BRENTON
Riley was finally asleep, Andrew was home and Brenton desperately wanted to just crash. He couldn’t yet, he had to make one call. He walked slowly into his office, Zachary on his heels.
“Are you really going to do this, Brenton?” Zachary growled.
“I had to do it eventually. No better time then now,” Brenton sighed.
He went to the ‘closet’ door in his office and stepped inside. Zachary staying with him every moment. They slipped through a hidden door in the back and they climbed down a flight of stairs. His office was on the first floor, it was once his father’s and so these stairs lead to a basement that technically didn’t exist. There were four entrances around the house to the basement. It was a bunker that no one knew about, his father installed it before Brenton was even born. Geoffrey Kingson was a paranoid son-of-a-bitch.
They stepped into the first room to the right in the basement hallway.
The conference room.
“Using this is going to wake up-” Zachary was growling but Brenton didn’t really want to hear it.
“I know,” he snapped. “Do you have a better idea? Someone sent those guys and this is the fastest way to spreading the word on the fact that Riley is under our protection…”
“Those guys might not have had a pride,” Zachary hissed. “They could have been agents for private interest. This is going to expose Riley to all of this.”
“No, it won’t. She’s never going to meet any of these pricks. There’s no reason for her to. These people would come after her if we told them about her or not if they decided to. This just clarifies our stance how we would feel about it.” Brenton leaned over the desk in the center of the room, his hands flat against the oak surface. “We put off making her an official pride member and look what happened.”
“This is not-”
“This could very well be one of them trying something to do with Isabella. Kidnap her daughter and see if mom really is still alive and would bargain for her life,” Brenton laughed harshly. “Or just torture Riley to see if she knows anything about her mother. Zachary, you and I both know that’s how these pricks work!”
His second nodded uncomfortably. Brenton couldn’t blame him since Brenton was about to wake up every major feline Alpha in the world for an emergency phone call. That’s what this room was for. So his father could stand in a room and feel powerful. All the feline Alphas around the room had a room just like this, so they could all talk. Brenton knew how everything worked but he had never used it personally.
In front of the desk were dozens of flat screens on the wall. That’s all. It looks like a classic office for a billionaire with way too many televisions.
“Let’s do this then,” Zachary snarled. He hit the call button labeled emergency meeting. This would ensure they all woke up and go to their conference rooms. They wouldn’t know who is calling, only that it was urgent.
Brenton wanted to laugh as he sneered at some of the connections coming through. It only took fifteen minutes as he sat on the desk with Zachary behind. Fifteen minutes until every major feline shifter Alpha was on the call.
“What is the meaning of this?” One of them snapped through the open line. Others were chatting to each other, acting like this was just another regular meeting.
“Good morning, evening, night, to you all where ever the fuck you are,” Brenton finally announced, putting on his best bored rich guy arrogance. His father had loved money and when he left it to Brenton, Brenton became the richest feline shifter in the world. He hated it.
The chatting all went silent. He clicked to turn on his video feed, grinning dangerously.
“Better? Now you know who made the call. It’s nearly four in the morning my time, so let’s get this over quickly.” Brenton crossed his arms over his chest and slid off the front of the desk slowly. He ended up just standing, leaning against the front of the desk, ankles crossed. Zachary chuckled and sat on the desk from the back, his back turned to the camera that would be giving the other callers a view of them.
“Brenton Kingson… To what do we owe this… call?” A female voice asked him. She was a European Alpha and they only knew about him by reputation there.
“i wanted to make announcement. For over a decade, my pride had consisted of only me and four members, we got a new one though.” Brenton smiled at all of them. “And since her apartment here in Wild Junction was broken into earlier this evening, I figured I needed to clarify a few things with all of you.”
“You?” Snarled a male tiger from Canada. “You accepted a new pride member?”
“I did, a half-breed” a lot of gasps to that, “ shifter, Riley Stern, is now a member of my pride. Any harm done to her is harm done to my pride. When I find out who sent the two mother fucking feline shifters to completely destroy her home and injury her God damn pet, I’m going to ruin them.” He ended it, snarling through his teeth. His smile became more of a grimace, his lips twisted on his teeth, baring them. A few people sputtered, some paled. Nearly half had reacted to the name.
“Isabella’s daughter is your newest pride member?” The tiger growled.
“No, Lily Stern’s daughter is my newest pride member. And that’s exactly what I wanted to clarify in terms of my new pride member,” Brenton growled back. “She had no idea who or what she was when we met her. She definitely doesn’t know who Isabella Amelia Gordon is and I want you to keep that fucking vendetta against Isabella out of Wild Junction. I’m not fucking playing with any of you right now. Who ever sent those fucking pricks knew better then to come here and cause a scene.”
“Brenton, I can’t believe this,” A male lion snarled at him. It was his fucking uncle on his mother’s side. Her older brother. “That… woman is the reason your mother is dead. We all know it! And you would shelter her brat instead of possibly help us give us this woman justice after so long?”
Zachary snarled at that. Brenton didn’t like that his uncle just called Riley a brat or implicated her mother in the murder of his mother.
“I know that Riley Stern hasn’t heard or seen her mother since she was six years old,” Brenton kept his voice low and nearly winced at the sinister tone it carried. “I know that Lily Stern was declared dead in a car accident and never showed back up. Because of that, yes, I will shelter Riley Stern since she has nothing to do with any of this. You all know that but you’re so fucking high up your own asses that you’re desperate for a way out.”
“Weakling,” his uncle snarled at him. “You could be using her to-”
“No.” Brenton snapped. His uncle went rigid on his screen. “Isabella was my father’s mistake. Isabella was you guys’ mistake. Not mine. Not my pride’s. Not Riley’s. You clean it up and leave Riley out of it. Or I’m going to go down the list and start knocking Alphas off their fucking thrones.”
He could too. He hated how felines did business but he was fucking good at it. He would ruin their business, get them arrested for illegal activities, assassinate their characters. By the time he was done with the first couple, the others would fall in line. And he would run the fucking feline shifter world.
“Is this all you wanted to speak to us about?” Another female, from South America.
“Yes,” Brenton smiled to them again. “So, is everyone here clear on my stance? Or do I need to call my board in and start destroying companies?”
A mumble of all clears came to him. His uncle was furious and raging in his office, live on camera. Brenton knew the rumors that Isabella killed his mother but he didn’t have memories of the time when Isabella and his father were a thing. He was fucking three when the woman disappeared and his mother died.
Once he was certain all of them agreed, he disconnected the entire call without a good bye.
“Fuck, Brenton,” Zachary hissed. “Your uncle is going mad.”
“Yeah, I saw that.”