Wolf with Benefits

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Chuck Roberts left his office in the church and walked to the back door. Someone had been knocking for a bit and he’d chosen to ignore it as long as he could. The rest of the church members had gone to the farm, but Chuck had stayed behind because he refused to buy into this con. He knew better.

He and Chris had been friends for a long time and they’d always enjoyed money. But Chuck had no illusions about what they were or where they’d come from. Chris, however, had begun to buy into all this bullshit. Believing the worship. Crazy.

And yet beneficial. Because Chris was so focused on the worshippers—especially the young female ones—he didn’t notice that Chuck had been pulling money out of the Cayman accounts and moving them to his own in Geneva. Another couple of days and Chuck was out of here. He’d be leaving the crazy far behind.

Opening the door just a bit to see who was standing there—a lot of homeless people came to the church asking for food or a place to sleep for the night and Chuck was definitely not in the mood to deal with any of that bullshit—he saw a gorgeous, dark-haired woman standing there in tight jeans and a V-neck T-shirt. She smiled at him.

“Hi,” she practically purred.

“Hi.” Unable to help himself, Chuck eased the door open. “Can I help you?”

Her head tilted and her eyes reflected the streetlight back at him. Like a cat’s.

Without thought, only abject fear, Chuck went to close the door in the woman’s face, but a hand from behind dug into his hair and a knife pressed to his throat.

“Hello, darlin’,” another female voice growled in his ear. “You don’t mind, do ya? But me and Malone here have just a couple of questions for ya.”

The one he assumed was Malone walked inside the church, closing the door with her foot. She smiled again, and that’s when Chuck would swear he saw fangs.

“Come on. Let’s go someplace comfortable to talk.”

Then the woman who held him, who was so damn strong, dragged him down the hallway and Chuck knew this couldn’t possibly end well.

“A notebook?” Toni shook her head at Dee-Ann’s words. “What notebook?”

“No idea.”

“If all Delilah wanted was a notebook, why didn’t she just take it?” Cooper asked. “She had to know that taking Freddy would set us off.”

“I can only think Freddy didn’t have it for some reason.”

“He probably hid it,” Oriana said softly while holding a bag of frozen peas against her swollen forehead. “He does that sometimes. Like a Labrador, he’ll dig a hole and put something that means a lot to him in it.”

“Well, it can’t be one of his notebooks,” Toni reasoned. “He doesn’t care about his own shit. So it had to be something he stole and . . .” She looked across the kitchen table to Irene, but her mother’s best friend immediately shook her head.

“I haven’t had anything missing and you know I’d notice unless it was food.” But then Irene looked off, her hand briefly covering her mouth. “Oh, no.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I think I know where this started.” She rested her elbows on the table, dug her hands into her hair. “Miki.”

“Kendrick?” Irene’s mentee and friend who they’d just visited at the hotel only a couple of weeks ago. “What about—” Toni nearly slapped her forehead. “The box of tissues.”

“The box of tissues.”

“He stole a box of tissues?” Cella asked.

“No. But he was alone in Miki’s room for a bit. He adores her. He’d take one of her notebooks. His way of keeping her close. He wouldn’t give that to Delilah.”

“So she took him?” Ricky asked.

“He has a photographic memory. If she couldn’t get the notebook, taking him would be just as good.”

Standing tall by Cella, Dee-Ann folded her arms across her chest, and stared hard at Toni. “What do you want us to do?”

Toni didn’t hesitate. “I want you to find out who she’s going to sell this information to. I think they wanted to bypass her and that’s why they broke into the house and then just tried to take him.” She pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Dee-Ann, I want you to find out where this is coming from and deal with it.”

“And you?”

“What do you think? My mother’s upstairs sobbing. My father’s trying to keep the younger kids calm.” She gestured to her fifteen-year-old sister. “She split Oriana’s head open.” Toni barely managed to bite back a growl when she saw how swollen poor Oriana’s face currently was. “I’m going to go get my brother back.”

Ricky didn’t bother arguing with Toni. There was no point. Instead, he turned to Vic. “What do you have?”

“We traced the license plate number Troy got off that car to a farm upstate. Dug a little, it’s owned by the church.”

“Good.” Ricky focused on his brothers. “Reece, I want you to stay here. I want this place locked down until you hear from me.”

“It’s done,” Reece said, then he got up and walked out of the room.

“Rory, I want you with me.”

“Yep.”

“Y’all take care of this,” Dee-Ann said. “Take Barinov and Malone with you.”

“Don’t you need backup, too, Dee?” Oriana asked, sounding remarkably kind since that hit on the head.

“Aren’t you just the sweetest little thing?”

“No,” Oriana answered honestly. “Not really.”

Dee snorted and headed out. “Y’all be careful,” she ordered before she left.

Toni got to her feet. “Irene—”

“I’ll take care of your mother. You just . . . fix this, Antonella. Fix it.”

“I will.”

Yeah. Ricky didn’t doubt that for one second.