Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 301

I felt slender fingers slip into mine and glanced up to see Erin standing supportively beside me. She squeezed my hand before letting go and carefully walking further into the room.

“You didn’t know about this?” I turned back toward the door to see Quentin leaning against the wooden frame, staring listlessly into the room. “How long have you been out here?”

Quentin shrugged. “About a week?”

“And you didn’t hear anything?” I asked.

“Nope,” he said, looking around the room. He didn’t look particularly disturbed, which I found strange. I don’t care what my relationship with my grandfather was like; if a room in my family home had been ransacked more than a week ago, I would have been highly disturbed.

Clearly, he could see the suspicion written all over my face because he said, “Like I said, I haven’t been in this room in more than a year. Gramps kept it locked.”

“And you haven’t been the least curious about what’s in here?” I asked.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I’ve been busy.”

I sighed and looked around the room, feeling my hope of finding anything here beginning to crumble. “You guys see anything interesting?” I asked my security detail.

“That,” Chloe said. She kept her hands in her pockets the entire time, so she simply nodded at a laptop under the desk. It had a hole drilled through it roughly where a mechanical hard drive would be. “Your visitor knew what they were doing.”

“Dammit,” I muttered. “What are the chances of it having a digital hard drive?”

“Computer looks older,” Chloe said, looking doubtful, “but we can try.

“Safe’s been drilled,” John said, pushing the door partially closed with an elbow so the hole was completely visible. “Looks like a clean job.”

“Definitely knew what they were doing,” Chloe said, peering at the hole in the safe’s door.

“Bar looks good,” Quentin said, and the sound of crunching glass told me he was stepping into the room. Chloe, John, and I turned to see him making his way to a bar along one wall with several bottles of liquor behind it and a couple of glasses resting on its surface.

“Don’t touch anything,” Chloe groused.

“Make me, Karen,” Quentin said, reaching for one of the glasses.

“Quentin!” I barked, and he stopped just short of reaching for the glass. Instead, he turned, leaned back against the bar, and cocked his head to the side, appraising me. I could tell he was offended by the tone I’d taken with him, but he was trying to keep his emotions in check. The way he worked his mouth suggested his casual bravado was a facade.

“Well… look at you, walking in here and barking orders,” he said. He sounded amused, but his tone had an undercurrent of malice.

“She told us to not touch anything,” I said. “You want them to find out who did this or not?”

“I don’t care,” Quentin said. “Honestly, I might have done the same if I’d been able to get in here.”

“Then just leave. We don’t need you contaminating anything.”

“Fuck that,” Quentin said, any attempt to hide his contempt fading with every word. “I’ve been coming here since I was a kid. I’ve been throwing parties here for years. Suddenly, you show up and start giving orders? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

Now, I was getting mad.

Sure, Quentin may have had a reason to hate me because I inherited everything from under him, but he didn’t know me. I would have been happy to have another brother to share everything with. He could have brought his friends back here all he wanted for all I cared, but not if he was going to be a complete asshole. I already had one Jacob in my life. I didn’t need another.

“I’m the guy who owns this place, and you’re trespassing. I feel like I’ve been perfectly reasonable, considering I’ve only known you for fifteen minutes, and I certainly haven’t given any orders, but if you can’t listen to simple instructions that make sense, round everybody up and take your party somewhere else.”

“Hey, baby!” a voice called out from just outside the office door in the hallway. “Are you in here?”

My blood ran cold.

I knew that voice.

I turned toward the study door.

Natalie blinked as she stared back at me through the doorway, looking as stunning as she did confused. She wore a yellow bikini that contrasted beautifully with her caramel skin. The triangles of fabric over her large breasts covered most of each mound—making it conservative compared to some of the others I’d seen in the house—but left plenty of side boob and cleavage for my eyes to feast on. The curves of her waist begged for an arm to wrap around them, and they flared into very feminine hips that supported a generous but firm ass. The cut of the bikini bottoms ran high on her hips, leaving most of them bare and mouthwatering. Her dark hair hung loosely halfway down her back, her full lips were slightly parted, and her dark eyes were wide in shock.

Whatever surprise she was feeling couldn’t have begun to compare to mine.

“Marcus?” Natalie asked with disbelief in her voice.

“Natalie?” I asked. “What are you doing here?”

I didn’t mean for it to sound so mean or accusatory, but I was just so confused. Natalie was supposed to be on vacation with her new boyfriend. She wasn’t supposed to be standing in my vacation home-turned-drug den. Well, that wasn’t exactly true… I’d asked her to come with me, but she made it perfectly clear that wasn’t going to happen. So why the fuck was I looking at her in my house dressed like that?

I wasn’t the only one surprised. So was everyone else. Everyone in that room was stone still, waiting breathlessly for the answer.

