Chapter One – Arabella
It would be easier just to kill him.
Arabella smoothed the front of her t-shirt as she stepped out of the elevator on her way to see Grayson Alexander. She forced a smile though a well of frustration was rising inside of her. To be so close to the mark but unable to do anything about it rankled her. Normally, she didn't take on these sorts of missions, but the payout was too tempting.
Grayson was causing trouble for a lot of rich mining companies. Arabella didn't know which one hired her organization, but here she was. Everybody knew that the billionaire Dragon Shifter was completely devoted to his twin children and the best way to stop his lobbying and lawsuits was to target them. Getting close enough to kidnap them and force Grayson to do as they wanted was another question.
And so, Arabella, who had been trained to be a spy and assassin since she was sixteen years old, was going to be a glorified babysitter. Not her most dignified work, but it still would take cunning and some good acting skills.
Grayson greeted her warmly with a firm handshake. "Ms. Grant. It's good to see you again."
Arabella had made up the last name. It changed with every mission. As far as she was concerned, she had no family to give her a last name. "Mr. Alexander. It's good to see you again. I'm grateful for this opportunity. And it's Arabella."
She was close enough that she could inject him with an untraceable poison. She'd had meetings where she was alone with him for hours. Killing him would be easy. But that wasn't the plan. Kidnapping the kids and forcing him to back off from his political pressures was what she had been told to do. She always followed orders. Deviating meant her pay would be cut, and she couldn’t afford that.
The Dragon who stood before her was tall and muscular, even more so than the average Shifter. Dragons, in general, were larger than, say, a Wolf, but they were even more reclusive than their Shifter cousins. They mostly lived in old-growth forests here and on every continent other than Antarctica. They were venerated in most societies.
Grayson was probably one of the most handsome marks she had ever had. Black hair, sun-kissed skin, steady eyes, and a sharp jawline and cheekbone combo that made every magazine he was featured on fly off the shelves like they were jet planes. In his black suit, he looked like a movie star on the red carpet.
"Has Henry given you a tour of the place?" he glanced at the Dragon that had brought her up.
Henry Landon, Grayson's best friend. Not a serious threat to the mission. He stood just behind Arabella, too close for her liking, and shrugged. "No, not yet. I just got her up here."
Arabella smiled tightly. If she stuck with the plan, this would be her last mission. The organization would give her a tidy sum that she could live a normal life off of. It was everything she wanted: to be free of the chains that bound her to this existence of lies and murder.
"I'll give you the grand tour, then." Grayson gestured for her to follow, which she did, Henry taking up the rear.
The house wasn't big, considering what Arabella's experience with billionaires had been. It consisted of a den, three small bedrooms (one of which was hers now), one bathroom for everybody to share, a kitchen, a playroom, and a closed-in porch that wrapped all around the house. Cute and comfortable. The fact that it was built into the trees might have something to do with its size. The only way to reach the house was to either fly in or take an elevator up the equivalent of four floors.
The twins, Olivia and Hudson, were just waking up from their naps when Grayson showed Arabella into their bedroom. The toddler-sized beds were pressed against each other, though Olivia's featured Tinkerbell and Hudson's Lightning McQueen. The two kids looked exactly like their father with their black hair, black eyes, and natural sun-kissed glow. Their father's angular jaw and sharp cheekbones were softened in them, though, with their rolls of baby fat still clinging to them.
Getting information on them was harder than the rest of the players. They were two years old, and that was basically all she knew.
"Look at that," Grayson said, smiling as the twins cried out in happiness and bounced from their beds. "Just in time. Livvy, Hud, this is Arabella, your new governess."
Governess? Arabella's brows rose. She thought she was a live-in nanny. Governess sounded so old-fashioned. Grayson caught her look and shrugged as he picked his twins up.
"They're really into The Sound of Music right now," he explained. "Can you two say hi?"
"Hello!" Olivia said, kicking her feet. "You gonna play wit me?"
Hudson buried his face in his father's shoulder.
Arabella smiled at the two of them. She had been chosen for this assignment for a few reasons, the first being her 'compassionate' attitude. In the organization, compassion meant weakness and she had been reprimanded more than once for it – just because she thought that killing people outright was better than making them suffer. It didn't matter how many times she said it was merely more efficient. She gained the reputation of being soft, and now she had to work with kids.
She had no practical experience with children. They were so small and soft. The organization had given her training for the mission, but practical experience was far different than reading What to Expect When You're Expecting.
"Let's go to the playroom," Grayson said.
"Carry me!" Olivia leaned toward Arabella. She kicked Grayson in the stomach and Arabella was just able to catch the little girl as she slipped from his grasp.
"Friendly, aren't you?" the assassin noted dryly.
