Page 36 of Liberty

Chapter 15

STERLING

I spentthe day in my office, locked away from my secretary and staff. I didn’t have time for games or mundane questions or requests. I was exhausted, both mentally and physically. The thought of going up to my apartment and just sleeping was way more tempting than the research I dumbly volunteered myself into doing.

It had taken hours. A ridiculous amount of time of image searching, obtaining the address, then wiggling my way through a trail of owners and leasers, the latest being James. But James owning these lands meant nothing. He had to have a reason; he always had a reason.

I had almost given up the search, called it a day, and headed back to the estate so I could drool over the girl. But then I saw it. I saw the one link that I was certain James wanted me to find. A name. My family name. A name I was certain linked me to this tiny piece of land in England.

Albright.

It was a name that hadn’t changed over the years as males were dominant in my family. But the others? Even though I knew we were linked by blood through Greta, their family names were different. It took some searching. A lot of searching. But my suspicion paid off.

By the time I got to the estate, it was already well after dark. Still, I couldn’t hide my excitement when I entered the house, finding all eyes instantly on me. “These are ours.”

“What exactly do you mean, ours?”

I pulled off my coat and hung it up. “The properties themselves belong to James, but I used the photos to do some reverse image searching, then obtained some addresses. After that, I traced the ownership from James backward.”

Ellis smirked. “Careful, you wouldn’t want your intelligence to show too much.”

“Fuck off.” I turned to Oak. “It turns out each of these lands was owned in the past by one of Greta’s sons. Each one of our ancestors.”

Oak’s head tilted. “Why does James own Greta’s children’s land?”

“I was wondering the same thing. Which is odd, if we weren’t in the equation, but we are. So these lands are linked to us. Though I’ll admit, it has been an incredible amount of time since any of our ancestors have occupied the land. Our parents were the last before moving here to the states. So, well over two hundred years. But, the point is, Greta’s sons owned them.”

The room fell silent as everyone watched me and thought of what this all meant. Hell, I still hadn’t figured this shit out yet, and I’d had the longest time to process the situation. Somehow, this had to be important, of that I was sure.

Liberty cleared her throat and asked while walking away, “So what do we know?”

She headed toward the library where I knew she and Ellis were doing research earlier in the day. We all followed obediently, and though I should question the fact that we all followed her without asking, internally, I felt okay with her taking the lead.

She sat in a plush leather armchair in the library's corner, the chair nearly swallowing her tiny body whole within its size. When everyone was in the room, and Liberty’s eyes were solely on me, I cleared my throat, “We know James was married and his wife was pregnant at the time that James got turned. This resulted in your bloodline. We know that Greta later had children with one – maybe more – men. Is that fact clear yet, or are we just assuming one man was involved?”

“We will count it as irrelevant unless other factors come into play,” Oak answered.

“Okay, her sons are our bloodlines.”

“What we don’t know is what any of this has to do with the power that overtook us in the last twenty-four hours,” Ellis pointed out. “What does that have to do with anything?”

“James was good with magic, damn near the best.” Oak ran his fingers through his long hair, and I didn’t miss the look on Liberty’s face as she watched. “But even with his strength and power, I don’t think he was capable of this.”

“Do you believe in fate?” Liberty asked everyone in the room.

“I believe in wrong place, wrong time, right place, right time. But that’s about as much of a believer as I get.” Ellis found a wooden chair by the desk and sat down as he spoke.

I searched around for a place to sit, finding an ottoman close to Liberty. “Fate is a bunch of bullshit; a fairytale said to children to scare them into acting properly.”

“Fate is real,” Oak proclaimed, and I almost believed him with all the passion he put into the statement, but I’d lived my life with one bad luck after another, and if fate was real, I was being punished for existing.

Liberty gave Oak the barest of smiles. “I believe in fate. After all that has happened in such a short time, I would be a fool not to.”

A pretty fool, at least. “What are you getting at, Liberty?”

The ocean of her eyes fell upon me. “Our meeting was inevitable. Our lives, predestined. The universe wanted us together; we just need to find out why.”

I licked my lips. The intensity of her gaze nearly making me squirm. “I wish I could believe it, I really do.”