He pulled his phone from his back pocket and dialed the number he was looking for. It only took a few moments to set up his apology, but he smiled to himself.
It would work.
Soon, Bethany Russo would be calling him, and then they could start on her ridiculous plan to save his career and image.
Not that he genuinely believed that his life was in danger of crumbling. This plan smelled of his mother’s overprotective streak. The truth of it was that London could fuck up all he wanted. In a few years, he would be able to reset his life, and his mistakes wouldn’t matter anymore.
He had lived too long to feel like his actions had any real consequences. What he couldn’t deal with or fix? He just threw money at it.
Chapter Six
London
London had already showered twice and worked out once, so either of those activities was off the table. But he knew he had to do something. He had to move or keep his mind busy.
Every passing second was too quiet and replayed his disrespectful exchange with the lovely Bethany Russo.
He had sincerely hoped that sending her the new and improved business cards would assuage some of the guilt he felt about his crassness, but it hadn’t really done anything.
Maybe, he said to himself, he would feel better about it as soon as Bethany called him to thank him for the nice reparative gesture.
And she would call. She had to.
If anything else, they had a benefit to plan together. Didn’t she have to manage him and tell him all about his naughty behavior and how he had to fix it? Bethany had to talk to him for that to happen.
It wouldn’t do to just sit there and stew in his anxiety. It was a new feeling for him, and it wasn’t one he liked very much. With a loud grunt, he grabbed his phone, and he asked James to meet him at his office at the museum. He needed something to do, and just maybe showing up at work would get his creative juices flowing.
Instead of taking his car, a luxury sports edition that cost more than a house, he had the guard in the lobby call him a car service. As soon as the sleek black car pulled to the curb, London opened the door and told the driver to head to the Warwick Natural History Museum.
The building was massive and beautiful. It was the perfect combination of old and new. It was an architectural wonder that had been designed by none other than his brother, Paris. Of course, he had gone by a different name then. But it was his brother’s work nonetheless. The large gray stones were always clean and oozed age and history. The front entrance was stylized like an old temple with massive pillars, each carved with an animal or historical figure that had been important to English and European history. Two large lions were the centerpiece, but the dragon to the left was also formidable. Most people assumed it was the red dragon of Wales. That particular statue was off to the left. The giant dragon with its head pointed upward was every bit Alfonse Warwick. His father and the patriarch of the Warwick family.
Paris had had a hell of a time convincing their father to shift and to stay completely still while he sketched him out to chisel the column. It had been a fun thing to watch. At least now, they still had this lovely monument of Alfonse. It was comforting for London to pass by his father’s likeness when he came to work.
Well, most days.
On that day, it didn’t feel so great. He could have sworn that the stone eyes of the dragon were quietly assessing him and finding him wanting. Lacking in true Warwick grace and valor. With a suppressed shiver, London made his way to his office in the basement of the museum. He counted himself lucky that he didn’t run into his boss. Technically speaking, London was the boss, but it didn’t do well for the Warwicks and their reboots if they were always made to be the boss. Especially not London, who always gravitated toward the same field of study and the same museum.
With quick fingers, he typed in the password onto his monitor, and his computer came to life with a soft dinging song. He pulled up a search engine and typed in Bethany Russo’s name. He knew it was a silly thing to do. He wasn’t even sure why he had done it.
But oh, was he glad he had.
He wanted to smack himself in the head for all of his ignorance. He should have remembered the name. Bethany Russo was the daughter of Lilly Russo. The human woman had been a great friend and companion to his mother. In fact, she had been something of a protégé as she came up through the ranks of high fashion.
Lilly Russo had been brutally murdered in her New York City home a few years previously. It had been quite a shock for Johanna. She was used to her human friends dying, of course. But it was typically of old age. Not being stabbed over twenty times.
London’s guilt at the words he had chosen to use with Bethany sat like sour grapes in his mouth. He regretted them all the more now. He scrolled through the search results with a growing cold spreading through his belly. The headlines, which so often attacked him, had not been kind to Bethany over the years since her mother’s death. They had been flat out malicious and cruel.
It irked him.
More than he cared to admit.
The trashy tabloids had pictures of Bethany planning her mother’s funeral, leaving the church, kneeling on her mother’s fresh grave. It should have been a private moment of grief and sadness. But instead, it had been used to sell papers. Across the heartbreaking picture were splashed harsh words. Despicable lines like heiress killed beautiful mom in revenge. Then slowly, the headlines were replaced by more lurid things. Daughter of slain model stands beside stepfather: why he killed his wife.
And so it went on.
They had first attacked Bethany, claiming she had killed her mother. Then they had ripped her apart once more when the attention had turned toward her stepfather. That fire hadn’t been abated by the fact that the man had been remarried to another—and much younger—model but three short months after he had been made a widower.
It wasn’t right.
His dragon uncoiled its tail, wagging it to and fro in his mind. Plumes of smoke curled out his wide nostrils. His keen eyes were full of doubt and worry. Something was definitely wrong. All of his instincts were activated. There was a gnawing itch inside of him, begging to look further into this.
The crime, a vicious murder, had not been solved. The case had grown cold.
It shouldn’t have. As London poured over all of the details he could suss out from more reputable journalist sources, he was certain that the investigation had been completely bungled. By accident or by design, that was the question.
London was a student of history, he had spent his long life looking over the sources of history, the ones that came before his birth, to garner sense and meaning from huge events. It had honed his shifter instincts to spot a mystery and a cover-up from a mile away.
And Lilly Russo’s death?
It was definitely a foul thing.
The stench of it was crossing the ocean, all the way to his London office.
Just in time, like he always was, James walked into the office, a large cup of coffee in each hand. The white and green cups were a welcome sight, and he took the drink with an emphatic thanks.
“You look like shit.” James wasn’t one to mince words. He might have only been human, but he had the backbone and balls of a shifter. London respected him for that.
“Yeah, well, I should.”
London quickly gave his friend a rundown of what had transpired with his mother and with the lovely Bethany. He spared no details. There was no point. Not with James. They had been friends for nearly twenty years, and James knew the depravity London could get up to. But more importantly, he also understood how London secretly felt horrible for the life he led.