Chapter 99 Racing Ridge
Lucian's POV
Reginald looked better than I expected. That was the first thing I noticed when I walked through the bedroom door — the old man was propped up against his pillows with a faint smile already forming at the corners of his mouth, like my concern was something he found mildly entertaining.
The private physician had already finished the initial round of checks, his equipment spread across the side table in a neat row of instruments and cuffs and small glass vials.
"Is it Leah who called you?" Reginald asked, and his voice carried the same dry amusement it always did. "She worries too much. I'm perfectly fine."
"Humor me," I said, and turned to the doctor before Reginald could argue further. "What are we looking at?"
The doctor began packing his equipment away with practiced efficiency. "Elevated blood pressure," he said. "Nothing immediately critical, but at his age it warrants close monitoring. We'll keep a careful eye on him over the next several days and adjust his medication if necessary."
"Good." I looked back at Reginald, who was watching me with that same patient expression he had used on me since I was a child, the one that meant he knew I was worried and was choosing not to make it worse by pointing it out. We talked for a while about nothing in particular — the estate, the weather, a business matter he had half-forgotten about — and by the time I was satisfied that he was genuinely stable, I was already thinking about Briar. She was hungry. I had promised her food.
I told Reginald I needed to find her something to eat and pushed myself to my feet. That was when Leah spoke up from the corner of the room.
"I'll take you," she said. "The small kitchen is the only one still open at this hour, and most of the staff don't know where it is. It's the one we keep for Grandfather's meals."
I glanced at her. I hadn't expected her to still be here — Aiden had mentioned something about her being at school, and her presence in that corner chair felt slightly off in a way I couldn't immediately explain. The head housekeeper was occupied with Reginald's care, and I didn't want to pull anyone else away, so I nodded and let her lead.
That turned out to be a mistake.
After the fourth unnecessary turn and the second time we doubled back past the same row of hedges, I stopped walking. The gravel path was damp beneath my shoes, the air carrying the heavy, charged stillness that comes before a storm, and Fenrir was moving restlessly inside me, pressing against the edges of my control in a way that had nothing to do with Reginald's blood pressure.
"Do you actually know where you're going?" I asked.
Leah kept her eyes on the ground, nudging a piece of gravel with the toe of her shoe. "I know the way," she said. "It's just harder to see at night."
"Then give me directions and I'll find it myself."
She started listing them — straight ahead, then left, then right, then past the artificial lake, then another turn I had already lost track of — and the restlessness inside me sharpened into something closer to irritation. Fenrir pushed harder, and I felt the first low warning pulse of unease move through my chest. Something was wrong. I didn't know what yet, but the instinct was clean and certain.
Before I could press her further, thunder rolled across the sky in a long, low wave, and then the rain came down all at once, the way it does in late summer — sudden and total, with no gradual buildup to soften the impact.
"Change of plan," I said, pulling out my phone. "I'll arrange for someone to walk you back inside, and I'll pick up something from the hotel restaurant on my way to Briar."
"Wait." Leah's head came up sharply, and I stopped.
A bolt of lightning split the sky overhead, and for one white, frozen second I could see her face clearly — the tension around her eyes, the way her jaw was set like she was fighting herself over something. She opened her mouth, then closed it again, and the silence stretched out with an urgency she wasn't putting into words.
"Say it," I told her.
She didn't. She stood there in the rain with her hands clenched at her sides, and I ran out of patience. I dialed the front desk and stepped slightly aside, keeping half my attention on her while I spoke to the attendant on duty. I asked them to send someone up to check on Briar's room, to make sure she was all right, and gave them the number.
There was a pause on the line, and then the attendant's voice came back careful and apologetic. "I'm sorry, Mr. Kincaid. We've tried the internal line and sent someone to knock. There doesn't appear to be anyone in the room."
The words landed in my chest like something physical. I kept my voice level. "Try again."
"We already sent someone twice, sir. There's no response."
The moment I heard those words, Leah's composure finally shattered. Her face had gone the color of old paper, and when she looked at me there was panic written across every line of her expression.
"I know," she said, the words tumbling out in a rush. "She's not there. Julian — he took her. He said he was just going to bring her somewhere, he said he just wanted to talk to her, and he told me to keep you occupied, and I thought — I thought it would be fine, I thought he just wanted to—"
"Where?" My voice came out louder than I intended, which was worse, and Leah flinched back from it like I had raised my hand. The gold was already bleeding into my vision, Fenrir surging forward with a violence that made my hands shake, and I had to lock every muscle in my body to keep from shifting right there in the rain.
"I don't know," she said, and started crying, and for a moment the sound of it was the only thing in the rain-soaked dark between us. "I swear I don't know where he took her. I just — I wanted to teach her a lesson, I didn't think he would actually—"
She grabbed the hem of my jacket, her fingers twisting into the fabric, her voice dropping into something small and frightened. "I told you. I'm telling you right now, so that counts for something, doesn't it? If something happens — please don't tell my grandfather. Please, Lucian, I'm scared—"
"You're scared." The two words came out like the flat edge of a blade, and I watched her flinch again. "Do you think she isn't?"
I don't remember making the decision. I remember my hand closing around the front of her jacket, and I remember the look on her face when her feet left the ground, and then her back hit the lamppost with a crack that cut through the sound of the rain. She cried out, a sharp, startled sound, and the noise of it pulled me back like a hand closing around my collar.
I let go. She slid down the post and crumpled at the base of it, her shoulders shaking, her face turned down toward the wet gravel. I stood over her and breathed, forcing Fenrir back behind the wall I kept for him, pressing the rage down into something I could use instead of something that would use me.
"Leah." She didn't look up. "Look at me."
She lifted her face, and I held her gaze until I was sure she understood what she was seeing in mine.
"You are going to pray," I said, "that I find her before he does anything else. Because when I'm done with Julian, I'm coming back for you, and there is nothing your grandfather's name will do to protect you. Do you understand me?"
She nodded, a tiny, miserable movement, and I turned away from her and ran toward the parking lot, my phone already in my hand. The rain was coming down harder now, sheets of it that turned the gravel paths into rivers and made the estate lights blur into halos of gold and white. Thomas picked up on the second ring.
"I need every security feed from the estate gates and the hotel parking lot pulled immediately," I said, not bothering with a greeting. "And I need a car brought to the south entrance. Now."
"On it," Thomas said, his voice clipped and efficient. "Anything else?"
"Send someone to stay with Leah Sterling until she's back inside. She's near the east lamppost by the garden path."
"Understood." He didn't ask why, and I didn't explain. That was one of the things I appreciated most about Thomas — he knew when questions were a waste of time.
I ended the call and kept moving, my shoes splashing through puddles I didn't bother avoiding, and that was when I noticed the notifications lighting up my screen. Three missed calls, all from Jason, and a string of text messages that had come through while I was on the phone with Thomas. I pulled them up as I reached the edge of the parking lot, rain streaming down my face and soaking through my shirt, and read them in the light of the nearest lamp.
[Racing Ridge.]
[One of my racing buddies just sent me photos. That girl from dinner — the one you brought — Julian threw her onto the track.]
[Julian's people everywhere. They were racing before, but they cleared the whole place out. No one's getting close.]