Under His Heel_A Kidnapping by Adara Wolf

Author:Adara Wolf [Wolf, Adara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2018-06-28T23:00:00+00:00

[Chapter 7]

While the doctors attended to Johan and Alex, Koteas and Vasilis questioned him in a private waiting room. They sat to either side of him, which they probably thought would keep him from leaving.

“How in the world did you find them?” Koteas wanted to know. “We’d already narrowed the location down to the underside warehouses, but…”

“I called in a favor,” Tracht said. “That’s all that you need to know.”

“So where are the kidnappers? They need to be brought to justice.”

The coffee at the hospital was abysmal. With the amount they were charging, they really should provide better food services.

“The favor included handing them over. I elected to remain ignorant of what they intend to do with them.” He could have insisted on calling station security and letting them handle it. But that would have precluded revenge, and that was intolerable.

It hadn’t been as satisfying as taking the whip to Parsons’ back, but he supposed it never would have been. He wished the sab’s leader had been male.

“So the kidnappers are running free, safe from the rule of law—”

“No.” Tracht set his coffee down on the coffee table. “They are not running free, of that I’m certain.”

“What did they want?” Vasilis asked quietly. “They did all this, had us terrified and scrambling for money—but what did they want?”

“From my understanding, they were professional saboteurs.” Anja Nilsen had helpfully sent along a profile of the sab group. “That new business acquisition of yours pissed somebody off.”

Rather than looking relieved, Vasilis’s face blanched further. “They hurt Johan over a business deal?” In the next moment, he was pulling out his tablet and scrolling through files. “I knew it was going to be unpopular, but we were going to keep most of the original staff, and—I suppose if you were with Gutenberg, that might be—” He shook his head. “It’s just business. It’s not worth hurting people over.”

“Vasilis, it’s not ‘just business’ and you know it. Don’t pretend you aren’t as ruthless as everybody else in the business. The only difference is that you keep that ruthlessness to the boardroom.” Tracht got up and threw away his empty coffee cup. He decided to remain standing, ignoring Koteas and Vasilis’s stares.

Koteas coughed lightly to break the silence. “It makes sense, given how they were operating. If you were completely focused on Johan, that would delay the acquisition. Might even cause the deal to fall through, if enough shareholders could be convinced during that time. Still. To hurt a child...”

This again. Johan was fine! It was Alex who had suffered the most. But Tracht held his tongue, letting Vasilis and Koteas discuss the situation between them.

“Do you think it was Argos?” Vasilis asked, this time addressing Tracht directly. “They pulled that stunt with your sailor too.”

Argos was the second largest company on Cadmus station, competing directly with Vasilis’s corporation. Tracht had actually taken contracts for them in the past, before Anna married Vasilis. Whatever goodwill Tracht had towards Argos had disappeared when they’d hired Parsons to do industrial espionage.

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