Chapter 3

Layla stood in the pre-operating room with her hands up waiting. She was sterile, gloved, and booted. Her mask was up and her hair was pulled back into a tight bun with a scarf over her hair. Still, she stood there. Waiting for…waiting for something that she couldn't figure out

The patient, Mr. Roger Patterson, was there, just beyond in the operating room, but she couldn't move beyond the doorway she was standing next to. Something had happened today. Something that terrified her. Layla had been angry, more angry than she'd ever been, and it had made her sick with it because of the jackass.

For what? She didn't have a clue. But for whatever reason, she had an idea that Madison knew the reason. Not to mention, he was the cause of her losing her temper so much of late. He'd seen her, and he'd been afraid, too. But only for a second or two. Then she'd been so ill that she'd had to rush to the bathroom to throw up. What on earth was the matter with her that she was forever…the nurse asked her if she was all right.

"I'm about ready. I've just something to work out in my head." The nurse, who hadn't any idea what her name was, said that Mr. Patterson was ready that he'd been given the medications that she'd prescribed and was ready for her to remove the six-inch nail that was in his thigh and shin. The young man, about twenty, had been playing a very dangerous game of chicken when it went off. Not only going through his thigh and into his shin but had taken off one of his fingers as well. And because he'd been sitting down when he'd been fucking around with it, they'd had to bring the large section of deck that he'd been sitting on as well. Sometimes, she had no hope at all for the younger generation nowadays.

Going into the operating room, the only doctor on call that could operate on the man, she started telling the others what to do long before the door behind her had swung closed.

Her first move was to remove the nail from the board. In order to do that, she was going to have to pull it free. Then, she would clean out each of the wounds, stitching them together as the nail made its way from the large section of wood to his thigh, which was the starting point. Once she started cleaning the thigh, she realized just how lucky that he'd been in missing femoral vein.

He might well have bled out if he'd nicked that. The man had waited an entire hour before calling an ambulance to come and get him. He was, rightly so, embarrassed. He'd told the medics that when they arrived and thought that he could remove it on his own.

"I would like to make time to speak to you." She told Madison as he spoke to her through the link that she supposed they shared as mates, that she was very busy right now at work. "Yes, all right. I don't even know what you do for a living. And I only just found out that— I'll wait. Contact me please when you have time."

"Will you get out of my head so that I can operate on this man? Christ, you certainly know just how to time shit, don't you?" He told her again that he was sorry and then he left her. But not entirely. She could still feel him there and was so angry that she had to take several deep breaths in order to do her job.

Concentrating on the job at hand, Layla was able to save the man's leg. He would have to be in therapy for a good long time. He'd done a lot of muscle damage, and she had been thinking that he'd lose his entire leg. But when she started to look his damage over, she thought that he'd be all right so long as he got his head out of his ass and started acting like the adult that he was. Shaking her head just as he was being wheeled to recovery, Layla was nearly out of the room when someone knocked on the ceiling above her.

"Christ, you're wonderful." Layla almost didn't know who was up in the gallery until Madison pulled his mask off his face. "I'm sorry, but I loved watching you work. My brothers were all doctors at some point in their lives. However, it was never anything that I thought I'd be any good at. You're really good."

"Are you spying on me?" He said that he deserved that. He'd been an ass. Layla stared at him for several seconds, not understanding the change in him when she headed for the prep area. "I have stuff I have to get done. Whatever you want right now will have to wait. I have to go and tell a very pregnant woman that her husband is a moron and that she should leave him while the getting out is good."

"You really wouldn't say that, would you?" She rolled her eyes, just remembering that he couldn't see her. "Nah, I might well have done that a few days ago. But you'd never do that. You're very nice and generous with your job. That made a great deal more sense in my head. But you'd think that I believe that his wife would, too, but you'd not say it. It's not your—"

"Do you have a fucking point while you're rambling around in my head? Didn't I just tell you that I have stuff to do?" He laughed, a sound that she'd never heard from him before. "Who are you really? Any one of your brothers has been nice to me, but not you. You've been a prick since I met you. And if you think about it, that wasn't my fault either. You should have just let the bullets spray into me, and your life and my own would have been a good deal better."

