Arrival of the Beast (Lucifer's Clock Series, Book 2)

Bird Watching

Julius smiled when he ended the call with Roman. He was ecstatic to hear that his nephew was at the girl's home. Julius had been trying for weeks to find out their location, but the angels had covered their tracks extremely well. Any information on the web or paperwork all led to false information.

He had thought about having Angelica tailed when she left school, but he didn't want to risk alerting the angels to his presence. He didn't want to spook them and have them disappear. They hadn't made his tracking easy at all. The only reason he had found out where Angelica attended school was because of his friendship with John.

Thankfully, Roman had done something right, after all, and wasn't worthless like his father. Julius smirked at the thought of his twin brother, Julian, who had chosen to deny their family heritage and hadn't wanted anything to do with the bounty hunter lifestyle. Julian had insisted that he would make his own destiny, while Julius had been the opposite.

He was happy to finally feel like he was needed and important. Even though they were twins, he had always been in Julian's shadow. Julian was the best at everything, and everyone loved him. Even though Julian hadn't followed the bounty hunter life like their line of fathers, his father had still praised him and put him on a pedestal.

When their father died, Julius had thought that maybe he and Julian could be the brothers they were meant to be, now that their father couldn't interfere in their relationship, but he was wrong. His father had arranged for Julian to have power of attorney over the family fortune and to delegate it to Julius as he saw fit. Julian even had the nerve to agree with his father's actions.

Julius knew his father had thought of him as irresponsible and selfish, but he didn't need his father's money, he had accrued a nice fortune of his own from tracking. What had infuriated him was that once again he was being treated as an imbecile and not as one of the greatest trackers the century had ever seen.

He had learned long ago that there was no such thing as earning respect, you had to take it, and that was why he had concocted the plan to get rid of his worthless brother. John had helped him carry out his plan. He and John shared a lot of the same traits and characteristics, which was why they were best friends.

John was just as greedy and ambitious as him. When he had asked John to kill his brother, and in return, he would reward him with Julian's school, John didn't hesitate. Unlike Julius, John had come from a life of poverty and Julius knew that he would do everything in his power not to live that type of lifestyle again. Ownership of the school gave him abundant wealth and a status that he would not have been able to achieve on his own.

When Julius received the news of his brother and his family being in a fatal car accident, of course, he hadn't been surprised, but he was surprised to hear that Roman was not in the car. Roman was at a fencing tournament when the accident occurred. John had offered to finish Roman off too, but Julius had thought that would look suspicious and he didn't feel like the boy was a threat to him. Instead, he had become Roman's guardian, enrolled him at John's school, so that John could keep an eye on him and went on with his life.

For the first time since the accident, he was grateful Roman had lived. He had known it would be extremely difficult to find out the girl's whereabouts, but he didn't think for one minute it would be as easy as Roman had just made it. He had indeed underestimated Roman. Julius had thought he was too caught up in his misery and loneliness to pursue a girl, lest the most beautiful girl in the school. He guessed Roman had proved him wrong. Maybe Roman did have some bounty hunter blood in him, after all.

He grabbed his jacket and headed out of the door, smiling at the thought of the wealth he was about to acquire once he turned the girl over to her father. As he hopped into his Ferrari, his cell phone rang in his pocket. He looked at his phone, smiling at Roman's text telling him not to come. He ignored the text and hopped in his car to pay a long-overdue visit.