Chapter 16

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Victor

I 'd gotten a good vibe from Mason Canton when I'd crashed his pool party to apologize for my uncle's actions a few months ago, and that feeling was confirmed as I spelled out the situation with Victory Holdings to him across his kitchen table. Mason understood how major companies worked, and he had a few, strong suggestions for how to proceed.

One of those suggestions involved the possibility of the two of us working together, in the event that Victory Holdings dissolved into smaller companies. I didn't hate the idea.

Part of me had hoped to open further discussions about an entirely new business venture with Mason, particularly since it could be argued we'd be keeping it in the family, albeit a new, different, and probably better family. But Vivien's call tossed a bomb in all that.

"What do you mean that I'm a dead man?" I demanded, reaching one hand instinctively to Simon, who knelt so beautifully and obediently by my side. "What did your father say to you?"

Vivien huffed impatiently. There was a lot of loud, vague background noise to her call, so I almost didn't catch her reaction.

"He said you're dead to him," she clarified. Even though that potentially meant something entirely different from just being a dead man, I didn't relax. "Did you kidnap another omega?" she demanded, as impatient as ever.

"I never kidnapped the first one," I said, glancing across to where Hayden sat on Mason's lap. "That was entirely Colin Gregory's doing, but with Uncle Vincent's full knowledge and assistance."

"I can't tell if you're blaming my father for something criminal or not, but I also don't care," Vivien said. "The only thing I care about is whether you or my dad is trying to blow up Victory Holdings. It's my company, too, and I won't let you two men ruin it because you're in some dick-measuring contest."

My brow flew up. On the one hand, I was offended by her characterization of the situation. On the other, it gave me hope, because she didn't seem to be on Uncle Vincent's side more than mine.

It wasn't really the right time, but I decided to lay things out on the table.

"Look, Vivien, your father is involved in some bad shit," I said. "He's been steering the company in a direction that neither of us want it to go in for a while. As soon as I figured out his intent, I started trying to wrestle it back from the brink."

"All of which means nothing to me if my deposits stop coming in," Vivien snapped.

"They would definitely stop coming in if Victory Holdings ended up being investigated by federal agencies for fraud and racketeering," I snapped right back.

Vivien was silent for a while, which I took as a good sign.

"I'm on a plane right now, heading back to Barrington," she said at length. "I don't trust the two of you to sort this out on your own. I'm going to get to the bottom of this and I am going to protect my interests."

Another shoot of hope sprouted in me.

"Where are you right now?" I asked, leaning into the table, where my phone sat face up so everyone could hear the conversation.

"About thirty-five thousand feet in the air above the ocean," Vivien replied. "And about two hours out from Barrington."

"Okay, Vivien, listen to me," I said, bracing myself for the biggest gamble of this entire situation. "Please, do me this one favor. Instead of coming here to Barrington, land in Norwalk instead. I'll pick you up at the executive airport and explain the whole situation to you. I don't know what your father has told you, but I can just about guarantee it's either false or misleading."

"How do I know you're not the one telling me lies to get your own way?" Vivien demanded.

I rubbed a hand over my face, more frustrated than I wanted to be. At the same time, I felt a pulse of Simon's hopeful calm reaching into me, giving me strength and keeping my head clear.

"You don't," I told Vivien. "You just have to trust me. Have I ever lied to you before? Have I ever led you in the wrong direction?"

"You've never led me anywhere," Vivien replied, more thought than annoyance in her voice.

"Exactly," I said. "I've let you do your own thing, have as much or as little involvement in the workings of Victory Holdings as you've wanted, and I haven't questioned you or judged you for any of it."

Again, Vivien was silent for a long time.

Finally, she sighed and said, "I'll meet you at Norwalk Executive Airport. I'll give you the time that the drive back to Barrington takes to tell me your side of the story. And then I'll talk to my father and see whose version of all this I believe more."

"Thank you," I said, heavy with relief.

Vivien had already ended the call, which was typical Vivien.

"Yeesh," Hayden said, eyeing my phone as if it might be as toxic as Vivien herself. "She's a peach, isn't she."

"She is who she is," I sighed, leaning back in my chair and resting a hand on Simon's head for comfort.

