"I want a private security firm at the apartment. Twenty-four hours minimum until we have a better read on his next move."
"Already on it." Amos holds up his phone. "I texted the firm we used for the Philadelphia office opening. They can have someone at the building by this afternoon."
I look at him for a moment, this man who wrote the transition plan and arranged security and tracked the money for three years and is still standing here with his pine and cedar scent steady despite everything, like a forest that refuses to burn. I want him in the car with me. I want both of them in the same room where I can see them and smell them and know that the man who just walked out of this boardroom can't reach either one.
"Go finish the paperwork." My voice deepens, some of my Alpha bleeding into my words. "I'm going to check on Mattaniah."
Amos' hand drops from my elbow. "Tell him I'll be home by dinner. Tell him I'm making dinner."
The drive to the apartment takes twenty minutes in midday traffic. I spend the first ten replaying Father's exit. The next ten I spend with my hands tight on the steering wheel, my bond markthrobbing in a way it hasn't since the first day after the bonding, the kind of ache that means my Omega is too far away and my body knows it. Amos should be in this car. We should be going home together. But someone has to hold the company together while it changes hands, and Amos has always been the one who holds things together.
Mattaniah is at the door when I walk in. He's standing in the entryway with his arms crossed over his chest, and the first thing that hits me is his scent. The coconut has gone sharp, almost bitter, cut through with the woody undertone that surfaces when he's been anxious for hours. The apartment smells like it, like he's been pacing and leaking distress into the walls since we left this morning.
"Is it over?" His voice is careful.
"He's out. The vote carried twelve to two." I set my bag down by the door. "Garrett named me interim CEO. Amos is CFO."
His arms loosen half an inch. The relief hits the bond like a wave, and his shoulders drop with it. The coconut in his scent softens, just slightly, the bitterness receding.
"Interim CEO." He uncrosses his arms. "You got what you wanted."
The words carry weight. He's not wrong. The scheme worked and the company is ours.
"The vote should feel like a win but it doesn't."
"Why not?"
"Because you're standing six feet away from me with your arms crossed and I put you there." My voice drops an octave "My Omega won't let me touch him because I earned that too."
His mouth opens and closes as something shifts in the bond, the anger sharing space with something that makes my mark throb.
"He walked out quietly." Mattaniah says it as a statement. "That's what's scaring you."
"Yes."
"You think he's going to do something."
"I know he's going to do something. Father doesn't lose. He regroups and retaliates against whoever matters most to the person who beat him."
Mattaniah's hand drops to his throat. His fingers brush the bond marks. "You means me."
"Amos is arranging security. A private firm, round the clock, until we know what his move is."
"You really think he'd try something? After being removed by the board? With everything documented?"
"Father spent eighteen months stealing from his own company without considering the possibility someone would catch him." I hold his gaze. "His risk assessment is not the same as other people's."
The apartment is quiet around us. Amos is still at the office, and the apartment feels wrong without his pine cutting through the leather and coconut, like a chord missing its middle note. The afternoon light comes through the living room windows at a low angle that catches the purple of Mattaniah's bond marks above his collar.
He takes one step toward me, closing the six feet to five, his arms at his sides instead of crossed. The bond tells me what that step costs him.
His hand reaches out, his fingers threading through mine. The contact after five days of nothing sends a jolt through the bond mark on my chest that makes my vision blur.
"Your hands are shaking." He says it quietly, looking down at our joined fingers.
"I know."
"The big scary CEO is shaking."
