Aden (Vampires in America) (14 page)

“Good planning.” He started toward the front doors, taking her with him, but she dug in her heels. Trav had the strength to force her, but not without making a scene, and she counted on him not wanting to draw that kind of attention.

“I don’t want to go in there,” she insisted.

“Babe, you stuck your nose where it doesn’t belong, and now—”

“What do you mean
where it doesn’t belong
? I’ve spent months doing exactly what I was doing tonight. This is
my
investigation, not yours. And—Wait a minute. You already knew about the slaves, didn’t you?”

It hit her then how stupid she’d been. Why had she thought Aden would be any different than Klemens? Why had she assumed he’d be willing to let go of Klemens’s very profitable businesses, regardless of whether they were moral? Or even legal?

“Let go of me, or I’ll scream,” she said quietly.

Travis let go of her arm, but not before giving her a truly offended look. “Jesus, Sid. You really think we’d have anything to do with that crap tonight? That
I
would?”

“I don’t know. I don’t really know any of you, do I? But tell me, Trav, why else did that vamp know who I was, and why’d he bring me
here
? And why does Aden shut me down every time I try to talk about it?”

“Maybe because it’s none of your damn business,” Trav snarled, then glanced around. “We’re not discussing this here. If you want to talk, you come upstairs.”

Sid frowned at him unhappily. She didn’t want to go upstairs, but she
did
want answers.

“Fine. But only long enough—”

Trav didn’t wait for her to finish, just hooked her arm again and started walking, not saying anything until they were in the elevator alone. He let go of her arm and said, “You’re a pain in the ass, Sid, but Aden insisted—”

“Wait, Aden’s upstairs? Let me out of here.” She started punching all of the floor buttons. Trav caught her hand.

“Stop that. Fuck! What’s wrong with you?” He grabbed her again, wrapping his arms around her and trapping her back against his chest.

Sid fumed, but stopped struggling, feeling a little stupid when she saw the row of lighted floor buttons. Fortunately, it wasn’t a very tall building. The elevator stopped at the next floor, and the one after that, the doors opening and closing without anyone getting on or off. Trav made a disgusted noise, but Sid fought back a grin.

When they transferred past the guards to the private elevator on the fifth floor, she stopped grinning. She reached up automatically to check her hair and discovered her braid was beginning to unravel. With a guilty glance at Travis, she tugged the coated elastic off the end and forked her fingers into the mess, trying to restore some semblance of
 . . .
well, attractiveness was out of the question, but sanity would be nice.

Travis chuckled. “Don’t worry. You look fine.”

Sid bit back a retort, knowing whatever she said would only add to his amusement. Flattening her lips, she remembered she didn’t have an ounce of makeup on. She’d been trying to look ordinary. Unfortunately, she’d succeeded. Digging around in the small backpack which she’d removed from underneath her hoodie, she found a sample tube of pale pink lip gloss. It wasn’t her best color, but it was better than nothing. Not even trying to conceal her actions from Trav, she unscrewed the cap from the rollerball end and smoothed it on her dry lips. Trav made a rude noise anyway, but she ignored him, too busy slicking her tongue over her teeth and remembering how many hours it had been since she’d brushed.
Note to self: add an emergency kit to backpack with all of the basic necessities
. Basic necessities being defined as those things necessary to look good after a couple of hours spent lurking in the bushes and spying on criminals.

The elevator dinged, and the doors opened on the sixth floor penthouse. Travis started to take her arm, but she jerked away, unwilling to be dragged into the great Aden’s presence.

The elevator opened onto a small foyer, with a marble floor and a lovely Chippendale table against the opposite wall. A wide hallway opened off to the right, delineated only by the change from marble floor to carpeting, and the door to the offices was about twenty feet down. At the end of the hall beyond the offices was a set of double doors, deep red and highly lacquered. She’d noticed them on her earlier visit, mostly because she was absolutely certain that they weren’t standard issue in the building. They were far too expensive for that, and, in her view, it said something about the man behind those doors that he’d been willing to put forth the money and the effort on a set of doors that most people would never see.

As she and Trav neared the door to the office suite, Sid started to turn, expecting him to lead her into Aden’s office, like before. But he touched her arm lightly, steering her instead down the hall to the red lacquered doors she’d admired. This close, she could see that while they appeared to be nothing more than decorative, they were in fact security doors of some sort. There was a keypad entry, which Trav accessed, and when the doors closed behind them, it was with a solid thunk of sound, like the noise a big refrigerator door would make, or maybe a bank vault.

What greeted them wasn’t a vault, though. The corridor continued, but everything else was different. The carpet was deeper, and the walls were painted a warm, sandy beige. There were no more harsh fluorescents. Wall sconces lined the corridor, incandescent and lovely, casting a soft light that illuminated without being garish. Closed doors lined the walls, three to a side, and at the very end of the hallway, a final door stood open slightly.

Travis guided her to the open door and paused, giving her scruffy athletic shoes a meaningful look. “Shoes off, Sid.”

She looked at him in surprise, but complied readily enough. Sid was well-traveled enough to know that it wasn’t uncommon to encounter cultures, or simple personal preferences, where one was expected to leave shoes at the door. She bent over and untied her Chucks before toeing out of them, scowling when she realized it cost her an inch of height. In her previous meetings with Aden, she’d worn high heels. With her feet bare, he would tower over her even more than he usually did.

