her tone imperious.

  Haley swallowed nervously, feeling the chill in the air as the temperature in the room dropped several degrees from the way Kaelyn spoke to this Kincaid character. She watched him for his reaction.

  The words seemed to slam into the stoic man, crumpling his soul even as he glanced over at her, an odd look on his face.

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand,” he said at last, sounding…haunted. She tried not to shiver at the obvious pain he was in. “What have I done wrong?”

  “Ten million dollars was stolen from us the day of the…troubles.” The Queen was clearly choosing her words carefully, for Haley’s benefit. “Now it has been found.”

  “That is good news. But what does it have to do with me?”

  “It was found in your account,” the Queen accused.

  “What?” Kincaid’s yelp of surprise filled the chamber. “There must be some mistake. I have never stolen from you, or from anyone.” His voice was starting to get angry. “I didn’t even know about the damn uprising until you called me, because I wasn’t here!” By the time he finished, he was shouting.

  Uprising? That’s certainly different than calling it “troubles”. I wonder what truly happened here?

  Even as her mind went one direction, Haley went another, backing up closer to the guard, well aware of the power someone as large as Kincaid could unleash if he let his anger get the best of him.

  Kaelyn’s voice snapped out across the space between Queen and subject. “That will be enough.”

  Kincaid fell silent, but not before he turned a glare on Haley, indicating that he knew now why she was there, and what she had told the Queen.

  “Don’t look at me like that,” she snapped, surprising everyone. Even the guard behind her rustled in shock at her outburst. “I didn’t do anything but find the records and bring it to her attention. I’m not the bad guy here, okay?”

  She stopped abruptly as Kincaid took a step toward her, but the clank of the guard as he stepped up to her side stopped the giant.

  “Kincaid.”

  He was still glaring at her, his lip pulled back in a silent growl.

  “Kincaid!” The Queen’s voice was like a whip, cracking against the man, returning his attention. “Look at me. Get a handle on yourself.”

  Visibly shaken, the big man drew himself up. “My Queen. I’m not sure what this woman found. What she thinks she found. I also know I may have had my troubles with the—” Kincaid hesitated and glanced over at Haley for a brief moment—“King, but I swear upon my life that I have never, and would nev
er, betray this House. I beg you to give me a chance to prove my innocence. Someone is trying to set me up. Let me find out who it is and prove to you that I did not do this.”

  Haley almost felt bad. Almost. If it weren’t for the damning evidence she possessed, she might even believe the conviction with which the man spoke. But the truth was there for all to see. The money had been transferred to his account, and it had been done in an attempt to cover up that it happened. That much alone indicated something foul was afoot.

  Kincaid just wasn’t good enough to hide his tracks from her, she thought proudly, glad she was able to help her client out in a time of need. Now they could recover the money and dispose of someone who had committed criminal actions against them. All thanks to her.

  That was worth a late night at the office.

  That, and the fact she could bill them for overtime.

  “Very well,” the Queen said softly. “I will give you a chance. One chance. It is all I can give, Kincaid. I apologize for testing you, but had to be sure.”

  Haley gaped in astonishment. What the hell was the Queen doing? Letting a guilty man try to prove his own innocence? No!

  “You must keep it quiet, though, which means you will have limited access to the resources of the House.” The Queen looked around, her eyes landing on Haley.

  I’ve got a bad feeling about this…

  “Miss Menard. You will assist Kincaid in any way necessary. This is your realm of specialty. If there is any possible truth to the fact that someone has tried to frame him, the two of you will track it down and bring it to me, where we will handle it…appropriately. Understood?”

  Haley’s mouth opened and closed, but nothing came out.

  “Are you all right? Miss Menard?”

  She shook her head. “What? No. I’m just an accountant, Kaelyn. I’m not some kind of detective or computer hacker. This is not part of my job. I’m not… I can’t—”

  The guard beside her cleared his throat quietly, while the others around the room shuffled uncomfortably at her use of the Queen’s first name. Well, screw them! Haley wasn’t about to be intimidated by her client. They were just people, they didn’t rule her, she wasn’t some sort of servant, and she was damn well going to speak her mind. This was against the rules. She dealt with numbers and spreadsheets and that was how she liked it.

  “Miss Menard,” the Queen said, her voice hard. “If this transaction was falsely made, this man will lose his position here, over evidence you produced. Are you one-hundred percent confident that he was the one who stole it from the House account, transferred it around and then deposited it into his own? Are you willing to bet your own job on it?”

  She tried to meet Kaelyn’s stare, but after a few seconds, she looked away. “No.”

  “Then you will help Kincaid out. If it turns out that the evidence is correct, he will be punished appropriately. However, I have my own suspicions as well, and I do not believe him to be behind it. That is not enough to absolve him, especially if any of the others learn about this. Which they will soon enough, I’m afraid.”

  Haley just nodded, staying mute in protest. She didn’t want to do this, but the Queen had essentially told her that if she accused Kincaid and was wrong, she would lose House Ursa as a client. That would doom her. Not only her but those who worked for her. Haley couldn’t do that to them.

  “You must work quickly, Kincaid,” the Queen continued, ignoring Haley for the moment. “The others will soon question why I haven’t confirmed you into your position. I will stall, but things are too precarious right now for me to hold out too long. If you can’t find anything in forty-eight hours, I’ll have to find someone else.”