They headed for the playroom. Henry followed after them. Arabella quickly reminded herself who he was. Best friend to Grayson. They had grown up together. Henry had been Grayson's best man at his wedding and was currently suffering from the poisoning that had caused half of the Dragon Shifter clan to fall ill before Grayson moved them here.
She eyed him. His skin had undertones that indicated he was naturally as dark as Grayson, but sickness had stolen the color from his cheeks, leaving him looking ashen. There was a faint yellowish tinge to his skin that indicated kidney failure. For a Shifter to be so heavily affected by this, he must have had massive doses of the toxins over a long period of time.
Which, come to think of it, meant that no poison would be effective against Grayson. Another reason to stick to the plan.
In the playroom, Olivia got to playing at once with Henry, while Hudson still clung to his father. Grayson rubbed his back soothingly as he explained the twins' schedule and all of the information she hadn't been able to find out. They were starting to breathe smoke, but no fire and no Shifting yet. Olivia was outgoing and demanding and Hudson preferred his alone time. He liked to color and draw while Olivia had a penchant for building things.
"And you're lobbying to make mining companies adopt safer practices and the consent of local populations before they start building, right?" she asked.
"Yes. Ever since my wife died from lead poisoning . . . " A hard look flashed over Grayson's face. "Our lives are meaningless to them. The only thing they understand is profit margins."
Arabella tugged her long sleeves over her hands. "I think what you are doing is very admirable," she admitted truthfully. "I know what it's like . . . not to be seen as human."
Not that she was going to let her feelings get in the way of the mission.
Grayson smiled at her, then gently moved Hudson. "Daddy's got to go to the hospital with Uncle Henry, bud. Arabella is going to be watching you, okay?"
Arabella felt the first clump of nerves flutter in her stomach. She had been placed with children once before. It had made her feel things that were dangerous in her line of work: real compassion and a mothering instinct that she tried very hard to deny. And those children weren't even as young as these ones.
Thankfully, Hudson didn't cry when he was transferred to Arabella. Grayson and Henry left shortly afterward. While Olivia was still engaged in her toys, Arabella got Hudson some crayons and paper and sat between the twins, listening to Olivia chatter away while she built things with her Duplo blocks. It wasn't long after she was left alone with the children when her cell phone buzzed.
"Hello?"
"Hey, sis," said a familiar, overly happy voice.
Arabella repressed the urge to roll her eyes. "Kennedy. I said I was going to call you, remember?"
Kennedy was one of the other women who worked for the organization. In this case, she was Arabella's partner. They worked well together, or so they had been told. Arabella couldn't stand Kennedy. The other woman's impatience drove her crazy. She was always pushing Arabella's timetables to make her move faster. Kennedy had botched a job more than once. But a case like this took extreme patience.
"Oh, are you at your new job?"
"Yes. And I don't have time to talk right now."
Contacting her on the phone she was using for work was dangerous enough. Arabella didn't think Kennedy was ever going to complete enough successful missions to ever be free from the organization. She wasn't going to take Arabella down with her, though.
"So, what time do you think we can meet up?" Kennedy asked, her voice syrupy sweet. "You know, with the kids."
"A month," Arabella said shortly. "We can talk more about it later."
She hung up, grinding her teeth in annoyance. Why would they trust such an important mission to somebody who never even waited for her coffee to cool down before drinking it?
Olivia eyed her with interest and plopped down in her lap, leaning her small head against Arabella's shoulder. "Who's that?"
"It was my sister." Arabella sighed.
It was sort of true, after all. The organization liked to make the 'recruits' call each other brother and sister like some sick cult. Which, in a way, it was. Many of those who actually did win their freedom (since their training, housing, food, and basically everything necessary for daily life was taken as a 'debt' that needed to be repaid) stayed on after they were free.
But that wasn't what Arabella was going to do. She was going to take her money and retire somewhere in the Caribbean where she could write self-published erotica for kicks and spend her day sipping Margaritas and listening to music too loud. And, best yet, she would be able to meet a guy she wasn't trying to get information from. She could have some semblance of a normal life.
"Hud my brudder, I his sissy," Olivia said. "Who's your sissy?"
"Her name is Kennedy."
Olivia laughed. "Funny name. Why's she call you?"
"She's getting married," Arabella answered, the lie rolling smoothly off her tongue. She had learned long ago that she had to stay consistent in front of children as much as adults. They were much cleverer than people assumed. "The wedding is in a month."
Olivia nodded. "I come too."
Arabella fluffed the little girl's hair and ignored the cramp in her stomach. A wedding would be the perfect excuse to take the children away from their father so that they could be ransomed back to him. The trust in the toddler's eyes hurt to look at, though.
"Maybe," Arabella murmured. "Now who wants a snack?"