Page 11 of Bred Mate (Stalked Mates #2)

K arl

This has all gotten complicated. When Ellie asked me to defend her land, I was planning on just killing people.

One after the other until they stopped coming.

But that was selfish. That was what I would have enjoyed.

It’s not what’s going to handle the matter to my mate’s satisfaction.

She wants a proper solution. A legal one.

There’s a decent-sized town called Baltair not that far from the forest. It’s pretty obvious that it used to be small.

Used to be nothing more than a gas station and a church, but like so many of these rural towns, it’s been seeing a surge of popularity due to the rising cost of living everywhere else in the world.

You could buy a house here for twenty grand not that long ago.

Now they’re all pushing a hundred, and that’s still a steal compared to the bigger centers and their satellites.

Fuck, I hate that I just had all those thoughts in quick succession.

I want to have short, brutal, easy thoughts.

I don’t want to spend my days looking at historical property values and thinking about economics and politics.

I’ve cultivated a life as a vicious idiot, and I used to be happy that way.

Acting as enforcer to my father gave me the outlets I needed for my cruelty.

But I can’t be an enforcer to someone who took retirement when he fucked up by messing with the wrong woman.

I try not to think about that either, how humiliating it all was for the man I once admired.

Worse still, when I check my phone, there are ten emails from various subsidiaries of the pack’s interests, all looking to me for input and direction. I flick through a few of them, realizing I don’t care about any of them really.

I’ve got to focus on the business at hand, and I’m guessing these people know how to deal with whatever they’re asking me about.

Rainer Katsoff’s office is in a brick building in the center of town, one of the older ones.

He’s established himself at the center of the community.

I know enough about territorial behavior to understand instantly that is no mistake.

His building holds several placards. There’s one naming him as a justice of the peace.

There’s another declaring him a property developer.

And above that, there’s an even bigger plaque declaring him mayor.

He’s the sort of person who collects every possible position of authority in their radius.

I bet he’s the head of the PTA, even without having kids as well.

I’d put money on him being the pastor at the local church if they’d let him.

Any chance to have power of any kind, and this guy will be gagging for it.

I almost feel sorry for him, being this pathetic a specimen.

I walk into the building, up the stairs to the third floor because of course he put his office at the top.

Like a cat in a fucking cat tree. The door I open into that office is glass.

There’s a reception area, small waiting room, and one door that has to lead to his office.

I’d put money on that office taking up the entirety of the floor. This man likes his space.

“You can’t go in there! You don’t have an appointment!”

I ignore the woman wearing a silk blouse with a big poufy bow on the front. If this man wants his office guarded, he needs a more dangerous beast. I’m not afraid of a woman.

The man I’m looking for is in his office, which is ridiculously large. It’s bigger than my father’s old office, and it’s more sparse. There’s something about a very big room that makes men who want to seem big just seem even smaller.

Rainer Katsoff is the sort of man my father would enjoy doing business with. He’s in his sixties with silver hair and deep lines from being a general asshole.

“Karl Dulac,” I say, offering my hand to him as if I have every right to be here.

He takes it and shakes it with a brief, almost rough shake, as if he’s trying to impress me.

He can’t impress me. He’s made of flesh and nothing else.

He’s human, and as much as he might play power games, he’ll always be human.

He can only imagine what it is to actually have the sort of animal power I have.

“You look like you’ve had some rough times,” he says, gesturing to my eye. Most people avoid mentioning it. I can respect his directness.

“Yep,” I say.

“How’d you get a scar like that? Deep and old and in the face.” He draws back his head. “That looks personal.”

“It was personal,” I say. “Real personal.”

He looks me up and down again. “You look like the sort of man who fights,” he says. “A soldier, maybe. But not military? A mercenary?”

While he tries to work me out, and I let him, the door behind us opens.

“You didn’t have an appointment,” the secretary says.

Smash!

That’s a bottle being broken over the back of my head. I drop to my knees as pain bursts across my skull. Bits of glass are stuck in my scalp. I can feel it.

“Ah, hell, Margaret. That was a good bottle of port,” Rainer Katsoff says. “I’m sorry, Mr. Dulac, my secretary can be overzealous in the matter of scheduling appointments.”