"Don't say that. Please? I've fucked everything up but would like to have a second or even a dozen more chances to make it up to you. Please?" She said that she didn't want him around. "I can understand that as well. But I'd like to make it up to you. As much as I've fucked up, I'm sure that it will take me centuries to get even one percent of what I've done to you and said to you. I'm sorry. With all my heart, I'm profoundly sorry."

She didn't want him to apologize to her but to get out of her life. When she was finished up with her clean up and changing into her clean scrubs, she made her way out of the area to meet with the people that were here with the young man.

Making her way home, she was happy to hear on her voicemail that the paperwork had gone through for Madison, and she'd be able to pay off some of her immediate debt. Also, she thought that Madison had overpaid. But it would go a long way in cleaning up the debt that her parents have left for her to take care of. Stretching her neck, she listened to the voicemail four times when it said that the person who had bought the house had paid cash and that she could pick up the money at any time. Soon, she begged. It was a great deal of money. She reached out to him to find out what the hell kind of game he was playing with her.

"I'm in the parking lot of your apartment. Can I—I had no idea that it was your home that I bought. I'm not sorry, but could I come up, and you can tell me why you're so angry with me?" She asked him if he was seriously asking her why she was angry. "I'm sorry. That's not what I meant. I…may I come in? I'm not going to knock—you seem to have some very nosy neighbors."

"They don't piss me off as much as you do." She opened the door and saw him standing there. If she was smart, she thought that she should have slammed the door in his face and told him to go away. But she was curious what he'd been thinking when he'd bought her home. Not that she didn't need the money, but she didn't want him to have it.

"I'm part vampire. You need to invite me in." She said that she liked that. Then asked him about the last time when he'd been here. "I didn't come into your home until I was mostly dragon. I guess, and I didn't know this, it matters what I am before I have to be asked."

"You can come into my home this one time. But I reserve the right to uninvite you if you give me any shit." He smiled at her. A good look on him, she thought. "Well?"

"Thank you." When he stepped over the threshold, she right then realized that he was a big man. Not that she'd not been around him before but this time, it seemed like he was filling every space of her apartment. "This is a tiny place. May I ask why you were living here instead of the family home?"

"I can't afford it. I have debt from when my parents were alive." He pulled something out of his suit jacket and told her that he'd forgotten to give this to her. "What is it? It's a check."

"Yes, when you were hospitalized the first time that I was here, I petitioned to the courts that I be able to have the right to collect your money. Since then, I've been able to do some serious research on your parent's debt as well as…would you have dinner with me? Now? I've not eaten all that much today, and I'm suddenly famished." Her own belly echoed his thoughts of being hungry, and it took that time to growl loudly. "I'm going to take that as a yes. Is there anything that you won't eat? I mean, I could go for about anything right now."

"I don't eat all that much meat." He said that he could do that for her. "No. I won't have you giving up on something that you like just thinking to impress me. We'll go where we can get both. And I said I don't eat that much. I didn't say that I didn't eat it ever."

By the time she'd changed out of her everyday clothing, he had made them reservations at a nearby restaurant. She'd not dressed up, thinking about what he had on with a suit jacket and jeans but she did feel much better in her favorite flowing skirt and a light blouse and jacket. They were out the door in a few minutes and on their way when she remembered the check. Pulling it out of her backpack/purse, she asked him about it.

"Oh. Well, I didn't do it out of the kindness of my heart, I'm ashamed to say. I had my mom—and please don't kill me but I had my mom file some paperwork that made it look as if we were husband and wife. I couldn't allow that much money to go to those men. I've had it at my apartment for the last few weeks, but I kept forgetting about it." He glanced at her, and she thanked him. "I was afraid that you'd be pissed off. But as I said, my mom is looking into what happened to your inheritance from your parents. I don't know when or how they passed away, but my mom has found a great deal of information that you need to be made aware of."

"This will make a huge difference for me. Plus, the sale of the house that you purchased. Did you know that I owned it?" He nearly drove off the road when he looked at her. "Yeah, lack of conversation, I guess. But it's been in my family for generations, each person that lived there would do some major renovations on it for the next that came into it. What on earth possessed you to pay that much for it?"

