“He had me kidnapped, right near my apartment in New York. They took me and my bro—” Her eyes flash to me with panic before she continues. “He took me to some isolated place. It looked like a building under construction.”
I feel my blood begin to boil. Sloane is mine, even if she doesn’t know it yet. The fact that Jan or any of his men would dare lay a hand on her, let alone kidnap her, sends a rage through me that has me threatening to go crazy all over again.
I release her throat and pull back.
Sloane stares up at me with cautious eyes, no doubt wondering if this is me giving her permission to make herself decent.
My eyes scan her well-fucked body, the clothes in rags around her hips. It tempers the inferno in me with a different kind of heat.
Instead, I rise up off the bed. It’s only when I’m standing that I realize my dick is still hanging out. I stuff myself back into my pants and walk over to one of the armchairs near the bed without bothering to put my shirt back on.
Sloane rustles the sheets, and by the time I’ve sat down, she has them wrapped around her like an impromptu ballgown.
I lean in, my elbows placed on my wide-spread legs. I give her a hard look before continuing, just in case she has any ideas of me going easy on her now that my hand isn’t around her throat,
“Tell me what he wanted you to do.”
This time she doesn’t hesitate. I suspect it has less to do with the fight going out in her and more to do with not giving a shit about Jan Vorster.
“He wants me to find out why you’ve been selling off assets for the past year. He wants to know what you’re planning to do with the money you seem to be hoarding.”
“That sounds an awful lot like you’re aiding and abetting insider trading.”
“Does it?” She retorts in a sarcastically sweet tone.
I feel a grin spread my lips, despite what she’s just admitted. If anything, I like her even more.
“How did you manage to get involved with this? I’m pretty sure your career as an attorney would be over if this little plan was discovered.”
“Not to mention going to jail,” she snaps.
“Well?”
She works her mouth a bit, as though tasting the truth and trying to decide if it’s worth revealing. With another sigh, she sinks against the headboard and stretches her legs out, crossing her heeled feet at the ankles.
“My brother Theo is…a genius,” she shrugs as though there is no other word for it. “His brain is like a calculator, and he likes creating software, or really algorithms? I don’t know. He tried explaining it, and it was completely over my head.
“Anyway, a friend of his from college is always trying to loop him into these schemes to make quick money. Usually, it’s small-time, like gambling or timing the market or something. This time, this so-called friend of his got him to steal money from the company he works at.”
“How?” I ask with genuine curiosity.
She laughs in a way that’s half-rueful, half-admiring. “You know that old Superman movie? The one with Richard Prior? Or I guess a more modern example would be Office Space. The films where they shave off the half-cents from the company profits, and when added up, they amount to a substantial amount? All without the bean counters noticing?”
I wrinkle my brow. “Both of those scenarios are unlikely in this day and age. The bean counters have programs that count every penny down to a tenth of a cent, if not smaller. They couldn’t have gotten away with it.”
She twists her lips into a smile. “They could the way Theo did it. His program, started up at the end of the fiscal workday, shaving off those few cents. The money was used for trading in overseas markets, while Corporate America was fast asleep. By the start of business the next day, the principle is replaced, and all records of the transaction erased, with no one the wiser.”
“And what would have happened if he’d lost money trading?”
She gives me a patronizing smile. “You don’t know my brother. They made ten million dollars over the course of six months.”
No wonder the Pirate was after him. Hell, I should look into hiring him when this is all said and done.
“But someone did find out.”
She shrugs as though to point out that her being here is evidence of that.
“How did they get from the ten-million stolen dollars to using you?”
“At first, they just wanted the money.” She hiccups a sarcastic laugh. “Sure enough, left to his own devices, Linus had blown most of it on some other scheme. Theo, for some stupid reason, threw out my name, thinking maybe I had enough to cover it.” She shakes her head and looks up to the side in anger muttering some curse in his name. “Obviously, I don’t have ten million just lying around, which they found out not long after they took me.”
Once again, my blood begins to boil, especially when Sloane begins to tremble. My instinct is to go over and comfort her, but I’m sure it would have the opposite effect.
“What else did they do?” I ask in a dark voice.
“There was mostly just yelling at first; several men just dragged me into that building. They tied me to a chair and waved guns in my face, trying to frighten me. I had no idea what was going on. Then I saw Linus and Theo. They’d beaten Linus up some. Theo just looked scared. I’ve never been so terrified in my life.”
She shudders.
“When Jan, I guess his name is, finally came in and announced himself, it was like a switch had been flipped. Everyone went silent. I think even his own men were wary of him. Those eyes…” She shudders again. “He talked in this eerily calm voice, first asking about