“What?” Natalie asked. She grabbed the door frame and leaned into the room to look around so she wouldn’t have to step on broken glass with her bare feet. “I was invited!”

I balked at that. “Wait… Tyler’s here?” I looked at Quentin. “You’re friends with Tyler?”

Instead of answering my question, Quentin walked past me to Natalie, took her hand, leaned in, and planted his lips on hers. “Hey.”

Natalie kissed him back, but—unable to take her eyes off me—it was a distracted reciprocation. When she didn’t look at him, Quentin repeated, “Hey, Nat.”

Nat… that was what I called her. Never mind that half the people at Marduke called her that, too, but that’s what I called her… this guy didn’t get to call her that. He didn’t know her.

Did he?

Natalie finally tore her eyes away from me to look at Quentin. “Um… what?”

“What did you need?” Quentin asked.

Nat looked back at me. “What’s Marcus doing here?”

I started to speak, “I—”

“He owns the house now,” Quentin cut me off. “He had plans out here this weekend, and we were just discussing how to deal with this mix-up. Did you need something?”

“I, uh…” Natalie started, looking back and forth between me and Quentin. “I… um… I was just wondering if there was a good place for Wendy to lie down. She just threw up and—”

“Sure,” Quentin said, cutting her off. “My room. Remember how to find it?”

Natalie stared at Quentin for a prolonged moment and then slowly nodded.

“Go take her there. I’ll come check on her when we’re finished here.”

Natalie turned to leave but then hesitated as her gaze fell back on me. She still looked like she was trying to comprehend what I was doing there, and as I stared back at her, I wasn’t sure what to do. I wanted to grill her for information and find out what the hell was going on, but I couldn’t just do that in front of all these people… especially when she looked so confused.

“Marcus,” she started to say.

“Baby,” Quentin said, “Could you just take care of that for me?”

Chewing on the inside of her cheek like I’d seen her do countless times, Natalie gave one last glance between Quentin and me before finally turning to leave, brushing past a new person standing in the hallway—quite possibly one of the largest women I’d ever seen.

She stood about 6’3” tall, so she had a couple of inches on me. Her hair was dark pink and shaved on the sides while the remainder was pulled back in a tight ponytail. Built like an Amazon warrior, she wore a sleeveless shirt, well-fitting fatigues, and a pair of black boots that laced up to mid-calf. Her arms were as thick as my thighs and ripped, and I could tell the rest of her was just as muscular under the shirt she wore. She had tits, but it looked like she was wearing some sort of compression bra that kept them pressed close to her chest, making it impossible to know their size. She wore very little makeup and had a clear, fair complexion complimented by dark pink lips in a pleasant cupid’s bow shape.

She also had a large pistol strapped to her right thigh.

“Sorry,” the pink-haired woman said. Her voice was a little deeper than average for a woman but not unpleasant. “She insisted.”

“What the fuck is going on here?” I demanded.

Quentin looked around the room at everyone else and said, “Everyone, clear out! Marcus and I need to talk.”

Erin, Emily, and Natashya looked at me while John glanced at Chloe. No one actually moved, though.

“I’m staying,” Chloe insisted.

“John,” I said. “Can you escort Erin, my sister, and Natashya back downstairs? Chloe and I will join you guys as soon as we can.”

John glanced at Chloe, who nodded her head once. He moved toward the door. “Yes, sir.”

The girls glanced at each other before giving me uncertain looks, and I nodded at them in reassurance. Emily and Natashya turned to leave, but Erin waited a beat longer as if double-checking to make sure I was okay. Then she went with the others, and John followed them out.

Quentin turned and headed back to the bar. “Liz, come in and shut the door behind you.” The Amazonian woman complied and leaned against the door with her tree trunk arms crossed over her chest. She was clearly some sort of security for Quentin and looked intimidating as hell, guarding our only way out. Chloe, who probably weighed a hundred pounds less than this woman, simply leaned against the office desk, looking cool and feigning unconcern as she eyed the two strangers. I was starting to get better at reading her.

“You said your name’s Quentin,” I said, not bothering to hide the heat in my voice.

“I always hated that name,” Quentin said, reaching behind the bar and pulling out a fresh bottle. He began unstoppering it, giving Chloe a look that dared him to try and stop him. Chloe simply gave him her best dead-eyed stare.

“My middle name’s Tyler,” he said, pouring a couple fingers of brown liquor into one of the glasses on the table. “It’s what my friends call me.”

He took a sip, swallowed it, and smirked. “Nat, too.”

The moment that stupid smirk crossed his lips… that’s when Quinten Tyler Gerrard took Roger VanCamp’s place at the top of my ‘most hated’ list.

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To Be Continued...