Page 14 of Claimed By the Silver Fox

I draw my lip back in disdain. “You can’t really believe that,” I retort. “Salamanca, that bastard⁠—”

“Don’t talk about him like that,” he snaps back at me. “He’s shown me more respect than you ever have.”

“What the hell do you mean⁠—”

“You’ve been keeping me away from this business for too long,” he tells me, voice dropping to an icy coolness, each word clearly rehearsed carefully as if he wants me to hear each and every one. “And I’m done pretending that I don’t belong here.”

“You would have belonged here, if you had taken the time to learn.” I pinch the bridge of my nose between my fingers. “But you were always reckless, son. And reckless, in this business⁠—”

“You’re telling me you’ve never made a call against the wire?” he shoots back. “Never done anything because you had to, not because you wanted to? I don’t believe you, Dad⁠—”

“No, but the difference is, I trained myself to know exactly what I needed to do in order to trust those instincts,” I reply through gritted teeth, doing my level fucking best to keep my temper in hand no matter how much I want to lash back at him right now. “And you never took the time. Too busy drinking, partying⁠—”

“Too busy seeing that there was a world outside you, you mean,” he replies dismissively. “People who would actually understand that I knew what I was doing, and give me the respect I deserved.”

“You think Salamanca respects you?” I snap back. “He’s using you, Andreo. And when it turns out that you don’t have everything he needs⁠—”

“What makes you think I’m going to fail him?” he says. “See, you don’t even trust me now…it’s why I could never stick it out there, Dad. You were always going to see me as less-than. Never ready. Always finding some excuse to prove that I wasn’t good enough for your precious business.”

I fall silent. I want to argue with him, but I get the feeling that he’s going to deflect every attempt, push back and make me feel like a fool for even imagining I could convince him otherwise.

“Fuck, I thought getting engaged would be enough to show you I was serious about settling down,” he goes on. “But you just treated it like play-acting. Like I was pretending to be an adult, instead of proving myself to you. And if that wasn’t enough to convince you⁠—”

“I never asked for you to be married,” I say angrily. “I never asked for anything from you. But if you wanted to be part of this business, if you had serious interest in proving yourself to me⁠—”

“You think I didn’t try?” he hisses furiously, his composure dropping away in an instant. “You think I didn’t try to show you what I was willing to do? That’s your fucking problem, Dad, you can’t see past the end of your own fucking nose, and you’re so self-obsessed that you would never let your grip on that business loosen!”

“You turned on me, and now you’re acting like I should have trusted you?” I say, incredulous. “Listen to yourself right now, you sound crazy⁠—”

“No, I don’t,” he says. “I’ve never been thinking more clearly. And besides, even if I had married her, seems like you had more of an interest in her than I did, huh?”

A cold rush passes along my spine. “What the hell does that mean?”

He snorts again. “You think I wouldn’t find out?” he snarls, and I can hear him leaning closer to the phone, clearly so angry he can’t hold it back. “You married her, Dad. When I left her, you married her. Were you always waiting for the chance, or were you going to just wait till she was in the house and try to make a move on her then?”

I want to argue with him, but God knows, after what happened last night, I don’t have a leg to stand on.

“Come on, admit it, you always wanted her,” he taunts me. “I saw the way you looked at her, you were just waiting for your chance to⁠—”

“I did what I had to do to keep her safe!” I shoot back, finally unable to hold myself back any further. “You walked out on her, you knew that would leave her without protection—you knew it would put her at risk, but you were too selfish to⁠—”

“So what, you married her just out of the goodness of your heart?” He laughs. “You expect me to believe that bullshit? I don’t know what kind of shit you spun to her, but you can’t convince me of the same thing.”

“Because I didn’t want an innocent girl getting caught up in this with no protection, which you know damn well would have happened if she hadn’t gone through with the wedding,” I remind him. “Anyone close to us is a target, Andreo, and you know that. You walking away from her like that, it wouldn’t change what people thought of her—the risk she was taking. Marrying her was the only way to ensure that⁠—”

“That you got your dick wet.”

“Jesus, Andreo, listen to yourself!” I yell. “You think I would do something like that?”

“I think that you married her, so there must be something you’re getting out of this whole arrangement,” he replies. “And forgive me if it’s such a fucking stretch to think that you would fuck her after you married her. Tell me, is she there right now? Playing at being the good little wife?”

I clench my teeth. Anything more, and I know he will use it to prove to himself that I’m a traitor. Not to mention, I’m skirting dangerously close to the truth, and the last thing I want is for him to figure out that he’s right in any of this. I need to make sure I don’t give him more than I already have, more than I want him to. I can already picture his face, triumphant, no doubt glad to get off his chest everything that he’s been holding back for so long.

“You don’t respect me,” he continues. “You couldn’t, not going after her like that.”

He doesn’t even say her name. It’s as though she’s nothing more than an object to him, a thing he used to get what he wants, and now that it has failed, he can cast her aside as though she never mattered in the first place.

I regret the call. I want to hang up the fucking phone, but I know it would only serve as proof to him that he was right all along—that he can’t trust me, and that I will lie and cheat and twist his words until I can get what I want.