I rise to my knees slowly, put my hand to the back of my head, and sure enough feel thick chunks of bottle glass in my goddamn head.

I turn toward the woman slowly. I didn’t really look at her on the way in.

I saw a vague female shape and an old lady blouse and I figured she wasn’t worth a second glance.

This is the second time in my life a woman has gotten the drop on me. Twice in a week, it feels like. I must be losing my edge.

She’s not as old as I thought she was. She’s older than me, younger than Rainer.

She’s dressed older than she is. I wonder if it’s on purpose.

I wonder if she’s dressed the way Rainer thinks a lady should be dressed.

She’s got dark hair tied up in a bun, and dark eyes half-hidden behind thick round glasses.

Something about this tells me she’s hiding.

I don’t know what, but it’s like looking at an animal in disguise.

I breathe deep.

There’s a certain lack of surprise from the man that makes me think he knows her well enough to expect things like this. Maybe he even wants it.

Yeah. I see a glint of excitement in his eyes. He likes what she just did. Not sure he ordered her to do it. Not sure that he had any idea it would happen, but he’s stoked it did.

“Lady, what is wrong with you?” I ask the question because I can’t hit her. Want to. Never would.

She looks down at me, her voice cold and hard. “Menopause,” she says. “Don’t ever fuck with a woman over forty, little man. You don’t know what you’ll get.”

Rainer lights a cigar and sits back in his chair.

“I’d like to make an appointment,” I say, standing up. I’ll have a bruise on the back of my head, but I can respect that kind of violence. I treated her like she was nothing, and I figured out she was more than that.

“Let him make one,” Rainer says, exhaling smoke he never inhaled. Pointless fucking activity.

“I came to make you an offer on a patch of forest,” I say.

“Would you like an ice pack?” Margaret makes the offer with apparent kindness. She seems so nice now she’s not wielding a bottle like a fucking maniac, but I know how psychos operate, and I know a smile doesn’t really mean anything.

“I’ll be alright, thank you.”

“Coffee? Tea?”

I wouldn’t accept a drink from this woman. There’d be arsenic in it.

“No. Thank you.”

“Perhaps a chair, then, sir. More comfortable than the floor, or so I am told.”

I take the chair I’m offered, reaching back to pluck bits of glass out of my head.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe these people are fucking animals after all.

Interesting. I start to get a sense of excitement I didn’t expect to have.

I thought it’d be boring dealing with financial things.

I figured we’d have some dry, polite conversation and I’d wish I was anywhere else doing anything else.

I didn’t expect to be treated like I was in a bar fight by a woman who looked like she stepped out of a catalog ad for adult diapers. She’s wearing a fucking floral chiffon skirt, for fuck’s sake.

Maybe people are more interesting than I gave them credit for. I’m going to have to think about that once I get out of here.

“Now, what did you want to talk about that was worth tangling with Margaret?” Rainer asks.

“There’s a patch of forest down by the river that’s being logged. I’d like to make an offer on it.”

He leans back and puffs his cigar, looking at me as if I don’t have the money. I’m not dressed fancy and businesslike. I’m wearing a leather jacket, a shirt that was clean before I got the blood of his workers on it, and jeans that are covered in river mud. I guess I look like a mess.

“And what offer would that be?” He asks the question like he’s indulging me.

“Market value.”

He laughs.

I get instantly annoyed.

“I have money,” I assure him.

“I’m sure you do, but I don’t deal in market value, when I buy land—which I did, from your father, by the way—I do so because I intend to add value.”

“How do you know my father? I mean, how do you know he’s my father?”

It’s annoying, being caught off guard and asking questions awkwardly. I guess it comes down to the last name.

“You’ve got his eyes. Or eye,” he says.

Roasted. By a man who looks like he belongs on a fucking spit.

This visit has been a humiliation from beginning to end, and I can’t blame anyone besides myself.

Ellie tried to warn me that this man was a monster of another kind.

She’s afraid of him. More than she is of me.

Because he can take more from her than I ever could.

“Alright. What sort of value are we talking here?”

I’m curious. I didn’t think I’d ever be curious about real estate, but today is a day for learning.