Morgan stood in the rain watching Honey’s car drive away. Rain soaked his clothes. He didn’t particularly care.

“Well, that sucked,” he said out loud. At least he hadn’t insulted her parents or kicked her dog. Hopefully, Honey would be willing to try him again, but next time he would actually have a plan and not attempt to wing it. Dinner reservations, maybe tickets to a show. He heard that Monterey had a little melodrama theater. Those were supposed to be good fun. Next date would be quality. He decided he would contact Jinx to have some clothes sent down so he didn’t dress like he was still on the job.

His phone rang. He checked caller ID. What did his sister Julia want?

“Palatine.”

“I don’t care what you have going on, Morgan. You need to get your butt up to San Francisco tomorrow. We have a meeting with Roman Aventine first thing in the morning.” Julia’s voice sounded demanding as always

Morgan groaned. “I’m not cutting my hair again, Julia.” His hair was still growing out from the time she insisted he have a power cut for the alliance meetings with the Aventine family.

Roman Aventine was Morgan’s business rival and despite their alliance, Morgan wasn’t certain Aventine wasn’t after his territory. Aventine had recently positioned himself to take over a healthy market share of the construction industry Morgan’s Seven Hills company successfully held. Based on Julia’s tone and insistence, this upcoming meeting had nothing to do with a little friendly market competition and nothing to do with the alliance they recently formed.

“You had better shave. I know how you get out on the job. You go all wild-man native-hairy.”

“Fine, I’ll shave.”

“Do you trust Remi to pick something suitable to wear from your closet?”

He chuckled. “Jinx or Remi can pick something suitable. Now can you tell me what this is about?”

“Nope, it’s Roman Aventine’s baby. Besides I don’t have all the details. He does. I agreed to the meeting and to make sure you were there. My gut tells me it’s big, Morgan. Important.”

No, Morgan thought, Honey is important, and he needed to make sure she knew that despite his piss-poor behavior tonight. Anything with Aventine could wait.

“Fine. Fine. What time do I need to be there?” Morgan asked, exasperated.

“Nine in the morning, Roman said prepare for it to be a long day.”

“No kidding. I guess I’ll head up tonight. That way I can spend my time more wisely in the morning. I’ve got a long drive ahead of me. Could you please make sure I have a room waiting for me at the Fairmont?”

“I’m not your secretary, Morgan.”

Morgan’s voice was grim, annoyance clearly evident in his tone. “No, you’re not. You’re the one giving me less than twelve hours’ notice for a meeting I don’t have clothes for and am over two hours away from. It’s raining and I’m on a bike. I’m walking into this blind on your recommendation, Julia. You can arrange for me to have a bed tonight. You have a secretary. Call her.”

“I’ll text you your confirmation. I’ll meet you at the hotel with your clothes at eight tomorrow. See you in the morning.” She huffed then rang off the line.

Morgan blew air out his nose. He didn’t want to spend the day in meetings at Aventine Industries. He enjoyed his break from office politics, working directly on the site of the new hotel. This meeting meant he wouldn’t be back until late tomorrow. He wouldn’t get to stop by and see Honey’s lovely smile while he got a coffee. He wouldn’t get a chance to ask her out again. She would think he didn’t like her if he didn’t follow up tomorrow after tonight’s fiasco. He didn’t want her to think that at all.

He dialed her number. Of course she let it ring. He wouldn’t pick up after tonight either. “I want to apologize for the poor quality of tonight’s date. If you would let me make it up to you I would like to take you out to a restaurant of your choosing. I’m headed to San Francisco tomorrow, so I can’t ask you this in person. And I sound like a dork,” he huffed in frustration. “I really botched tonight, and I’m botching this apology. I would really like to take you out again if you’ll let me.” Morgan ended the call and stared at his phone. Hopefully she would listen to his voicemail, and not send it straight to the trash.

* * *

A sharp knock rapped on the door. Morgan stepped out of the bath room, shaving cream slathered over half of his face, and a thick fluffy white towel wrapped low around his hips. His visitor had to be his sister since his morning meal service tray sat on the table.

“Good morning, Morgan,” Julia said sharply as she brushed past him into the room. A suit bag hung from one finger and a pair of shoes dangled in the other hand. She wore a black pant suit and had swept back her dark brown hair into a low ponytail. Several thick gold chains draped around her neck and hung in front below the pointed collar of her red blouse.

