What Fire Dragons Treasure - Cristina Rayne Page 0,58
a mutually assured destruction scenario what you want? Only, all the Draknos kingdoms will be completely safe behind their energy shields that even our bunker busters couldn’t scratch while our own cities will be completely susceptible to all the dragon fire being rained down on them from the sky. You do realize that before all that happens, the dragons will definitely come for you and your father first?”
Garrett stared at Amber for a long, tense moment, his nostrils flaring like an enraged bull’s. “You’re bluffing.”
Amber stared at him in utter incredulity. After having such a plausible nightmare scenario thrown in his face, he was still refusing to even consider it.
She would have to play her ace now. It was the only way.
“I have proof, Garrett,” Amber said evenly, catching and holding his gaze.
“Proof?” he echoed suspiciously.
“I have an audio recording of the night you beat both me and Matty. Remember that night, Garrett? It was the night you hit your three-year-old son so hard in the face that his mouth was streaming blood. You can very clearly be heard forbidding me from taking him to the ER. I never thought I would need it because you were egomaniacal and stupid enough to trigger a war with a peaceful people just because you decided to throw a temper tantrum. But it exists, and I will release it if you let your father release his video of lies.”
Before Amber could blink, Garrett lunged at her and grabbed her around the throat with both hands. “Not if you’re dead!” He hissed, squeezing her neck cruelly. The expression on his face was practically demonic.
“Then you’ll…never…find Matty!” Amber gasped out as she frantically pulled at his hands, trying not to freak out completely. Ms. Madden hadn’t made a peep so far, so Amber doubted she could expect any help at all from the lawyer.
Garrett paused, and the vice around her neck eased just enough for her to breathe again. “I know where the brat is,” he scoffed.
“For the last…time…he’s not with…the damned dragons!” Amber wheezed. “Even I don’t know…exactly where he is…right now.”
Garrett’s eyes narrowed, and he abruptly tightened his hands around her neck again. Amber let out an awful, strangled sound and scrabbled desperately at his hands with her nails. Garrett howled, and suddenly, that terrible, crushing pressure disappeared. Amber gasped after a breath like a drowning woman breaking the water’s surface at the last possible second and then promptly lost it again when the back of the bastard’s hand struck her hard across a cheek.
Only sheer will kept her on her feet.
Amber instinctually blocked his next blow with a forearm and then shoved him back against Madden’s desk with all her strength.
“If you kill me now, not only will you…never find Matty, that audio…file of you assaulting us will be…released online,” Amber threatened roughly. “I’ve left instructions for it…to be released if I don’t contact…the people who have it…once a day.”
She fell into a coughing and wheezing fit as she slowly backed behind Madden’s desk where the woman in question sat frozen with a pinched look on her face.
For one horribly eternal moment, Amber thought Garrett was about to leap over the desk after her, but then he just cursed loudly and growled, “Six o’clock. Emma Long Metropolitan Park. Think you have enough brains to remember that, you dumb bitch?”
When Amber just stared back at him without a word, he muttered one final “bitch” and then turned on his heel to stomp out like a toddler throwing a tantrum.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
“How could you sell me out?” Amber rasped angrily into the heavy silence following Garrett’s departure. She rubbed at her neck, cringing to think of the bruises that were probably darkening with every painful breath she took. “I guess attorney/client privilege means nothing to you. Neither does people committing attempted murder in your office. You’re just another in a long string of lawyers bought by the Johnsons.”
“He showed me the video with the dragon,” Ms. Madden said tightly.
Amber drew in a sharp breath that nearly set off another coughing fit.
“Even if what you told your husband is one hundred percent true, it won’t matter,” she said. “The Johnson family is powerful enough to make their version of events the truth. It will look as though I helped my ‘obviously brainwashed client’ steal a child away from his ‘loving’ father. Never mind my career, I would be arrested for treason on the spot, for conspiring with the Draknos. By the time Henry Johnson finished with