Beast (Happily-Ever-After: The Illegitimates Book 1)

by Trisha Grace

  She squealed.

  “I warned you.”

  She laughed and tried to squirm out of his grasp, but he locked his arms around her. “Okay. Okay. You win.”

  “Do I get a prize?”

  “What do you want?”

  “I want to go to your place.”

  She arched a brow and turned to face him when he released her.

  “You’ve already broken Bobby’s rule by leaving the mansion anyway.”

  She licked her lips. “But Bobby might be there.”

  “How often does he stay at your place?”

  “Pretty often.” So often that he’d bought a sofa bed to replace her couch—without asking her. She frowned. “I thought he’d make a fuss when he found out I left the mansion.”

  “Disappointed that he didn’t?”

  “I’m worried something happened at the Eolenfelds. I wonder if Mr. Eolenfeld’s okay.” Helena shook her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t talk about them.”

  “Don’t be sorry.” He tucked a stray hair behind her ear. “I want you to be able to talk to me about anything.”

  She smiled and nodded. “Can I ask you something?”

  Liam nodded.

  “When you say rich, exactly how rich are you?”

  He cocked a brow.

  “Because this suite can’t be cheap, and I really don’t need this much space.”

  “My half-brothers and I own Shadow Corp.”

  Her brows rose. “The Shadow Corp.? The one that created the hottest game last year?”

  “Gaming is just a small part of what we do,” he said dryly.

  “That’s the company Jude is planning to pitch her new game to.”

  “Killian’s in charge,” he said. “And about GS Inc.” He held her shoulders and grinned. “I can buy them out for you. Give Flora back to you.”

  “What? No.” She laughed at how disappointed he looked. “Liam.” She cupped his face. “The game’s more Judith’s thing. I was only illustrating it as a favor. She was tired of dealing with the masochistic people at GS Inc. so she asked me to help. I still prefer illustrating children’s books. Besides, if you buy out GS Inc., Jude’s stepmother would walk away with a big paycheck. I’m sure Judith doesn’t want that at all.”

  “Huh.”

  “I’m sorry. You look so disappointed.”

  “I thought you’d like that.”

  “I like that you’re thinking about doing things to make me happy. That’s enough.”

  His brows drew together. “I’m serious, Helena. I have enough money to buy you whatever you want. I mean we’re not Eolenfeld rich, but I’m sure we can catch up soon.”

  Helena’s eyes widened.

  “So paying for the suites isn’t a problem. Actually, we own this hotel chain, so I’m basically paying myself.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked. “Do you not trust me?”

  “It isn’t that. It just didn’t come up.” He ran a hand through his hair. “I was going to tell you when I asked you about money, but we got interrupted. Are you mad at me?”

  She laughed at the incredulous look on his face. “No, I’m not. I’m just surprised, I guess.” She shot him a stern look. “No buying out GS Inc., you understand?”

  “You really are quite bossy.”

  She crossed her arms.

  “Okay. Are we going to your place?”

  “Sure. After breakfast. And while I wait, I’m going to enjoy that giant bathtub since someone got his sweat all over me.”

  “Wouldn’t have happened if you had just come when I asked.”

  She sat on the edge of the couch and took his hand. She ran her thumb lightly over his knuckles. “You swim at night because you can’t sleep. Why do you need to work out in the morning too?”

  He opened his mouth to say something, then shut it again.

  She waited.

  “I have anger issues. I trashed the house when I was a teenager. Forty-one bedrooms. I trashed every one of them. Then George got me a punching bag, and I redirected all my excess energy into exercising.”

  She nodded slowly and dropped her gaze to his knuckles.

  Liam got down on one knee. “I’ll never hurt you, Helena. I’ll never raise my hand to you.”

  “I know that. Not because you say so, but from how you’ve treated me.” She laughed once. “For one, you always grip my hand so gently.”

  “Have you seen how thin your wrists are?” He wrapped his hand around her wrist, then released it and formed an ‘O’ with his hand.

