I was so incredibly lucky to have Imogen as an admin and as a friend. I doubted she could sweeten the bitterness of the pill that my life had become, but I would be happy to take her with me when I opened my new law office.
Her surname was Klein, though. I didn’t know why she was bringing one of my favorite composers into the conversation.
It was a mystery for another time. For now, I had briefs to look at and a life to drag myself through.
Half an hour of not really being able to concentrate later, there was a knock on my office doorframe. I glanced up with a smile, expecting to see Imogen again…but it was my dad.
“Junior,” Dad greeted me with his usual frosty demeanor.
“Have I done something wrong?” I replied, not bothering to correct his use of the name I hated.
“No, not this time,” Dad said.
And then he did something that made my skin crawl.
He smiled.
“You should be preparing for your lunch date with Gretchen Montgomery,” he said, checking his watch.
I sighed and sat back in my chair. I wasn’t going to ask him how he knew I was going out to lunch with one of his list of omegas. He’d probably already ordered at the bistro where I would be meeting her.
“This work can wait for later,” he said, as if I’d told him I had work to do before I left.
I said nothing, just looking up at him, waiting for him to tell me whatever it was he’d come all the way down to my office to say.
“You need to eat more,” he said, which surprised me. “You’ve lost too much weight.”
In my head, I answered, “No shit. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I can’t think after you ripped me away from my omega.”
Outwardly, I just stared at him.
“I’ll tell Dr. Lawrence to prescribe you some anti-depressants. Your mother takes lithium, but I’m not sure that’s right for you.”
“Are you a physician now as well as a lawyer and a senator?” I asked, not trying to hide my contempt for him. “Does your planto keep me in line with your image of a happy, perfect family involve keeping me drugged up, like you do Mom?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Dad snapped. “This sullen rebellion is not becoming of a Salisbury.”
Again, I said nothing in response to that. I was tired of fighting with him. He’d spent the last six weeks showing me that I was well and truly fucked. He didn’t get to crush my spirit and then expect me to follow along when he crooked his finger, smiling vacantly and being the perfect prop to his political campaign.
He had Chester Monk to do that now.
A long silence stretched between the two of us. I assumed Dad knew he wasn’t going to get the reaction out of me that he wanted, so he gave up with a small shrug of his shoulders and said, “You should know that Monk is marrying that omega freak ex of his today.”
A bomb could have gone off in my office and I wouldn’t have been more stunned.
Quincy wasmarryingChester Monk?Today?
I just stared at my dad, fighting with everything I had not to let the agony of my heart exploding show on my face. Why would Quincy do that? He definitely wouldn’t marry Monk willingly. I knew my omega too well to doubt that. Quincy had to be under some sort of threat, or, like me with my past and future clients, he was fighting to protect someone from an even greater harm.
Either way, it didn’t matter. He’d won. My dad had destroyed me on the field of battle and won absolutely everything. What was the point of fighting back when he could use his power and influence to convince Quincy to marry Chester Monk?
I stood, stepping calmly to the side, where my coat hung, and reaching for it with shaking hands.
“Well?” Dad said, definitely expecting a reaction from me.
I sighed as I put my coat on, then turned to him with a shrug.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “That this kills me? That I’m devastated? Well, I am. But you’ve bludgeoned me over and over again, in the last six weeks and in my whole life, with the knowledge that you control me completely and there’s not a damn thing I can do to resist.”