He closed the door behind her. “You know you could have had a valet bring those up.”

“Nice to see you too, brother.” She laid the suit bag across the bottom of his rumpled bed. Morgan returned to the bathroom. “I see your hair is growing back. Please tell me you are shaving that mange off your face.” she said with an I-told-you-so tone to her voice.

Morgan growled a low rumble of disagreement in his chest. “It’s too early for you to be this bossy, Julia.” He leaned out from the bathroom to glare at her, “You still going to make me wait until we are in Aventine’s office to tell me what this is about?”

“Hmm-mmm. And I’m not bossy. It’s called leadership skills and effective decision making. You don’t want to appear all scruffy when you meet Aventine since he will be wearing some custom tailored suit and not that off the rack special.” Julia picked up a piece of untouched toast and slathered jam across the top. “Honestly, Roman didn’t tell me much. Only that this is mutually beneficial and historically important.”

“Roman? You’re on first name basis now?” He picked up the suit bag, removed slacks and a shirt and returned to the bathroom.

“Shut up, Morgan. You’re in a foul mood.”

Morgan emerged from the bathroom in dress slacks and a crisp, pale blue shirt. He reached back into the suit bag to retrieve a pair of socks and a red tie. He sat, put the socks and shoes on, then began knotting the tie. “Yes, I am. I had to ride up here late, in the rain, on my Harley, and I still don’t know why. You’re telling me what to do. I’m pretty sure I recently met the mother of my children, and I’m fairly certain I completely blew it like some thirteen-year-old dweeb who doesn’t know how to talk to girls.” He shrugged into the suit jacket. “Are you done eating my breakfast?”

“It was only the toast. You never eat your toast, Morgan. Did you just call yourself a dweeb?”

“A thirteen-year-old dweeb. There is a difference. This had better be worth my time. I really should be in Monterey trying to figure out how to make it up to Honey.”

Morgan followed Julia out of his room and down to the lobby.

“Her name is Honey?” Julia paused. “You’re serious? Mother of your children? The whole mate thing?”

They were met by Julia’s driver outside the door.

“Yes,” Morgan grumbled getting into the car. “The whole mate thing. You think you’re merely flirting, then BAM, you realize this is the one. Felt like a frying pan to the back of the skull. It really threw me off last night. I was less than impressive.”

“I don’t want to hear about your sex life, brother.”

“You’re not, and there isn’t going to be one if I blow this.” Morgan watched the city slide by through the car window.

“Your mate? I always thought that was a bunch of hokum our parents fed us. You know, wait for your true love. You don’t need to date around, you’ll know, you’ll profoundly know.”

“Julia, they were so right. I wish I could tell Mom how right she was. She’d really like Honey. You and Caro will. JoJo will adore her.” He was sure his sisters would be as impressed with Honey as he was.

“Well, you can make things up with her after the meeting then bring her up for JoJo’s wedding.”

Morgan shook his head, recalling the evening before. “If she’s still speaking to me.”

“That bad?” Julia tilted her head to the side.

“Worse.”

* * *

Roman Aventine stood behind his desk when Morgan and Julia entered his office He wore a gray pin-striped suit that skimmed his slender frame. As tall as Morgan, Aventine was of a much thinner build so he appeared to not be as large. He wore his pale blond hair short, clipped close on the sides. His blue eyes were enhanced by the royal blue tie he wore.

He stepped out and offered Morgan his large hand. “Palatine.” Morgan shook it. Roman nodded to Julia “Julia.” Roman’s gaze noticeably lingered on her face, and his tongue lingered on her name.

“That’s Ms. Palatine, Mr. Aventine,” she smirked as he took her hand and stepped in a little closer than professionally necessary.

“Roman, please,” he corrected her.

“Look at this,” Roman slid a stack of papers across his desk to Morgan.

Morgan flipped through the stack, shaking his head. “I’m looking at what? This looks like genetic code. G-A, C-A, T-A.”

“Exactly. It’s a DNA report from a genealogy lab.”

“So?”