  “Yes, yes. Big strong man, you are.” She kissed his knuckles. “You don’t have anger issues, Liam. You grew up with a cruel mother. You grew up fending for yourself. That’s all. Exercise all you want, not because you think you have anger issues.”

  “You really are a bossy little thing, aren’t you?”

  The doorbell rang, and Helena frowned.

  Liam had mentioned to the manager that no one else was supposed to come up to their floor.

  “It’s probably Trevor.” Liam moved over to the door, then opened it after checking the peephole.

  “Here.” Trevor handed over a pair of dumbbells. “You could’ve asked someone who works in this hotel to fetch these for you.”

  “You were already on the way here anyway.”

  Trevor reached behind him and pulled out the sketchbook. “I didn’t look at whatever is inside,” he said as he moved over to Helena.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  “I’m going to order breakfast. What do you want?” Trevor moved to the couch.

  “I’m waiting for Liam.”

  “He’ll be done by the time the food gets here. Pancakes?”

  “Sure.”

  Liam put the dumbbells down.

  “Coffee?” Trevor asked.

  “Yes, please.” She turned. “Excuse me.” Helena hurried back into the bedroom and pulled out the chair in front of the dresser. With a heavy sigh, she opened up the sketchbook. She flipped through it and stopped on one of the pages.

  “Found what you’re looking for?” Liam asked from the doorway.

  “This.” She swiveled around to face him while Liam strode over. On the page where she was drawn hanging from a noose, she pointed to the character’s clothes. “This was my original costume for the character. Later the game development team decided it wasn’t revealing enough and changed it.”

  “I thought the game was meant for women.”

  “But developed by men.” She rolled her eyes. “They didn’t exactly say it wasn’t revealing enough. They said the character didn’t look appealing enough.” She waved it off. “Anyway, not many people saw my original illustrations.”

  “That narrows our suspects list.” He rubbed a hand over his mouth. “Could Bobby have seen the original illustrations?”

  “I don’t think so, but I do leave my iPad around and I don’t have a passcode on it.”

  “You don’t have a passcode on any of your devices.”

  “I’m usually home. If I do take them out, they’re always in my bag. I don’t have anything that important on them.”

  “Internet banking? I could’ve emptied your bank account in under a minute.”

  “Is that how you got your riches, Mr. Black? Emptying people’s bank accounts?”

  He narrowed his eyes.

  “I’ll put a passcode on all my devices immediately.” She tapped her finger against the sketch. “Everyone on the team is so busy. Who would have time to stalk me? Jude sometimes didn’t go home for an entire week.”

  “They wouldn’t have to leave their desk to monitor you through your laptop or online.”

  Helena bit down on the tip of her thumb. “GS Inc. monitors the staff’s online activity.”

  “Perfect.” Liam turned around and was moving toward the door when Trevor called out to him.

  “Something’s happening on the laptop,” Trevor continued.

  Helena put the sketchbook down on the dresser and hurri
ed out after Liam. She looked over at her laptop. A program appeared to be running, and lines of words began rapidly scrolling up the screen.

  Liam moved onto the couch and pulled the laptop onto his lap.

  “The stalker?”

  He nodded. “He’s in your laptop. I can trace him now.”

  Liam worked fast while the stalker was still creeping around on Helena’s system. Last night he’d set the laptop on the coffee table and recorded the empty couch for fifteen minutes.

  Now the video was set to play in a loop in the background. Liam had created a parallel idle desktop, too.

  From the stalker’s point of view, it would look as if Helena had left the laptop open and unattended.

  Liam wasn’t sure how long the stalker would wait, so he needed to be fast.

  By hacking into Helena’s laptop, the stalker had created a direct line back to his own device.

  Liam grinned when he got into the stalker’s device. Stealthily, he ran a scan, searching for any video, image, and—for the sake of being over-cautious—audio files. Then he ran the program he’d configured last night. One that would delete every single one of those files in the background.