"I fell in love with it as soon as I pulled into the driveway. I didn't know who owned it, but I put in a bid so that I would have it at whatever the cost." He pulled into the parking lot of the restaurant and looked at her after shutting off the car. "May I ask why you had to sell it? You can tell me to fuck off. I'm sure you've done that at least a dozen times, but why did you do it? It seems to be the perfect place for you to live."

"My parents were in debt up to their eyes when they passed away. My brother, he's gone too had gone to prison for a life sentence, and they were responsible for—actually, I don't know if they should have been responsible for his debt, but they owed millions of dollars to several families when Thomas killed a bunch of people when he'd been depressed. He'd been found guilty of their deaths, which was, if you ask me, a no-brainer. He confessed to it at his trial, but Mom and Dad were paying people through our attorneys. Well, their attorney. I never trusted them." He told her that with what his mom was telling him that it was a good thing that she didn't trust them. "I don't know what that means. Did they have to pay those families or not?"

"Not." That had her thinking about all the money that she'd paid out to the attorneys who had taken the money without a single thought as to how much this was hurting her financially. She looked at Madison as soon as they sat down. "I've asked my parents to join us. I hope that's all right. Mom will be able to explain a great deal more than I could. And my dad just wants to sit with a pretty woman."

Nodding at him, she knew that his dad was a flirt. A harmless one, but he was an outrageous flirt all the same. She didn't know if she cared all that much for his mom. She was pushy and opinionated. Much like she was. But she was his mom, and she couldn't tell her off like she might well have others.

As soon as his parents showed up with David, her boss, she knew something more than just a few bucks were being stolen from her. David had been crying, something he rarely did when he was out in public. He was, like Alex a flirt, an emotional man. When Daniel showed up, she sat up straighter in her chair.

Daniel and David had been partners forever, she thought. They complimented one another well, and opposite attractions were perfectly balanced in their relationship. Layla had been to their home several times over the years and had thought well of them both. However showing up at a meeting like this one had her jumpy.

"I work for the law firm…I did work for the law firm that was in charge of the estate of your family. I retired this morning, effective immediately." She asked him what that had to do with anything. "Everything. I'm the one who sent in the DNA test to that website. I'm the one that found out that you…you had a great deal of family, dear, that has been killed off in the name of greed."

"Maybe you should start at the beginning, Daniel. She looks as confused as I was when you told me what you'd done." Storm looked at her. "I'd never harm you, child. I want you to know that I'd very much like to be your friend if that's all you can give me. I know that you're afraid of me, with good reason. I'm a bitch." Layla burst out laughing. "There you go. Now, we'll order, have us—oh good. They're going to move us the a private room. How wonderful of them."

She had a feeling that they'd had a great deal to do with the expansion of this restaurant and the quality of the people who worked there. When Storm winked at her, she smiled again. It was, she realized something that she'd been out of the habit of doing for a long time.

After Daniel explained about how he'd seen the file that had been hidden with another file that he'd needed, he saw that the younger woman was Layla's twin. He handed her a picture.

"I nearly had myself a cow when I saw the picture. The grandmother there, she was young when your parents had them. She'd only just turned forty when you two were born." She asked him why they'd been separated. "Your father and mother were about as paranoid as they could be and decided that they'd be able to keep you—as I said to you before, I didn't understand most of what was said in the papers. However, you come from old money. And a great deal of it. Also, I should point out that you were living with your biological father while your sister, Abbigal, lived with your biological mother. And Abbigal, what she was called from birth, had a terrible life while living with her and your stepfather. I do believe when they were killed, and she went to live with your grandmother, that she had a better life. Compared to yours."

"I didn't exactly have a walk in the park, you know." He told her some of the things that had been done to her sister. "Oh. I'm sorry about that. Had I known about her, then I would have gone to get her. I'm sorry for being so flippant. It must have hurt her terribly to be locked in a cage all the time. Do you know if she was smart like I am?"

"No, there was no way to tell as your mother never let her go to school. By the time she was ten years old, she was socially inept as well as didn't talk well. Your mother and stepfather were the only people that she ever spoke to, and they, for the most part, ignored her. And you should understand that it appears that your grandmother didn't seem to know that there was another child born of her daughter. She never mentioned you, even in the will that she had when she perished."

