She scoffed. “How very fucking noble. I can’t believe this. You’re such a lying, conniving asshole. In case you didn’t guess, you are so fucking fired right now. Get your shit and leave.”
“I’m afraid I can’t do that. I’m your bodyguard, Isa. Where you are is where I need to be.”
Isa ground her teeth together. “Then I’ll leave.”
“Like hell you will,” Elija said. He gently lifted Tarrah off his lap and set her back into the seat they had just been sharing. “If Isa wants you gone, you’re gonna take your things and go.”
Luke and Elija were about the same size, but Isa knew Elija had an advantage. He was a shifter. Luke had no chance of winning a fight against the tiger shifter.
“Thanks, Elija,” she said, making it clear to her former employee that she was fully siding with Elija. She grabbed the cell phone from Luke’s hands. “Dad, this is your daughter. Call off your man. Now.”
“Isa,” her father snapped. “You’re such a child. You cannot think I will send away the only link I have with you.”
“The only link that ever existed between us was severed when I moved out. This was despicable. If you wanted to know what I was doing with my life, you could have reached out and been supportive despite your opinions of anything that isn’t Wall Street, blue-blood bullshit.”
She swore because she knew it drove her father insane when she did. He was so into proper manners, she could almost see him turning purple in the face with anger. “You overstepped in such a fucked up way. For years. We are done.” She ended the call and tossed the phone back to Luke. “Get the fuck out. Now.”
Isa didn’t wait to see if he left. She knew Elija was there, and he would force him out. There was every chance Elija would call Valens as soon as Luke left. Her mate or boyfriend or whatever the fuck Valens was to her, she knew he’d asked Elija to keep an eye on her.
That was two men, three if she counted Luke, that had betrayed her trust. She was so done with the day. She wanted to lie in a bubble bath with a fresh glass of wine and forget the last twelve hours.
She wanted to bask in the excitement that she felt when she bought the mountain. She wanted to think of all the things she was going to do with her new property. For a second, as she watched the bathtub filled with water, she wondered if she could make it a girls-only camp. Screw men. They were so much trouble. More than they were worth.
Isa sank into the hot water, making sure not to submerge her stitches. The last thing she wanted was to develop an infection. Then she’d have to go to Valens for help, and she wasn’t ready to see him yet.
Though now that she had discovered Luke’s betrayal, she didn’t know which hurt more.
Luke’s was longer, heavier.
Valens’s was more personal. It wasn’t just her life and privacy that were on the line. Her heart was too. She sighed as she thought about her week with Valens, trying to decide if she could forgive his transgression.
The issue? If she forgave Valens, didn’t that mean she had to forgive her father and Luke? That wasn’t going to happen.
Maybe falling for a man in a week had been a massive mistake, even if he was her mate.
20
VALENS
The conversation with the lions was a bust. It had done nothing to improve the chances of avoiding a huge and violent fight. As Egon recounted the tense meeting to Oz, Bree, and their parents, everyone listened with careful ears and tense hearts.
“Elija texted me to let me know Isa got some really bad news tonight when she got back to the cabin. I think I should go over there.”
Bree and Egon exchanged a look. “I think we need to have a chat, dear brother-in-law.”
“I can help,” Oz said. “Don’t be a dick to your mate. There. That easy.”
Bree rolled her eyes. “I really am excited to see how you’ll be when you finally find your mate. I will definitely remind you of the words you’re telling your brother right now. You’re gonna go back to your place, Mister Mayor, and make sure you’ll be well-rested in case there is a fight we have to hide from the human tourists.”
Oz crossed his arms, looking more like a kid than a grown-ass man who was a Mayor. As the baby of the family, he had major issues about missing out. He was left out of more serious shifter business when he was a kid, and somehow, that translated him into being the most nosy person in the whole streak.
Even more so than Reina and Mom.
Maybe he was already destined to be a nosy man with those two in his family tree, but still. It was one thing to not want to miss things. It was another thing to pout as an adult.
“Don’t be like that, Oz,” Bree soothed. “I’ll bring over a pie to your office tomorrow. Now, get going. You need to be fresh in the morning.”
Valens was caught between wanting to tease Oz and being eager to hear the advice his brother and sister-in-law had to give him. He waved his good-bye to Oz, not trusting himself to say anything. Once the trio was alone in the living room, Bree sighed and laid her head back on the couch.
“I don’t even have kids yet, and I already feel like I’m raising a pack of ‘em. So, Valens, do you have any clue what happened with Isa tonight?”
He shook his head. “Elija wouldn’t elaborate. He said if I wanted more information, I should head over there and ask her myself.”
“That makes sense. She did feel pretty betrayed that you checked in on this stalker when she asked you not to.”
“I didn’t have a choice!” he argued.
“I know,” Bree said. “I know, and honestly? I think any person would have done the same as you, shifter or not. But we need to take something into special consideration here. Isa isn’t a normal person like you and me. Or me and you shifters,” she added, laughing at her own joke. “She had fifteen million dollars to drop just like that to buy a mountain. She obviously comes from money.
"If I understood properly that cash has always come with strings. That means her trust is hard to earn, but it’s also really easy to lose it on the flip of that. You have to look at it from her perspective.”
“Her perspective?” he roared. “There’s a psycho out there who wants to hurt her.”
“You don’t know that. You know he follows her around. You know he messages her every now and again.”
“And I know he doesn’t like it that I’m spending all of this time with her. I thought it was this guy, Luke, who works for her.”
“I looked into him,” Egon piped up. “He is as clean as a whistle. He doesn’t have a parking ticket or a speeding violation. The man has never broken a rule, despite working for Daredev-Isa. Before that, he worked for some fancy private security company.”
Valens frowned. Something about that didn’t sit too well with him. “What do you mean?”
“He was working for a company that provides bodyguards for the rich and famous. Why? Does that mean something to you?”
He inhaled, his frown pulling deeper. “I’m just thinking… Tonight, Elija said Isa got some bad news. What if…”
Bree shook her head. “Help us connect the dots, please.”