  While his program did its thing, Liam searched the system to find out if the stalker’s laptop was being backed up elsewhere. Surprisingly, no. There wasn’t even a trace of it being backed up on an external hard drive.

  He searched through the system twice more, just to be sure.

  Once he was certain there weren’t any other copies of whatever the stalker had of Helena, all Liam had to do was wait for his program to delete the files on the system.

  As the minutes ran on, Liam rubbed his hand over his mouth. He was worried the stalker would get bored of staring at an empty couch.

  “Is everything okay?”

  He looked over at Helena. He had been so focused on tracing the hacker that the rest of the world had faded.

  She was now in light gray leggings and a long-sleeved T-shirt, rubbing her damp hair with a towel. “You looked worried.”

  “I need something to keep the stalker on your laptop.” He turned back to the screen. “Right now, he’s just watching an empty couch.”

  “I can sit in front of the laptop and pretend to work.”

  “No.” That would be enough to keep the stalker on her laptop, but Liam didn’t want the stalker to have any recording of her. Not even one of her fully clothed and sitting on the couch.

  Liam smirked as his program flagged the actions of the hacker. “He’s trying to locate where your laptop is.”

  “Isn’t that bad?”

  “I set up a fake location.”

  The doorbell rang, and Helena took a step forward.

  Liam got up, but Trevor had jumped forward too.

  “I got it,” Trevor said and gestured for Helena to join Liam.

  “We ordered breakfast.” Helena put her hand into his. “You warned the staff that no one is to give out our room number.”

  “Better safe than sorry.” He tugged her down on the couch.

  Helena shrugged and scrolled through the channels on the TV while Trevor rolled the tray in. She watched as he transferred everything onto the coffee table.

  Liam pounded his fist on the coffee table when the progress bar hit the hundred percent mark. He leaned over to give Helena a peck on the lips. “Done.”

  “Done?”

  He turned his attention back to the laptop. Now that the files had been deleted, it was his turn to find out where the hacker was. He cursed when the connection suddenly cut off.

  Helena leaned forward. “So is it done or not?”

  “If he says it’s done, it’s done,” Trevor said.

  “Then why did you curse?”

  Liam tipped his head back and sighed. “I only managed to delete all the videos, images, and audio files on his system.”

  “You did?” Helena threw her arms around him. “Thank you!”

  “But I didn’t get him. I didn’t trace him earlier because I wanted—”

  Helena kissed him on the lips. “You don’t have to explain. I’m sure you did everything you could. Thank you.”

  “Can we eat now?” Trevor asked without looking over at them.

  Helena lifted her hand and frowned at her watch. “Bobby’s calling.”

  That got Trevor’s attention. “The hacker’s stuff got deleted, and he’s calling.” He looked over at Liam. “Quite a coincidence, don’t you think?”

  Chapter 18

  After breakfast, Helena, Liam, and Trevor went to Helena’s apartment. Bobby had demanded to know where she was, and Liam had insisted that she not tell him.

  Bobby had flown into a rage when he heard Liam’s voice, so Helena ended the call instead of torturing herself with the poison Bobby was spewing. Then she sent him a text, telling him that she would see him back at her place.

  Liam wanted to go there anyway.

  “Finally,” Bobby said from the couch even before she had the door to her apartment all the way open. “Do you know how worried I’ve been?” He threw aside the blue and purple silk cushion Aunt Beth had brought back from her last trip to Myanmar and gave her a head to toe scan when he saw her. “What are you wearing?”

  She was wearing a simple white top knotted around her waist with dark blue jeans, so he was probably referring to Liam’s suit jacket she had on. She seemed to have gotten addicted to wearing his clothes, though she had to roll up the sleeves several turns so she could see her hands. “What’s so urgent?”

  Bobby’s bloodshot eyes landed on Liam and Trevor. “Well, well, well. Look who’s finally crawled out of his hole. I guess outcasts like sticking together.”

