“Chestnut Holdings LLP. How may I direct your call?”

Raoulf had been trying to reach Mr. Chestnut for the past couple of hours. The man had resorted to not answering his call which could only mean one of a few things: he was tired of being reassured of imminent case completion with no proof in sight or he was just that damn busy.

“Warren Chestnut, please.”

“Mr. Chestnut is busy, sir. Can I—”

“I don’t care if he’s busy. This is urgent. I need him on the phone…stat!”

“Certainly, sir. Hold the line.”

Classical music flowed through the earpiece, but it did nothing to soothe Raoulf’s rising temper. He paced the small motel room like an aggravated mountain lion ready to spring from his cage.

“This is Warren.”

“It’s Raoulf. I need answers,” he stated bluntly.

“Well, well, well…I thought surely you’d run off with my money. Why does it feel like you’re beating around the bush on what you promised to deliver?”

“I have questions that require answers,” Raoulf stated firmly. He plopped down on the couch, hoping that it would aid him in calming his wolf. “First one: What exactly do you want from Nina Moore?”

“I told you. It’s complicated.”

“Complicated? Right. Everything’s complicated when you can’t answer the question,” Raoulf replied, making no attempts to hide his snide, sarcastic tone.

“I told you about my agreement with her already, Raoulf Justice. You of all people should know that we enter agreements like this to retain what we should be entitled to in the first place. Unlike you and your family, my true nature is still secret. I’m not out as a shifter. None of my immediate family members are. I can’t risk my businesses, my money, my livelihood if, one day, that no longer is the case. Every day I proceed in business as if any and all of this can be stripped away from me at any time. I have humans in place that I trust should this transpire. I trusted Nina to do what I asked,” Mr. Chestnut replied. “When she signed the agreement obligating herself to marry me, I began the process of transferring a very important asset into her name. I was given one month, so against my better judgment, I decided to get things rolling early. I made the call to conduct the transfer before we were legally married. And then she reneged. Our—my asset and my money are in limbo because of her. She needs to fulfill her end of the bargain so that we may proceed as planned.”

“We? Is someone else involved?”

“What does it matter? It’s a family asset. I was just responsible for keeping it in the family.”

“Is there any reason why you can’t just reverse what you’ve done without her?”

“I cannot. Nothing can be reversed without me dragging her back into this again.” Mr. Chestnut sighed. “She needs to marry me or make arrangements to get her ass down here so I can try to reverse what I’ve done.”

“That’s harsh. You shouldn’t be dragging anyone back anywhere against their will,” Raoulf stated.

“You’re right. I won’t. That’s what I hired you to do.”

“We all know that ain’t happening’.”

Raoulf didn’t trust Chestnut. Even if he gave away Nina’s location, how could Raoulf be certain that Chestnut wouldn’t hound her for life while holding a nasty grudge against her? She had been hiding from him for her peace mind. He doubted she’d been trying to keep an asset that wasn’t hers.

“I figured this much,” Mr. Chestnut said. “Of course, there are others in your line of work who’ll do the job without asking any questions.”

“While you keep your hands clean, right?” Raoulf scoffed.

Mr. Chestnut chuckled. “I’m a sanitary person, and I like keeping cleaning.”

Raoulf rolled his eyes. “So what you’re saying is that you want Nina present to reverse your agreement?”

“That is somewhat correct.”

“This isn’t as complicated as you present it to be,” Raoulf noted. “It doesn’t sound like she wants your asset at all. Maybe she just wanted to help you out of the goodness of her heart. I don’t know what transpired between you that caused her to break everything off but your harassment is unwarranted.”

“That too is a complication I don’t have time to get into,” Mr. Chestnut said. “She was my friend. We dated while she worked from my home. She was a woman, I was a man. We had needs. We satisfied those needs. And like I said, I trusted her.”

Something akin to jealousy mixed with rage consumed Raoulf at the thought of Chestnut touching her.

“Well, you should have trusted her enough to ask her like normal people do to reverse your premature transaction.”

“I would have if she stops running from me. She’s afraid.”

“Of course she’d be afraid if you’re hunting her down like a dog.”

Mr. Chestnut chuckled dryly. “You don’t even know the half of it.”

“There’s more?”

There was a brief pause on the line. “She knows what I am.”

Raoulf shook his head and scoffed. “So?”

“Have you not been listening? I’m a Chestnut! We’ve kept our shifter gene a secret. We conduct business as the humans do. We’ve done this for hundreds of years. We cannot risk this now.”

“I doubt she’s going to stand up in front of your business holding up picket signs outing you. She’s not that kind of woman.”