  Kincaid nodded. “I understand. By your leave?”

  “Go,” the Queen said. “Work together. Figure out the truth.”

  Great. This ought to be a lot of fun.

  She returned Kincaid’s glare as he gestured for her to leave the room, while he followed behind. She could feel the weight of his blue eyes upon her as she went, the heat from his stare threatening to burn holes through her chest. He hated her.

  Good. She hated him too.

  5

  Behind them, the engraved copper-colored doors swung shut.

  “This way,” Kincaid said with barely restrained fury. He pointed down a hallway. It wasn’t the same one she’d come in through.

  “My car is out there,” she told him bluntly and kept walking.

  He darted forward and grabbed her elbow, gripping it tightly. Not enough to hurt, but close.

  “Let. Go,” she said, furious that he would dare to touch her.

  “I need to see the evidence.”

  “Then go look at your bank account history for two weeks ago. It’s hard to miss a deposit of ten million dollars,” she snapped.

  “Considering I never made it, apparently it is easy to miss. Especially since it took you two weeks to find.”

  Haley bristled.

  “There’s a conference room down here,” Kincaid said, pulling her down the hallway. “We can sit, talk and look things over there. You show me everything that you have.”

  She thought about resisting some more, about causing a scene, but her mind wandered back to what the Queen had said, about her losing her job if she was wrong. It left little room for misinterpretation.

  No room, really. She was quite blatant about it.

  If the Queen had been that blatant, she must believe Kincaid to some degree. Haley smiled tightly as she decided it would be nice to prove both of them wrong. At which point, she would hit the Queen with a bill for services rendered that would more than compensate her for this ridiculousness. And the Queen would pay. She always did.

  Feeling confident in her own abilities, she snatched her elbow back and walked calmly beside Kincaid, her back straight, chin up.

  This was going to be fun.

  “I don’t know how you can possibly miss ten million dollars being added,” she remarked as he pulled open a richly-colored wooden door, revealing a room beyond that looked much more like an office than anything else she’d seen so far.

  Kincaid gripped the door tight and held it open, waiting for her to walk through. Stepping forward, she came to a halt abruptly as he moved, walking inside and cutting her off, and letting the door go at the same time.

  She shook her head, grabbing the handle and hauling back on it. The door was heavier than it looked and with her small frame, she was forced to exert herself to pull it back open.

  “Can you stop the childlike behavior?” she said, biting the words off.

  “Are you done with the insults to my intelligence?” he fired back. “You’re well aware of how much money is in my account. There is no need for me to look at it on a regular basis.” His gaze locked onto her as he sat down in a chair. “After all, isn’t that why we hired you?”

  Haley was forced to concede the point.

  “Look,” he began, but she held up a hand to stop him.

  “I don’t want your speech about how you’re innocent. Save it for someone else, okay?”

  Eyes that she would have been glad to have roaming over her under any other condition, stayed locked upon her face.

  “Very well. Show me your proof.”

  Adjusting her skirt as she sat forward, Haley once again pulled out her tablet before sitting across from Kincaid. He leaned forward eagerly, like a predator moving in for the kill, and for a brief moment, she felt scared, reminded that she was essentially locked in a cage with him. It was just the two of them in the room, and if he wanted to do anything to her, she would be helpless.

  You’re insane, Haley. Go find the Queen and tell her you aren’t doing this. You aren’t working with this arrogant asshole.

  “Are you going to show me?”

  She blinked, realizing he was staring blankly at the screen as she held it out to him. Flicking it on, she showed him the various pages of information that showed very clearly an extra ten million dollars now sitting in his
account, that someone had purposefully tried to hide.

  Even Kincaid didn’t try to argue that she was wrong. It was plain as day to see now that she and her team had tracked it down.

  “That appears to be correct,” he muttered, unhappy about it all, but unable to deny what it looked like. “Though I didn’t steal it.”

  She remained quiet, not interested in getting into a shouting match with him about whether or not he was a thief and thus a traitor.

  “Someone must have planted it there,” he said quietly. “To frame me, to make me look guilty. To try and have me removed.”

  Haley just shrugged. She’d done her part.

  “This someone, they would have to have access to the accounts. To be able to move money around. They would know exactly how to make it look real,” he said.

  His voice was growing colder the more he talked, and when Haley finally looked up into a handsome face twisted with anger, she realized immediately where he was going with his insinuations.

  “Excuse me?”

  “You could do it all,” he said. “Easily too, I bet.”

  She laughed sharply. “Kincaid, I didn’t even know you existed before this morning when we found this information. You flatter yourself, but you are not that important to me.”

  Tracking his face, she saw the hurt at the way she’d dismissed him, though it was gone in a second, hidden behind his defenses. He tried not to let her see that she’d scored a point with him, but she had. She was paying close attention, watching his features carefully.

  “Unless someone paid you to do it, maybe.”

  “I make a solid seven-figure sum a year being Ursa’s accountant. Why the hell would I jeopardize that? It’s a good job. You’re barking up the wrong tree. It’s far more likely you did it.”

  “Everyone who knows me is aware I would never betray my House,” he snapped, shoulders and arms bulging under his shirt as he pounded at the table, expressing his anger.

  “Maybe the House doesn’t know the real you,” she suggested. “Either way, I don’t give a shit. I showed you the evidence. I did my part. What now?”