My mother.His daughter.The woman he’d disowned when she married my father, then exploited for sympathy after she died.
Half my life I’d waited for this moment.Fifteen years of building power, accumulating wealth, positioning chess pieces across a board that spanned continents.All leading to the moment when William Prescott would finally pay for what he’d done.
“Good.”The word came out flat.Empty.Like air escaping a punctured tire.
Viktor paused on the other end of the line.“You sound distracted.”
“I’m fine.”
“The girl?”
My hand tightened on the phone until the plastic creaked.“What about her?”
“You’ve been different.Since the arrangement began.”Viktor’s tone was carefully neutral, the way wolves spoke when they were delivering information that might provoke their superior.“Distracted.Unfocused.Some of the others have noticed.”
The others.Meaning the pack.Meaning wolves who reported to the Pakhan, who would relay any sign of weakness to the Alpha without hesitation.
“If you need assistance managing the situation,” Viktor continued, “I can arrange for someone else to handle the hotel surveillance.Remove the temptation, so to speak.”
“That won’t be necessary.”My voice was ice now, the mask firmly in place.The vor who had clawed his way up from nothing, who answered to no one but the Pakhan himself.“The arrangement is proceeding exactly as planned.”
“Of course.”
He didn’t believe me.The silence stretched between us, heavy with everything unsaid.Viktor knew me too well.He’d watched me build this empire.He knew what I was capable of, and more importantly, what I’d never allowed myself to be.
Vulnerable.Distracted.Compromised by a girl with blue eyes and a spine of steel.
“Keep me updated on the Prescott situation,” I said, and ended the call before he could respond.
The documents spread across my desk should have commanded my attention.Three decades of evidence, sorted into categories.The shell company records tracing my grandfather’s investment in the network of schools where children were sent to disappear.The cover-up files documenting payments to silence parents, correspondence about journalists who’d gotten too close before their accidents.And the personal file.Financial records tracing payments from the senator’s office to the Hughes Hotel, laundered as vendor services.Correspondence proving he knew exactly where I was and chose to leave me there, year after year, while the headmaster’s punishments grew more creative and I learned that no one was coming to save me.
Testimony from former staff members.Receipts.Photographs.Everything I needed to end him.
Some of it would end her too.The hotel’s role in the cover-ups, the money laundered through its accounts.If I released everything, Lena would face investigation.Criminal exposure.The legacy she was fighting to save would become a crime scene.
I’d already decided which files to leak and which to hold back.Protect her while still destroying him.The wolf approved.The strategist in me called it weakness.
I told them both to shut up.
The wolf prowled restlessly through my thoughts, uninterested in paper vengeance.He wanted something else.Someone else.
She’s awake now.I can smell her moving through the manor.Coffee.Toast.She’s in the kitchen with Alice.
I ignored him and kept reading.The same paragraph, three times over.
Alice likes her.Did you know that?Our housekeeper, who barely tolerates anyone, actually likes the little mate we’ve claimed.
She’s not our mate, I snapped back.She’s a business arrangement.A means to an end.
Then why can’t you stop thinking about the way she felt when she came on your fingers?Why can’t you forget the sound she made when you spanked her, that little gasp that went straight to your cock?
I slammed the folder shut.The wolf’s laughter echoed through my skull.
An hour passed.Two.The words blurred together on the page, and I stared at the window instead of the documents.The gardens were white with frost, the morning sun doing nothing to thaw the January cold.Icicles hung from the eaves like frozen tears.
She’d touched my chest.Felt my heart hammering under her palm like a caged animal trying to break free.And instead of recoiling from the monster who’d just degraded her, she’d stepped closer.
I don’t know how to do this, she’d whispered.I don’t know how to give you my body without starting to give you other things.