“How do you know? In either case, she knows about me. She wasn’t supposed to find out the way she did.”

“That’s what happens when you plan a marriage with a human.”

“Not necessarily. We’ve been marrying humans for business reasons for decades now. We’ve never had a problem. The divorce rate is high, of course, but these women never leave the marriage wanting for anything else. They sign pre-nuptials and non-disclosure agreements, yet most of them are set for life anyway—even if the marriage only exists for weeks. I promised this lifestyle to Nina. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

Raoulf rose from his chair and then bent down to retrieve a beer from the mini fridge. The woman he’d become so infatuated with had almost married this nutcase.

“I don’t understand why you need to press this. If she hasn’t exposed you already…”

“This isn’t just about me, Raoulf. She saw my brother and I shift. I promised Ronald I’d have everything taken care of and that I’d get his asset back and correct this mess. Here I am today with his asset still in limbo and Nina is still missing without a trace. God knows what she’s doing. She could be transpiring against us this very moment.”

Raoulf had paused mid-sip, but suddenly he didn’t care for a drink anymore. “So all of this is about your brother?”

“Yes, it is. This deal was done so that we could liquidate the asset I was holding for him. He didn’t want to marry a human, so I agreed to do it. I already had the perfect human. My own personal chef. It would have been convenient. After she overheard a conversation that I had with him one day about our planned marriage of convenience, she said she felt betrayed, unsafe. On an evening when I thought she would be out of town, she entered my home early and witnessed me and my brother shifting after returning from a run.”

“You should have explained things to her…” Raoulf dropped his head in his palm.

“I did. She was more upset by me calling her a tool than she was about learning that she’d been fucking a shifter.”

“Careful,” Raoulf growled. “Did you explain that to your brother?”

“I tried. It was too late. Ronald lives by the old code. He wanted her silenced. In the days afterward, while we were arguing about what we should and shouldn’t do, she had already managed to redirect the funds that I had fronted her back to my bank account and skipped town. She just disappeared. Ronald said she was transpiring against us. I said she was just scared. I convinced Ronald to let it go for a while. But Ronald…being the man he is…won’t let it rest. He’s warned me to fix this before he does. I agree…somewhat. If the wrong people have access to the right information, our whole cover is blown. Nina needs to understand that. And I don’t know about you, but I like making easy money.”

“Don’t we all, but something tells me that your brother is a pain in the ass.”

“You’re right. He’s not like me. He still finds issue with the fact that my father cut him out of the will leaving our company and all of its holdings to me. The fact is, if it weren’t for me, Ronald Chestnut would be as broke as the Ten Commandments. It’s because of me that he continues to have any money in his bank account at all.”

Raoulf frowned. “Does he not work or have a trade?”

“Our family trade includes riding the stock market, Raoulf Justice. We’ve been riding it for decades.”

“But you’re the one doing all of the work to keep the family afloat.”

“I’ve been telling them this for years,” Mr. Chestnut said. “They seem to think I go to the beach and play in the sand all day. Nonetheless, and contrary to popular belief, I’m not the bad guy here. I’m just a businessman. My brother is who you need to worry about.”

“Why should I worry about him?”

“I tried doing it the legal way, but I presume that since you’ve been stalling all this time that you don’t plan to deliver on the terms we agreed on. I told you that time was of essence and now my brother is involved. If he finds Nina Moore, there’s no telling what he will do.”

Raoulf slammed his fist into the table. “You can’t control your own goddamned brother?”

“Like I said, I’m not like my brother. Ronald thinks that he’s above the law, and that includes Pack law. In fact, he is without a Pack. He’s been running around with a group of outlawed shifters ever since Father died. You should know how ruthless those gangs are. I understand that you were outlawed and that you rebelled for and against some Pack regulations for quite some time before going back to Aspen Valley.”

The man knew too much about him for his tastes.

“Consider me off this case,” Raoulf stated.

“I considered it the moment you made excuses for not revealing Nina’s location.”

Raoulf grabbed his jacket and keys from the bed. “I’ll have my accountant wire you a refund plus interest by tomorrow morning.”

“Oh, of course you will. But at this point, a refund won’t solve a thing. I’m tired of running after Nina. Maybe my brother will have better luck. You may consider that a warning.”

“Here’s a counter warning for you. If your brother does anything to harm Nina or even attempts to lay a hand on her, he’ll be more than without a Pack. He’ll be without his life.”

Before Mr. Chestnut could utter another word, Raoulf disconnected the call and tugged on his jacket. In less than five minutes, he was on the road headed to his destination. Nina’s home.