by Terra Wolf
“Hank, yes, it's Natasha. I was wondering if we could set up a meeting. I have some investments I think you might be interested in. Something a little unusual.”
“Now really isn’t a good time. As I'm sure you know, there's some shit going down at your office. My dad's really on edge about the whole thing.”
In front of me, Giovanni used his hands to encourage me to continue to press him for information. I kept pushing. “I know that. And that's why we need to meet. Hank, this is really important. How about I come to your office in an hour? I promise it won't take long.”
He paused for a moment, and we all waited with bated breath in silence. “Fine. In an hour. Remember the place?”
“Yes. Will your father be there too?”
“No, just you and I. Just like last time. I'll see you then.” He hung up the phone before I could say anything else. I breathed a sigh of relief as the detectives around me exchanged what looked like happy glances. The captain had his hands behind his back, and as the call ended, he stopped pacing. “That went well.”
My eyes widened. “Did it? I mean I got in, right? That was the goal.”
Giovanni reached across the table and grabbed one of my hands, squeezing it tightly. I felt a surge of electricity run through my body. “That was the goal, you did good.”
I did good. The first time since any of this had started, I had done something right.
11
Natasha
I drove my car to his office. Giovanni was in an unmarked car behind me, and two more of the detectives were in undercover cars already parked near his office building. I'd gone home to change, as I needed to dress the part. We never met on a weekend before, and it didn't seem appropriate to be in jeans and a button-down. I put on my best black skirt and high-heeled pumps. I wanted to look professional, believable.
As I pulled into the parking lot, I realized that he and I were the only ones in the building. That made me nervous. I grabbed my phone and called Giovanni quickly. I needed a vote of confidence.
“Giovanni?”
He parked a few spaces away from me and I could just barely see him through his window. “You're going to be fine. The wire is completely unnoticeable. And even if he has something to check for bugs, it won't come up. Nothing bad is going to happen to you.” He sounded so calm, so sure of himself. I wish I felt that way.
“I hope you understand that I really am sorry. I didn’t mean to hide any of this from you.”
“I know that. Now stop worrying. Get in there. As soon as this is over, you and I can move on. We can all start over.”
I took a deep breath and ended the call. Exiting my vehicle, I could hear the clicking of my heels along the pavement. It was colder than I expected, or maybe that was just the anxiety creeping through my veins. I entered the back of the building and took the elevator up to the third floor, where the Wilshire's office was. The door had been left open, and I walked in, surveying the place. It was empty. “Hank?”
Hank walked out of the conference room at the back of the office. He had on a dark gray suit and he looked older than I remembered. Suddenly, there was some graying at the edge of his hair, and he kept buttoning and unbuttoning his suit jacket like he was nervous. Was this what a killer looked like? I wasn't sure. I rubbed my palms on the side of my skirt and hoped he didn't notice my nervousness.
“Natasha, come in. Can I take your jacket?”
I shook my head. “No, I'm fine. Besides, this shouldn't take long.”
He extended a large hand in front of me, and I walked into the conference room, trying to slow my breathing. I felt like I had just run a marathon. He sat down in one of the chairs and put his feet up on the table. He was pretending to be relaxed, but it was so overly dramatic that it wasn't believable. “Why don’t you sit down?”
I did so and clutched my purse in my lap like it was a lifeline. I felt like it created a barrier between him and me. Not that it would keep me safe in the end, but it made me feel better somehow.
“So what's this all about? I haven’t seen you in what, a year?”
I chewed on my lower lip. “I'm sure you heard about what's going on at the firm. The thing is, Hank, I did some looking into it. And I know for a fact that the entire lawsuit is a façade. It's just to make us look bad, when we’re not the ones stealing anyone's money.”
He took his feet off the table and sat up straighter in the chair. Clearly, he understood what I was saying. “So then who do you think is doing it?”
I raised an eyebrow at him, mustering up my confidence. “You. What I don't understand is why. And unless you want me to tell someone, I want in on the deal. I will go to the office on Monday and quit, so long as I know that you will continue to pad my bank account. I'll never talk, Hank. I just need you to keep me safe.”
“Keep you safe? From what?” He didn’t even try to deny the money scheme. What a creep.
“Mr. Boston is dead. And it wouldn't surprise me at all if he figured out what you’re doing here. And then he planned on coming after you and me. So I appreciate you taking care of that little problem…”
Hank's mouth dropped open. “Are you insinuating that I had something to do with his dad?”
Anger surged through my veins. I knew he had done it. There was no question. He tried to keep him quiet, but it would all backfire in the end. “Hank, who are you trying to impress with this act? You can't deceive me. I know what you did.” I stood just as Giovanni and I had practiced, and it made me look stronger than I really was. “And if you don't read me in, I'm going to the police. I don't care if I get in trouble for what I did, as it's nothing compared to what they’ll do to you. So do we have a deal?”
He crossed his arms, staring me down with his steely gaze. “You drive a hard bargain.”
I held my breath. Please take the bait, I thought.
