The Note (Manhattan Nights #5) - Natalie Wrye Page 0,23
Saturday morning.”
Was it Saturday morning already?
I almost forgot.
I hadn’t been to my New York apartment in months. Long enough to forget that my weekly cleaning was today.
Maria, true to form, was there every Saturday morning, usually to pick up after whatever cum-covered fiasco Lachlan had thrown the previous night. Only this time?
It was my mess Maria had to clean up, the mess being the probably still-drunken vixen under my sheets.
I curse to myself, stepping even farther away from Jase to talk, a knot solidifying under my Adam’s apple. I take a huge gulp of air.
“Shit, Maria. I’m sorry. I didn’t tell you that there would be a guest there. If you could do me a favor? Just leave the bedroom alone.” I hesitate. “I’ll take care of that little room myself when I get back.”
But Maria doesn’t listen. She’s too busy, silently crying to understand a word I’m saying. She sniffs heavily again, her soft sobs confusing me as she speaks. I can barely hear her.
“I just want you to know, Mr. Quinn, that I would never steal from you. Ever.”
“I know that, Maria.” Confusion tugs inside my gut. “I know that… Now, why are you telling me this? Is something missing?”
“I think so, Mr. Quinn. The box was empty when I arrived. You have to know that. And the note was on already there on the floor.”
“What box? And what the fuck… What note?”
But the chill in my blood is already ice-cold the second I ask the question, my veins already Arctic. Instinctively, I almost know which one she’s talking about, and with those few words, my memory jogs almost instantly.
My bedroom. A box.
The only item in it of any value to me…
It can’t be. It just can’t be. She wouldn’t.
Or would she?
“The box in the nightstand, Mr. Quinn.” Maria blubbers, her quiet hysteria bubbling over. “The one stashed behind it. When I arrived here, the back of the nightstand was broken. And the box was empty. And the sheets were a mess.”
Another unlikely scenario.
No matter what party Lachlan had thrown the night before, my bedroom was off-limits. Not sometimes.
Always.
I knew that. Maria knew it.
All of Times Square probably knew it, too.
Off-limits.
Except for last night.
Last night was the first time I’d let someone who wasn’t me inside of it. Last night was the first time I’d left someone alone in it.
I was a man who enjoyed his privacy. A man who made his bed every morning.
And a man who’d just left a stranger in it.
I clutch the phone hard enough to crush it, anger making my fingers tingle. I ask the one question I already know the answer to, and suddenly seeking out new options to save my company with Jase’s help is the last thought on my mind.
Because I just screwed up option numero uno.
My Little Bear had opened the secret compartment in my nightstand. My Little Bear had seen what was inside.
My Little Bear has found the place I’d forgotten had existed in the damned contraption and had taken out its contents.
Its very valuable, indispensable, irreplaceable contents.
A watch. My watch.
The only object in the world connecting me to my father. To the fortune he’d leave to me, once I proved that I was his oldest son.
The fortune that could save my company was now in the thieving bear’s hands. Except this was no fairytale.
In the fictional stories, the Big Bag Wolf was supposed to be just that: Big and Bad. But right now, there isn’t a “big” or “bad” bone in my body as I stand there—seething, the only lifeline to revive Quinn Real Estate Group, sitting squarely in someone else’s hands.
My voice is a hiss. No, more like a growl when I respond to Maria, my rage barely on a leash.
Here he was again. The beast inside me I was putting in cage.
And the beast, in the span of a second, was suddenly determined to find the woman who dared to violate his lair. At all costs.
Gravel grinds into each word as I bow my head inside Duffy’s tuxedo shop, my heart thrumming, each syllable from lips sharp enough to kill as I talk to my trusted maid. I grit my teeth, grating out the sounds.
“Maria, excuse my language, but… Read. Me. That damned note.” I rasp. “And then tell me: Where is she?” I ask my trusted cleaning lady. “Tell me: Where’s the woman I left in my bedroom right now?”
Chapter 7
SOPHIA
Monday afternoon
I don’t know where I am, but my feet won’t stop tapping on