Nope. Pretty much all the time. From the minute he’d seen Princess Alea Binte al Mussad, his cock had been hard and his heart had taken a nosedive. She’d hit him like a bolt of lightning. He’d stood there staring at her, feeling like a damn fool, but he wasn’t going to let that stop him. Then he’d looked at his two best friends, ready to tell them that he’d finally found the one woman he wanted to put a collar on—as crazy as that would have sounded—and realized they were just as head over heels. That quickly, all three of them were fucked.
But they had all backed off, unwilling to step on each others’ toes. They had been through too much together. Coop and Lan were the only family Dane had left. Oh, there was a father and three brothers back in Georgia, but he’d come back from the Korengal Valley a different man. Shortly after his second tour, the family drama and his divorce had ended any affection or allegiance they had for him. In their head, Dane was as good as dead. Coop and Lan were his brothers now, and he couldn’t fight with them. They had been at an impasse.
Until they had really understood the way relationships worked here in Bezakistan. It was tradition among the wealthy and the landholders in this small country for the brothers of a family to share a wife so they didn’t have to divide the family riches or leave any sibling to suffer poverty. After a few weeks, Dane had decided they could adopt the Bezakistani way. He, Lan, and Coop might not truly share blood and they might not be preserving a fortune, but they all wanted Alea and weren’t willing to stab a brother in the back to have her.
So after a full month here, he’d decided he liked the idea of sharing. The families in Bezakistan seemed happy, and he wouldn’t have to relinquish his backup. He’d spent the majority of his adult life in the military, his whole childhood before that following his dad from base to base. The idea of having a family that functioned as a team really suited him.
And then just as they’d settled everything between the three of them, they realized they had forgotten to talk to the most important member of the team. And Alea didn’t want anything to do with them. Or at least that was her story, and she seemed to be sticking to it.
Landon touched his earpiece and suddenly his voice came on the line. “I want you to do a background check on that British fucker, Oliver Thurston-Hughes. Get me everything you can. I want to know it all, right down to what the asshole eats for breakfast so I’ll know what to poison.”
“Slow down,” Coop said. “Why are we going to poison that Brit’s oatmeal? Do they even eat oatmeal in England?”
Lan ignored the question, getting right to the point. “He’s a little too interested in the princess.”
Fuck. If he was calling her “princess,” then their conversation had been a clusterfuck. “What’s going on, Lan?”
His pal didn’t look back. Instead, Lan stared across the ballroom, never taking his eyes off her. “That cousin of hers is trying to get her to go to England. The princess walked out onto the balcony to get some fresh air. First Mr. Small Dick followed her, then Crazy Bitch crashed the party. They laid all kinds of guilt on Her Highness.”
“She’s not going to England.” There was no way Dane would allow it. Especially now that he was pretty sure she was still in potential danger. He would talk Talib into putting her on lockdown if he needed to. And if, for some reason, she left anyway, he would have to quit and follow her because he couldn’t leave her unprotected and alone.
“I don’t think she really wants to go,” Landon replied. “But the British fuckwad sure seemed interested in her being a bit more than a traveling companion.”
“I got a shot, boss. I can take him out in one,” Coop said, his voice serious.
“I think that’s a damn fine idea, Coop,” Landon interjected. “Can you aim for his pecker?”
“Don’t know, brother. I suspect that is a mighty small target, but I’m a damn fine marksman.”
Dane hated it when he had to be the voice of reason. “You can’t kill him. Not here anyway. I’ll run a check on him, guys, but seriously, we can’t go around assassinating every man who looks at her twice.”
“I don’t see why not. We’re good at assassinations. If Tal had let us take out Khalil when we wanted to, we could have avoided a whole lot of heartache.” Coop sighed over the line. “Are our ‘friends’ here yet?”
Lawson and Riley Anders were private investigators with the prestigious Anthony Anders firm. It was made up of the brothers, Lawson and Riley, and a badass named Dominic Anthony. They had come with the highest references from the two PIs who had tracked down Alea when she’d been kidnapped. Burke and Cole Lennox were good, but they also had married a really sweet girl named Jessa and now had one son with another on the way. They couldn’t do the kind of twenty-four seven work that Dane had demanded after the death of Khalil al Bashir.
With the prime suspect dead, he had to know once and for all if Khalil had been the one responsible for Alea’s abduction. In fact, he prayed that Khalil had been the guilty fucker. That would set his mind at ease. But it didn’t add up.
The report the Lennox brothers had filed had stated plainly that Alea had been held for months in a state of “training.” She’d been moved from New York to Colombia and housed in a brothel. Yet the physician who had treated her after she’d been returned to Bezakistan had said there was no sexual abuse evident. According to him, Alea remained a virgin.
So he feared the random act of slavery was bullshit. Dane’s guess was that someone had paid for her to be taken. Someone had wanted her to disappear and suffer. Money had been on the line. Money and maybe something else. Revenge? Pride? He couldn’t be sure until he had more information.
Once, Khalil had seemed like the best suspect, but Dane hadn’t been able to connect him yet to the crime either via physical evidence or motive. He prayed that Law and Riley gave him the proof tonight. He would be thrilled to find out that Alea’s abduction had been a random act or that the asshole who had sold her out was dead.
But it felt too fucking easy.
Dane shook off his suspicions and brought himself back to reality, answering Coop about Riley and Lawson. “I have confirmation that they landed about half an hour ago. They should be here any minute. It’s bad timing, but this is the best window they could give us, given the tight schedule Dominic keeps.” Plus, if the perp was still alive, he might well be attending tonight’s event and wouldn’t notice a few more visitors to the palace that might raise suspicion. “We’re going to meet in Tal’s office to go over what they’ve learned.”
“Won’t someone notice if the sheikh disappears from his wife’s coronation ball?” Coop asked.
“Not for a few minutes. We’re going to make this short and sweet. Rafe and Kade will keep Piper occupied.” In fact, Tal planned to give Rafe the signal, who would then make sure their wife was occupied on the dance floor until the meeting adjourned. The goal was to keep the party rolling as normally as possible so as not to alert Piper—or Alea—that anything potentially dangerous might be going down. If the news was bad, as Dane suspected, they would need a whole new game plan.