He stood and walked over to me, and my heart raced with every footfall. But then he extended his hand. “Shake on it?”
I extended my own hand. “Deal.”
But just as our hands met, he spun me around so that my back was to his chest, and he wrapped his other arm around my neck. I could hardly breathe! I started gagging and gasping for air, but he just pulled tighter.
“You think I don't know that you’re already working with the police? You were never this ballsy last time. Always looking over your shoulder. And people don’t just change like that, Natasha. No, someone sent you here.”
He continued to choke me for only a moment more, but then his head snapped up and he released me. I fell into a crumpled mess on the floor as I watched a white tiger come crashing into the conference room.
“Gio!” I croaked out. My voice sounded nothing like it usually did and I put my hands around my throat, rubbing where his arm had just been. Every breath I took felt like needles filling my throat. I watched as the tiger plowed back and forth in front of me, making a space between myself and Hank. But Hank was prepared. He reached under the conference table and pulled out a gun. My eyes grew wide with fear. Was he going to kill us?
He pointed it at the tiger, screaming at the top of his lungs. “I'll shoot you! Don’t make any moves, tiger.”
Giovanni didn't listen. I watched in horror as the big cat descended upon his prey. But Hank didn't go down without a fight. He released a shot just as Giovanni took a bite out of his shoulder. The man lay on the ground, screaming in agony underneath the big cat, but the tiger wasn't moving anymore. I crawled over to them. My chest hurt and I felt like I could barely breathe.
Hank had released the gun out of his hand and I slid it across the floor. I heard it knock against the wall on the other side of the room. Tears fell down my face as I reached for Giovanni. I needed to see that he was okay.
Why wasn’t he moving? I needed him to do something. Show me he was all right.
Marco and Logan came sprinting in behind me. Logan lifted me up and carried me out, as I was sobbing uncontrollably. I tried to look over his shoulder to get a cl
earer picture of the tiger that had saved my life, but everything started to go dark. The image became fuzzy at the edges and then eventually, the lights went out.
12
Natsha
I woke up in a hospital bed. There were tubes sticking out of me in every direction. I felt my neck and realized that there was a brace supporting it. I started to panic when I realized I couldn't speak. Oh my God, what had they done to me? The room began to spin.
The nurse walked in just a moment later and saw my struggle. She attempted to calm me down. “Honey, honey, you're okay. The brace makes it so you can’t move your jaw very much. But I promise you you're okay. You’ve been on a mild sedative for the past day or two, but it's good you’re waking up on your own. I'll send a doctor in shortly to examine your neck.”
As she started to walk away, I grabbed on to her wrist and pulled her back to me, pleading with my eyes for her to understand. I had to know Giovanni was okay. She cocked her head at me slightly and Logan walked in behind her.
“You’re wake!”
I let go of the nurse and she left the room. Logan sat down on the edge of my bed. “Sarge will be happy to hear that you're okay. He just woke up last night.”
I moved my hands to tell him to continue to talk. I had to know everything that had happened to the tiger. He understood.
“Did you know he shifted in the parking lot? He broke through the door, and there was glass everywhere by the time we got there.” He spoke with admiration. “It's when I realized how important you are to him. He's going to be okay, you know. He's in a special shifter hospital. One that the members of your company actually support. And Hank is in another kind of hospital, at a prison. He was transported there yesterday morning while the two of you slept. He admitted to the whole thing. I took his statement. And his father, Devon, didn’t know anything. He thought the investments that you had done for him last year were totally on the books. His son has been scamming money out of him for nearly four years. You were just the last puzzle piece, the reason that we all figured it all out. I know the captain appreciates you putting yourself in danger to solve this crime. Hank even admitted that he tossed Mr. Boston over the stairs. Apparently he's not a shifter, but we didn't realize that he was a bodybuilder. Same kind of strength, I guess.” I tried to take deep breaths to calm myself down. I'd only heard one thing: Giovanni was going to be okay. He was going to make it.
“Natasha, there’s something you need to know. Sarge doesn't give his heart out easily. None of us do. It takes a special kind of girl to turn our heads. So if he really likes you as much as he says he does, then there's something else going on there. When you're ready, you should go see him.”
I tried to nod my head, but then remembered that I was in the brace. Instead I gave him a thumbs up. He smiled at me.
The doctor came into the room and Logan left us in peace. He went over the plan for my recovery. First we would remove the neck brace, and then I would have to wear a light neck brace for the next few weeks. It would provide stability, especially whenever I was walking or while I slept. Hank apparently had done a number on my windpipe, and he almost completely crushed it. He had been trying to kill me.
I was in the hospital for three more days, and when they finally released me, Logan took me over to see Giovanni at the shifter hospital. The place seemed cheery and bright, much nicer than my human hospital had been.
A sign welcomed us with a slogan that said, We’re All Equals Here. “Logan, who owns this place?”
“A company called Purest, Inc.”
“I've heard of them. You're right, we do a lot of investing on their behalf. I didn't realize the facility was this nice, though. They’re always looking for more benefactors.”