  Helena wagged her finger at him. “Stop.”

  “I’m not your dog.”

  She rolled her eyes and strode forward. “What’s going on?”

  “You left the mansion.”

  “I have my reasons.”

  “And what are those?”

  Helena sighed. “Why do you need to speak with me?”

  “Why did you leave the mansion?”

  She sighed. “You wanted me to leave anyway, right?”

  “Not with him.”

  Helena ignored Bobby. She turned to Liam and Trevor. “That’s my kitchen.” On the small wall facing them was a carved wooden mask Aunt Beth had brought back from Africa.

  Her apartment was filled with souvenirs of Aunt Beth’s travels. She loved looking at them and imagining all the adventures her aunt her been on.

  She pointed to one of the two bedrooms. “That’s my room. You guys want—”

  “Get your things.” Bobby stood from the couch. “You’re coming with me.”

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.”

  “I’m not asking.”

  Liam stepped forward. “She said she isn’t going anywhere with you.”

  Bobby laughed once. “She might’ve chosen to stay at the mansion out of pity for you, but don’t mistake that for anything more.”

  Trevor pulled out the chair by the dining table and sat, seemingly tuning them out.

  “I don’t pity Liam.” Helena hooked her hand on Liam’s arm and tugged him back. “What’s going on, Bobby?”

  Bobby’s gaze dropped to her hand on Liam’s arm, and he glared at it as if he could set them on fire with his gaze.

  “What is it?” Helena repeated her question and dropped her hand. It wasn’t that she cared what Bobby thought; she simply wanted to know what was going on. “Is it Nigel? Where is he, anyway?”

  Her brother had texted her to let her know he’d need a few more days to get back to the mansion. He didn’t even bother giving her an excuse.

  But at least Helena knew he was still alive.

  “He’s with a friend,” Bobby said.

  Helena’s eyes slitted.

  “He’s fine, but you won’t be if you don’t come with me.”

  Liam pushed her behind him. “Are you threatening her?”

  Bobby rol
led his eyes and plopped back onto her dark blue fabric couch. “The old man found out that you were thrown out of the hospital when you tried to visit him.” He brought his ankle to his knee. “He got angry and said he’s made you the executor of his will.”

  “What? He didn’t do that.”

  Bobby frowned. “You’ve seen his will?”

  She licked her lips.

  He dropped his foot back to the floor and leaned forward. “You have.”

  She had.

  Besides Edward Eolenfeld and his lawyer, she was the only other person who had seen the will. There wasn’t anything spectacular in it, and they could all stop fighting since Mr. Eolenfeld was going to distribute the wealth equally.

  Almost equally. Bobby would get a double portion.

  Helena hadn’t wanted to have anything to do with the will, but Mr. Eolenfeld had said in his frail voice that she was the only one he trusted to witness it for him. Then he had gone on and on about how all his family would kill him in an instant if he didn’t have a plan.

  “Don’t lie to me,” Bobby said when she remained quiet.

  “I have.”

  “And?”

  She shook her head. “Nope. Not getting dragged into this.”

  Bobby ran his hand through his hair. “If you didn’t want to get dragged into this, you should’ve run the other way when the old man said anything about a will.”

  “He ambushed me with it.”

  Liam’s chest rose slowly while Bobby stuck his tongue in his cheek.

  “What’s in his will?” Bobby asked.

  “I’m not saying anything.”

  “You’d honor your oath to that old man instead of coming clean with me.”

  Helena frowned at Bobby. “That isn’t fair. I’m just a witness to his will. A fail-safe. In case anyone tries to come up with their own version of the will. He’s trying his best to protect everyone involved.”

  Bobby just waved it off. “Whatever.”

  Helena’s brows rose. She had expected Bobby to bug her until his dying breath. He would have to do that, because she wasn’t saying a word about it.

  “But you’re not the executor of the will, right? If you agreed to that, you’re the stupidest person on earth.”