"What did they die of? I'm to understand that they both died at the same time like my grandmother and sister did." He told her what he'd been able to find out. "Christ, so he shot my mother and then himself? Why? There had to be a good reason, correct?"

"No one knows. He didn't leave a note, nor did he say anything to anyone before it happened. He didn't work, not from home or an office. It is believed that he, too, was socially awkward, and when he was told that he'd have to go to board meetings, he flipped out. Not my word but that's what I heard. And the reason that it is figured that he didn't kill Abbigal is, as I said, he didn't interact with her much, and it was assumed that he'd forgotten about her."

Layla looked at the picture. She could tell now that her sister—a sister that she never knew wasn't thrilled about having her picture taken. As the conversation went on around her, she tried to think if she'd ever had any indication of having a sister. Or, for that matter, a close relationship with her father. Then she thought of something.

"When I was about fifteen, right around the time that I'm assuming that my mother was killed, my dad locked himself in his bedroom and didn't come out for days. Now that I think about that, my father was killed a year later. I bet if I thought about it, it would have been the anniversary of my mother's death. Christ, they were more fucked up than anyone I've ever dealt with in the hospital setting." David told her that she was correct. It was exactly that date. "So what happened? I'm assuming that something happened that killed my grandmother and sister. I find that I really don't want to know and find that I need to know."

When Madison took her hand into his, she held tightly to his while the others looked at one another. Layla didn't know why but she thought that they were having the same feelings. That they needed to tell her but really didn't want to. She told Storm to tell her.

"They were murdered." She'd thought that but had never voiced it before. "The car accident was staged to make it seem like her brakes went out. I know that it wasn't an accident when I read that your grandmother, whose name was Layla Abbigal, by the way, had taken your sister out of the home she'd been living in to go shopping. It wasn't anything that that Abbigal could have done and your grandmother didn't drive. None of the pieces of the puzzle line up to make any of that true. I believe that the attorneys were sick of waiting for them to die so that they'd get the money. It was supposed to be dispersed to a list of charities, but I doubt that it would have gone anywhere but in the firm's key player's pockets. That's why I sent in your DNA. By the will, they had to search for a relative before they got the money. That's when you turned up. And the reason they had to make a reasonable effort to find you is they hired someone to kill you." She asked Storm if anyone had looked into their deaths. "They are now. All of their deaths. I believe that they had a part in all their deaths in some form."

"What happens now? I mean, there can't be too much left after I was given that check." Madison laughed, and so did his parents. "I take it that would be wrong on my part."

"Very much so. You're the last surviving member of your family. So you get it all. Your grandmother's and both your parents' separate monies, as well as your sister's portion too. Your family was an odd bunch but they knew how to turn a buck into a million better than anyone I've ever seen. Your estate, as of yesterday, is worth billions and billions of dollars. And, well, I hate to say this because I know how cruel it sounds. You'll get double that if it can be proven that they were murdered. And I believe that they were."

Layla didn't know when she'd eaten her food. It must have been good, as there wasn't even a small pea on her plate. The others, talking around the table, hadn't said anything directly to her until now. And it was Amy that brought her out of her stupor.

"You all right now?" She wondered aloud how she would feel if she'd just found out about her family being murdered. "Just as you are taking it. I don't know a great deal about you but I have a feeling that this is unusual for you, you know, lacking in response."

"I suppose you're right. I do usually have something to say." They both laughed, and she realized that Madison was at the other end of the table talking to his brothers. "I don't know what to do with him. Or for him. I've had such a fucked up time over the last couple of years that I can't take one more thing from anyone right now."

"Understandable. Not to be incentive about shit, Madison can and will help you with whatever you need." She told the other woman that she didn't have any idea what she needed. "Hey, I was right there with you when I came to this family. They're huge, wealthy, and loving. This is just a suggestion for you but if you were to share with him about the stuff you have going on, I promise you that he'd lift things off your shoulders and not ever hold it over your head like most men I know. Getting with him couldn't be better, by the way, either. And after you have sex with him…good golly, as I've heard Alex say, it'll be fantastic. His brother and I had a very rocky start. Well, it was horrific there for a while but he's come around in behaving himself. It was touch and go there for a while that I might well have killed him off. Or had him killed. I think that all of the sons were like that when I first arrived. Especially Madison and Fowler. Being the oldest, I guess he had a stunned childhood or something. Not from his parents. They couldn't understand him either."