I watched as a nurse walked past us with a tray full of vials of blood. I knew that shouldn’t seem odd to me in a hospital where blood work was done all the time, but there was something about the way she held them. It made me uncomfortable. And very quickly, all the brightness that had been at the front entrance was fading away as we continued down the hallways toward Giovanni's room.
Something about this place gave me a bad feeling.
“Logan, when is Giovanni going to get to leave?”
He raised an eyebrow at me. “Tomorrow, why?”
I kept my eyes on the ground as I continued to follow him. “No reason.”
When we finally arrived at his room, he was sitting up, watching sports on television. His gown opened in the front, and I saw that statuesque physique I had been oh so familiar with. Around his abdomen were strips and strips of gauze. That must've been where he had been shot. Logan stopped just outside the door. “I'll wait out here.”
I smiled at him, appreciating his kind gesture to give us a moment to just ourselves. I had so much to say to him. So many things I needed to get off my chest, starting with thanking him for saving my life.
I almost reached his bed by the time he realized I was there. “Natasha,” he breathed out. He took the remote and turned off the television while scooting over a little bit so I could sit on the bed with him.
“How are you? Tell me about your neck.”
I raised my fingers up to the plastic that was currently supporting it. “It kinda hurts, to be honest. But it doesn't hurt nearly as much as it did when I didn't know what happened to you.” I promised myself I wouldn't cry, but clearly, I was going to break that promise. Tears started trickling down my face. He placed a rough hand on my cheek and attempted to wipe them away. “You saved my life! And got shot because of it. I didn't know he had a gun. I would've let him kill me if I had known that. I just didn't want anything to happen to you.”
He shook his head. “Guns are in my job description, sweetheart. Besides, it's not you who should be worried about me, it's me who should be worried about you. As soon as he agreed to the deal, I had gotten out of my car, and we were ready to move. Then I heard what he said to you at the end, and my tiger just took over. I changed in broad daylight, did anybody tell you that? I couldn't control it.”
I nodded, lifting my hand to cover his own on my face. “Logan mentioned it. He said that you also went through the glass door in order to get to me faster.”
He nodded. “I got lucky, honestly. The door to the staircase was open so I could just fly through there. I don't think a tiger on an elevator would work out so well. And from there, it was just an animal instinct to protect my mate.” He stopped himself and his eyes got wide for a moment.
“Mate? What does that mean?”
He looked nervous. “I think that's what you are. I mean, I've never felt this way about anyone else, and my mother always told me when I found the one that I would know right away. And if risking my life isn't knowing, then I don't know what is.”
My chest constricted. Giovanni was practically professing his love for me after I had just put him in danger. I leaned forward and kissed him. It was awkward because I couldn't turn my neck, and we both laughed a little.
“I can't believe you just said that.” I looked into his lavender eyes.
“I can't believe I just did either.”
I sat back, away from him a little bit, feeling relieved. I hadn’t ruined my chance with him after all. Geez, I had gotten lucky. “So where do we go from here?”
He smiled. “Seattle? I don't really think you want to go back to your job after all this. I'll help you find work, and you can live with me. I know we don't know each other that well, but we’ll learn about each other together.”
I smiled at him. “Together.”
Turn the page to read Meredith Clarke’s Second Chance Shifter book, A Promise to Bear
A Promise to Bear
1
Twilia
“I can’t believe she’s dead,” Twila said in a rush of words. The phrase felt like it was coming out of her mouth without her even trying. She shook her head back and forth slowly, the phone still clutched in her hand. “How? When?” The questions seemed insignificant, yet she felt li
ke she had to ask them. It was her duty.
The girl on the other end of the line simply responded about how she passed away in her sleep and that it was peaceful and short. An aneurysm they said, so she didn’t even feel the pain. But Twila felt the pain, the stabbing through the heart. She rubbed her chest, wondering if she would feel the warm, sticky blood on her fingers; there must be some physical evidence of the pain she was feeling. But instead her hand came away clean. “I was supposed to come visit her. I was just about to book my ticket.”
The unknown caller sighed heavily. “Well, you’ll still have to do that. Someone needs to take care of her affairs. And there’s the lodge to think about.”
Of course. The lodge. It was her grandmother’s life’s work to open a lodge in New England. Twila had moved to Montana with her parents as child, but she spent all of her summers at the lodge. That was until three years ago. Three years ago, everything had changed, and she hadn’t been back since. She had only seen her grandmother for Thanksgiving once since then. She should have spent more time with her. She should’ve made more of an effort—she wasn’t some child that could hide from her past anymore. She was an adult, and she should’ve acted like one. And now it was too late.
“Of course. I’m sure that she had some arrangements in place?”
“Yes. There’s a will, but there are some things that I would like to discuss with you personally.” The woman on the other end of the line was Lauren Turner, her grandmother’s lawyer. It was sad that she had been the one to call Twila, but none of her friends had picked up the phone. Twila doubted any of them had her number anyway. This was the most direct route. Besides, no one wanted to call a woman’s Granddaughter to tell her that she had passed. This was reserved for a professional.