“On the second page, the fifth group of gene data.” Roman picked up a second set of test papers, flipping to the area of data indicated. “See here.” He pointed between the two groups. “The report you hold belongs to one of my cousins. This report—” he tapped the second document, “—was included at random to be a control, basically. Do you see here? This gene pair on my cousin’s report isn’t recorded on the control report.”

Roman walked across his office to close the door. He returned to his desk and tapped out commands on a keypad. A soft swishing sound could be heard as sound proofing baffles slid into place, the windows dimmed. “My cousin is full wolf. The control is full human. When this was first brought to my attention, she had already run tests on random family members, those who turn and those who don’t.”

Roman added more reports to the pile on his desk and pointed to different pages.

“Look, I don’t have all the scientific terms, but this is how it was explained to me.” He tapped a specific sequence. “This is a full genetic marker, indicating whether the subject is one of us—wolf. When a person has a full gene set, the person turns. When a person doesn’t have a full marker, they don’t turn. Now this one is interesting,” he opened another report and indicated the area where the gene showed on previous reports. There was no mutant gene pair present. “This is my second cousin or something. Neither of his parents was capable of turning. He can’t either. I’m betting that none of his children will have the gene since he doesn’t. We’re still waiting on their results. But get this, his brother has the gene, but the indicator is only for one of them, not for a full pair. He can’t turn but will be able to pass the gene along to his offspring who might be able to if they inherit a full pair.”

“Do you know what this means?” Julia asked breathlessly.

“We can be traced.” Morgan’s voice was calm.

“It means we need to start buying into genetics labs and getting people into position in them. How did you come by this, Roman?”

“One of the family works for a lab, ran her own DNA test. Came to me as soon as she figured out what was going on. Right now we are in a position to leverage this to our advantage. Our gene signature is going to start showing up as an anomaly as more and more people start using DNA for their genealogy hunts.”

“We need to be part of the lab that all anomalies are sent to. How do we do that?” Morgan said.

“Leave that up to me,” Julia jumped in. “We need to buy out a genetics company, become someone who is already leading in this area.” She bit her lip calculating. “Aventine, I know you aren’t in a position to take on something like that on your own.”

Roman raised his eyebrows at her. Julia was on top of business knowledge for her company and her competition.

“I’m going to confess neither are we,” she said. “Guys, you’re both going to have to agree to a joint venture or it’s not going to happen. I doubt we will be able to do this amicably, so we have to provide a united front and stage a hostile takeover of a genetics company.” She began typing frantically on her tablet, her fingers flying to keep up with her brain. “Need to either stage a coup with the board of directors and supersede them or get them on board fast. Roman, your people are going to need to get moving on this as well if they already haven’t started.”

“We’ve started. Aventine Industries is in process of buying out the lab facility in Emeryville where our scientist is. I actually want to head over there this morning, and she can explain the situation better and maybe show us how we can tap into their network of other labs. We already have the one geneticist in our ranks. What both families need to do is find out who else is a geneticist and get them into some of these jobs ASAP. And we need to start making sure all data showing anomalies with that gene signature comes to us.”

“My understanding is with the simple genealogy tests, they don’t have enough information to find out what this mutation does. We are currently ahead of the game in that we have identified it as ours. As long as we trace that gene, and every instance of it that comes through, we can still control the knowledge about our kind.”

Morgan glanced up from the report he stared at, “We no longer need to go on hearsay regarding other families. As long as people are voluntarily sending in for these tests, we can find who we have lost track of.”

“Great. You two go visit that lab and start strategizing on how we become a clearinghouse for that piece of information. I have to go back to my office and get started on whats needed. I have to do some research, find who we can partner with, buyout or take over. Roman, who in your camp is going to be my contact regarding this venture?”

Roman smirked. “Sorry, Julia looks like you are going to be stuck with me since I’m the one who takes care of mergers and acquisitions. We’re going to be spending a lot of time together.”

Julia rolled her eyes. “Fine, I’m scheduling us for something early next week. I’ll see you two later.” She picked up her purse and headed out the door.

Roman paused admiring the view as she left. He pressed a button on his desk phone. “Have the car pulled around. Let Jeeves know we are headed to SeaQuence Labs.”

“Your driver’s name is Jeeves?”

“Hell, I don’t know their names. I call them all Jeeves.” Roman collected the reports from his desk and stuffed them back into a folder.