Schubert turned back to give us an apologetic look.
That was the only sympathy either of us got.
“God only knows what the fallout from this will be,” Amelia went on, rubbing her forehead. She glanced up at Jack and said, “Obviously, I can’t do anything about you, Mr. Salisbury, but Quincy, I’m afraid you’re fired.”
“What? Amelia, no! I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” I said, tipping over into full tears. “Please.”
Amelia held up her hand, looking like I’d just ripped her heart out. “I’m sorry, Quincy, but there’s no way I can justifyyour continued employment at The Grand Hotel after that display. Please go upstairs and clean out your desk.”
“But this is Salisbury’s doing,” I cried, even as Jack tugged me into his arms. “He’s the bad guy. He’s the evil one. What he’s doing will hurt so many people. I just tried to bring it to light.”
“On company time, at a hotel event,” Amelia pointed out, her eyes red-rimmed and glassy, too. “I’m sorry, Quincy, but that’s my final decision. Even if I wanted to defend your actions, which I do, the board would never let me keep you on.”
“But—”
“I’m sorry,” Amelia said, then turned to walk away, holding a hand to her mouth, like she was trying to stop herself from crying, too.
I glanced desperately up at Jack, feeling like my entire world was falling apart.
Jack hugged me tightly, then let me go.
“I’m not going to let him get away with this,” he said. “I’m not going to let either of them hurt you like this ever again.”
With a quick kiss to my forehead, he turned and stormed back into the conference room.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Jack
Iwas beyond livid. It didn’t matter that Quincy had been the one to disrupt Monk’s presentation or that German had failed to stand up for us when he’d said he would. At the end of the day, neither of them was responsible for the anguish tearing my omega apart or the suffocating sense that I was trapped in a life I didn’t choose.
There were only two people to blame for everything destroying my life and Quincy’s, and they were standing casually by the side of the stage as the audience broke up and moved on to the next scheduled event. My dad and Chester Monk were the root of all evil, and they would pay for what they had done.
That was a nice sentiment, but all the righteous anger in the world wasn’t enough to cause me to be rude to the eager group of young people who had gathered around Monk, presumably to ask questions about his shady app. I came to a stop several feet away from him and my father, shifting restlessly with all the built-up energy inside me.
I glanced over my shoulder, checking for Quincy, but my sweet, wronged omega was nowhere to be seen. I had thought he was behind me, but apparently he’d never stepped back into the conference room. Without a bond, I didn’t have any sense of where he was, whether he was still out in the hall or if he’d sprinted out of the hotel and into the ocean.
I was about to give up on confronting my father and go after him when my dad’s voice right beside me said, “I hope you’re proud of what you’ve done here today.”
I whipped back around, eyes wide, to find him glaring at me with utter disgust.
“I’m very proud of what I’ve done,” I told him, keeping my voice lower than I wanted it to be, since there were still other people in the room. “I’ve stood up for my omega and fought for him.”
My dad made a sound that was something between a dismissive sniff and revulsion. “That omega is beyond damaged goods. I’ve learned all about him from Monk. He is a piece of refuse that should be in an institution.”
“Quincy is a good, brilliant man who was forced to undergo a procedure with catastrophic consequences,” I told my dad. “Forced to undergo it by that man there.”
Monk had finished his chat with his eager fans and glanced up as I pointed at him. He turned downright green for a moment, looked around as if wishing more people would come talk to him as a shield or that he could make a run for it. He was out of luck, though, and moved cautiously forward when my dad stared at him like a master telling his dog to heel.
“What this man did was unconscionable,” I said, glaring at Monk. “And if everything I have learned in the past few days is true, he is an unscrupulous bastard who would do anything for money and power.”
“And you wouldn’t?” Monk threw at me.
I pulled myself to my full height and said, “No, I wouldn’t,” with all the certainty in the world. I focused on my dad and said, “I’m not like you and I never have been. I don’t care about fortune and position. I hate the world I was raised in and all the stupid, vapid rules and standards that our people have. I don’t care about status or who outranks who in the social order. I only care about helping people, helping my omega.”
“Oh, you don’t care, do you?” Dad balked, eyes going wide. “You don’t care about the fact that you’ve never wanted for anything in your life? That you were raised in comfort and safety? That you attended the finest university in the country on my dollar and were given a high-ranking position in an established law firm immediately upon graduating?”
I winced, my heart racing and my stomach turning. “I couldn’t help any of those things. I had no choice in who I was born to or how you chose to raise me.”