"Yes, well, I don't understand the lot of them. I've been around not as long as he's been. But I know that ‘getting with him,' as you put it, would make me all the much stronger. However, as I said, I'm overwhelmed." Nodding, she said that she could understand that as well. "How much did I miss when I zoned out? I'm betting they have accomplished a great deal on their own."

"No, not really. They'll leave any decisions that you should be making left up to you. Storm can be a tad—no, that's not right, she is bitchy, but she has a wonderful heart when it comes to welcoming you into the family. And I love Alex. He's not at all like I imagined a vampire to be." They both looked at the man they were speaking about when he threw back his head and laughed. The rest of the table did as well. "One of the ones that you have to agree to is having the bodies of your family exhumed. And a thorough examination done of them. It's not even for the money, I would imagine that you'd say, but for the simple reason that someone needs to pay for what was done to them."

Amy laid the paperwork in front of her in a thick file and then left her. Looking at the paperwork, there were several places that she needed to sign off on and each one of the names on the paperwork was like a stab to the heart. She didn't know any of these people, not even her own father and stepmother. But she did sign where the tabs were before looking at the rest of the things in the file.

She felt like she was knee-deep into everything that she didn't understand when Madison asked her if she needed help. Shoving the papers in his direction, he laughed. He told her that he'd help her to understand whatever it was that she didn't.

"What does it mean here about the check? The forty million that I've only just realized is still in my backpack?" He told her that the firm was hoping that she'd be thrilled with that much money and not check in on the rest. "So it was like get your face out of your own business. Okay, I might well have done that if not for you. In fact, I wouldn't even have this much if not for you."

"You do understand that I didn't do it out of the goodness of my heart. Right? I was still in my prick stage and did it for meanness." She said that she'd understood that. "Yes, well, I didn't want you to think that I was anything but an asshole back then."

"What makes you think that I don't think of you as an asshole now?" He laughed and said that she had wounded him. "Not that it matters all that much, I guess, but did you really do this to make me more upset? How did you figure that was going to happen when I'm forty million dollars richer?"

"I don't know, to be honest." He helped her with the wording in the file on a great many of the pages. He was doing a good job at it, telling her what they meant and what it meant in the circumstances in which it was being used in the paperwork. By the time they'd gone through about half the work, she had a better understanding of how she'd been swindled. And it pissed her off more.

"Where do we go from here now that I've signed off on the exhumation paperwork?" He told her what he knew, which seemed like a great deal to her. "So I have to keep in mind that this isn't a guaranteed win. However it does look good for my table. Another thing is, I need to pay off some of my parents' debt with that check you gave me."

"No, you don't. As I said to you the other day, the law firm of Schuster and Schuster isn't doing good for a lot of people that they were hired to take care of. Your parents, none of them had any debt. Much like you, they either paid cash for something or they didn't get it. So whatever you've paid them for this supposed debt is a lie. Nowhere has my mom or anyone in the family been able to find where they owed anyone for anything. We'll get all that money back for you as well." She laid her head down on the table as he continued to tell her all the things that she'd been doing in the name of her parent's debt. "There was no hospital bill, no funeral bill. There was nothing that was owed on their homes. Even your grandmother owned her own home that she and your sister lived in before she was taken to the home to help her with her anxieties. That was paid monthly by your parents, each of them paying half the balance, so she'd never been a burden to anyone. If they suggested that your family, any of them had any credit card debt? There isn't anything like that."

"They had me paying hundreds of thousands of dollars every year. For all the things that you've listed and more." Madison nodded. "How the hell did they get away with that for so long?"

"They prey on people that are in grief. Just as you were when they approached you. Then Daniel stepped in and sent your DNA to a site that they subscribe to, and they had to act fast. The deadline that they gave you for that money? It was real. If you didn't claim it, which is what I did for you by that night at midnight, they were to receive the lump sum of all the policies for each of them, at, as I mentioned, double because of the way that we think they were killed." She asked him if there were other families that they did the same thing to. "There are a dozen of them. Yours has the most payoff. They would have retired if I hadn't stepped in and made it known that David, Daniel, and I weren't there to get your money."