She set her shoes neatly side by side on a small, elegant rug to one side of the door, which had obviously been placed there for that purpose. She couldn’t help but note that hers were the only shoes there, and that Travis hadn’t removed his loafers.

She gave him a questioning look, and he grinned. “It’s just you and Lord Aden, babe. Just what you always wanted.”

Without any further warning, he tapped lightly on the door. No one answered, but Trav made a sweeping gesture with his hand, indicating she should go on in. Sid frowned unhappily, but then gave a resigned sigh and pushed the door open.

She took two steps inside and paused, letting her eyes adjust to the muted light. There were no overhead lights, no wall sconces, not even the elegant ones that had lined the hallway. As her eyes adjusted, she realized this was someone’s—probably Aden’s—personal suite. It was decorated in rich colors of burgundy and gold, with an occasional streak of brilliant blue. An intricate silk hanging covered one entire wall, drawing Sid like a siren’s song, offering her a rare glimpse of ancient history. It was incredibly well-preserved, the threads gleaming with color, and those gold strands were the real thing. Their color was too warm, too deep to be anything else.

Sid’s mother was a weaver. Her pieces were much smaller than this, but they hung in small galleries and wealthy homes all across the Northeast. As her only daughter, Sid had been dragged to every decorative arts collection in museums all over the world. Sid knew fabric and weaving. And this hanging was as fine as any she’d ever seen. Even better.

She stared at the magnificent piece of art, completely taken in by the decadent and bloody scene it depicted. Eastern lords—she couldn’t have said which country, only that it wasn’t the western hemisphere—rode into battle, their horses’ hooves sharp and deadly, their teeth bared and eyes sharp, their swords dripping blood. And at the other end of the hanging, an elegant palace where ladies in dresses of striking color reclined in indulgent splendor while servants bowed and scraped.

Feeling grubby after her recent crawl through the dirt and bushes, Sid shoved her hands into the pockets of her hoodie to resist touching the tapestry and wished she could turn up the light just a little to see it better.

She was so engrossed that she didn’t realize someone else was in the room until a deep, smooth voice drawled, “Sidonie.”

She spun around, chagrined at her own rudeness, irritated that he’d managed to startle her. She glared at him as if it was all his fault.

Aden sat in a deep, upholstered chair on the other side of the room. The chair was covered in short-napped velvet, its burgundy color rich with gold deep in its threads. A standing lamp was just over his left shoulder, casting a circle of warm light over him, sparking red highlights in his black hair and blazing off his olive gold skin, while leaving his eyes dark and gleaming.

Just sitting there, he took her breath away. She tried to focus on something else, anything but the way her foolish body was reacting to the mere sight of him, and her gaze fixed on what he was holding. A pile of paperwork sat on the table to his right, and he was holding a multiple-page document, the top pages flipped over as if she’d caught him in the middle of reading it.

Aden made a noise like an abbreviated chuckle, and Sid’s eyes flashed up to meet his lazy stare. He did a quick head to toe scan before meeting her glare with a small smile of amusement. He gestured with one hand at the matching loveseat opposite his chair, and his smile only grew broader when she stubbornly remained standing.

“Sidonie,” he repeated, his voice flowing over her skin like the finest silk. “I wouldn’t have thought criminal activity was your thing.”

“Very funny,” she said, feeling the blush to the roots of her messy hair. “But as long as we’re talking criminals, I wouldn’t have thought slavery was your thing.”

Something changed behind his eyes. Every shred of humor was gone in an instant, replaced by something much colder and angrier. He dropped the papers to the table and stood, towering over her just as she’d known he would despite the fact his feet, too, were bare.

He reached out and twisted a lock of her hair around one long finger, then leaned in close, as if to share a secret.

“You don’t know me, Sidonie Reid,” he purred. “So I will forgive you this once. But never again accuse me of tolerating slavery. I won’t forgive it a second time.” He tugged her hair until the curl slipped away from his fingers, and started to turn away. But then he stopped. As if it was an afterthought—although she doubted Aden did anything without thinking about it first—he said, “And for the record, I don’t need you or anyone else to tell me what’s going on in my city.”

“
Your
city?” she managed to say.

Aden’s lip curled into a crooked smile. “My city. My territory. It’s only a matter of time. And not much more of that.”

Sid thought privately that his arrogance knew no bounds, but she kept that to herself, saying instead, “So, that vampire Elias, the one who brought me here, he’s one of yours?”

Aden regarded her skeptically, clearly deciding whether to answer her question or not. “Elias belonged to Klemens,” he said, still studying her as if trying to figure out what angle she was working. “Klemens’s people now belong to no one, other than Lucas who holds their lives until a new lord claims the territory. Elias knows who’s going to win this battle and is being useful in hopes of gaining favor. Eventually, he will be mine.”

“You already knew about the slaves when I talked to you the other night, didn’t you?”

“I suspected, which is why Elias was there tonight. Fortunately for you.”

“Why didn’t you saying something? You know how important this is to me.”

“Do I?” he asked archly.

She felt suddenly foolish in having assumed he would have found out about Janey, and that he’d know what she’d been doing since her friend’s death and why. “I’ve spent the last several months trying to—”

“I know what you’ve been doing.”

She glared at him angrily. Why couldn’t he ever be up front with her? Why was he always with the games? “You’re an asshole, you know that?”