Both men sighed heavily with obvious relief as Ephraim tossed the phone back to Chris. “Just a reminder to pick up some fudge from that shop that she likes,” Ephraim muttered, rubbing his hands down his face.
“Which I would have told you if you hadn’t attacked me, you betraying bastard!” Chris practically snarled as he continued to shake off his hand with a wince as he shifted his legs.
“I thought you told her not to text you unless it’s an emergency,” Ephraim grumbled as he gestured for Christofer, who was still oddly quiet throughout this whole exchange, to precede them inside the large, and obviously, upscale building.
“I did,” Chris gritted out, keeping stride with Christofer as they headed inside.
“She’s pregnant,” Danni said dryly. “To her, fudge is an emergency.”
Ephraim chuckled as he pulled up the rear alongside Kale, who was once again glaring at her. How did she know this? Because while everyone else was chatting away and Christofer was voluntarily walking them to their doom, she was struggling to get free. She kicked, shoved, pinched and squirmed, but nothing worked. He’d barely even grunted when she’d kneed him in the chest when she’d tried to climb over his shoulder to take a chance with a pavement dive.
“Let me go, Christofer!” she said, squirming wildly in his arms, but other than tighten his hold around her, he didn’t seem to react at all.
Fed up, Cloe decided to take a chance that someone, anyone, might actually give a damn in this city. “Somebody, please help me! They’re kidnapping me!” she shouted as Christofer stepped inside the opulent building and the gold encased glass door closed behind her with a whoosh.
“Scream all you want,” Kale said, smiling smugly as he gestured to the men and women moving all around them and making her frown when she realized that they all wore various forms of black combat clothing much like that of her captors. “It won’t do you any good, not in a Sentinel compound.”
Chapter 25
“You son of a bitch!” Cloe snapped as he stepped inside the large penthouse.
Without a word, and because he needed some space to clear his head, he put her down, dropping her beautiful ass on the leather love seat as he passed by it. He kept walking until he found himself standing inches away from the floor to ceiling windows overlooking Central Park. Other than releasing a little surprised squeal that teased a small twitch from his lips, she didn’t say anything about the rude way he’d handled her.
He knew that he should have pulled her away from the group and tried to explain things to her, at least of what he knew, but he just…..he just couldn’t. Too much shit had happened in the last couple of days and he wasn’t handling it very well. To be honest, he’d rather be anywhere but here. He should be accompanying his sister’s body back to Germany and seeing that she had a proper burial in the family cemetery, but instead he was here in New York making sure that the woman whose life he’d ruined was tucked away somewhere safe.
Goddamn Marta for leaving him like this, he inwardly raged, grinding his teeth together as he forced his hands to stay by his sides when all he wanted to do was to pull out that damn letter again. She’d f**king lied to him. She’d known that she was dying for a goddamn year and she’d never said a word to him. She’d f**king played him, telling him that she had a serious female problem that needed frequent treatment. It was the only way she’d been able to convince him to drop her off at the doctor’s office and leave her there until she called to be picked up after her appointment.
He never should have left her there, but he’d wanted to respect her request for privacy. She’d been humiliated enough in that f**king lab and he hadn’t wanted to take away what little self-respect she had left so he’d left her at the medical office and drove off far enough away so that he wouldn’t be able to overhear what was discussed during her appointment. If he had known that she’d been diagnosed with cancer he never would have left her.
Never.
She had no business leaving him the way that she had, taking her own life and saying goodbye to him in a f**king letter! He’d deserved to know what was going on, deserved to be there to hold her hand and tell her how much he loved her, but most of all he deserved a f**king chance to try to save her! He would have taken her to every expert that he could find and made them fix her.
She’d left him too soon. He hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to her, not when he knew that they should have had several more years together. He would never forgive her for doing this to him, goddamn her for leaving him like this and goddamn her for doing this to Cloe. It made him sick knowing that Marta had purposely brought an innocent woman into this mess. She’d put Cloe’s life in danger, and for what? So that he wouldn’t have to worry about being alone for a few more decades?
Marta thought she was giving him someone to care about and love when all she ended up giving him was another responsibility. He might not have been ready to say goodbye to Marta, but he’d been prepared for it. He’d been prepared to learn how to live on his own, to have no one to worry about, to finally explore the world around him, and to figure out how he was going to manage to live forever without losing his goddamn mind. Now it seemed that he couldn’t even do that, because he was already losing his goddamn mind.
He had a mate……..
A f**king mate that he didn’t want and who sure as hell didn’t want him, but none of that mattered, because she was his now and he’d be damned if he failed one more woman in his life.
“Why haven’t you tried to run yet?” Ephraim asked as he moved to join him in front of the large window.
“Why do you care?” Christofer asked, staring out the window at what other people would probably call a breathtaking view, but he barely noticed it, lost in his thoughts the way that he was.
“I’m just curious,” Ephraim admitted.
“Were you expecting a fight?” Christofer asked, already having noted that this little misfit group had been heavily armed when they’d come to retrieve him.
They’d probably expected him to fight them tooth and nail and if it hadn’t been for Cloe, he would have done just that. Throw in the fact that they hadn’t resorted to bullshitting them, threats of violence, and he didn’t count Ephraim being forced to shoot him in the back of the head to protect his son, and the fact that they seemed genuinely concerned about Cloe’s safety and he didn’t see a reason to fight them.