"Will she side with your uncle and help him get rid of you or will she see sense and truth?" Mason asked.

"I honestly don't know," I said.

We were all silent for a few seconds as each of us absorbed the content of the call and the bigger picture of the situation we were all in. It was such a confused, monumental jumble of family feud and cold, corporate maneuvering that I didn't know how to even begin to tackle the mess.

My emotions were tugged in an entirely different direction when Simon lay his head on my thigh, glancing up at me with sweet trust. That simple gesture sent my heart ricocheting around my chest.

I smiled at him, resting my hand on his cheek and stroking the side of his face for a moment, then brushing back his hair with my fingers. I wished he were naked so I could soothe myself by looking at his beauty. I didn't even need to fuck him, necessarily, although I'd never say no to burying myself in him. I just needed Simon's calm, innocent, devoted presence to give me strength.

I'd almost forgotten we weren't alone when Mason spoke.

"You're going to need to leave for Norwalk almost immediately if you want to get to the airport around the time your cousin does. If she's two hours out from Barrington, she'll almost definitely get there before you, one way or another."

I drew in a breath and pulled my eyes away from Simon.

"You're right," I said. "Fortunately, there won't be much traffic at this time of night, but it'll still be a drive."

"You should take our car," Hayden said, sitting suddenly straighter.

Simon lifted his head and glanced across at his brother with a frown. "Your car? Won't you need it?"

"Not tonight," Hayden said. "But if the police are looking for you, if they think Victor has kidnapped you, they'll be out searching for Victor's car, and they'll probably be watching the road to Norwalk."

"You're right," I said, the truth of that dropping like a stone in my gut. I turned to Mason and said, "I don't want to force you to get involved in this when it isn't your problem."

Mason shook his head. "You're family now." He glanced to Simon with a soft look, then back to me. "Family sticks together."

They were the simplest words, but they hit me so hard. I was fighting bitterly with one family in a battle with the highest stakes I could imagine, but fate had just handed me an entirely different, and apparently much healthier, stronger family. Suddenly, I didn't care about Victory Holdings half as much as I had just days before.

If it fell apart, it wouldn't have been the worst thing in the world. I would have to keep fighting for Vivien's sake. It would be important to hold on long enough to change all the non-compete rules and clauses that Uncle Vincent had built into the company, probably for this day, which he'd known would come. But once the whole thing was dead, I would happily move on to sunnier shores.

"If you're sure you're okay with us taking your car," I said, looking at Mason across the table.

Hayden jumped off his lap and ran to grab a set of keys from the kitchen counter.

"Here," he said, bringing them back to me. "Take it and go. Um, there's a car seat in the back, but I think it's fine to leave it there. We don't have to take Junior anywhere anytime soon."

That decided it. I got up, pulling Simon to his feet with me, and accepted the keys from Hayden. Together, the four of us headed outside to the driveway.

"I'm sure the police will track your car here eventually," Mason said, nodding to my SUV. "When they do, we'll explain everything to them."

"I hope it helps," I said, doubting it would resolve everything.

Mason seemed surer. "I have a friend on the force," he said. "I might call in a favor to see if we can get the police side of this mess sorted for you."

"I'd be grateful," I said, even though gratitude didn't cover it.

By pure chance, Mason and Hayden's car was an SUV with a lot of the same features as mine. It was a different make, so the controls weren't in exactly the spots I was used to, but by the time I drove out to the entrance to the west-bound highway, I had the hang of it enough to drive as though I was used to the car.

"Hayden really needs to do a better job of keeping things clean," Simon said, twisted to gaze into the back seat.

I grinned, glad for the tiny distraction from everything pressing down on me. "Something tells me you're more of a neat freak," I said.

Simon settled back into his seat, facing forward, but grinned at me. "I might be."

"Good," I nodded. "I like my space kept neat as well. I'll expect you to keep everything clean, in my Barrington apartment, my Norwalk apartment, and my condo on the beach down in the islands."

I felt Simon tense in anticipation before he said, "Does this mean…does it mean that you want me to stay with you from here on out?"

I laughed, stealing a glance at him before making the turn onto the mountain stretch of the highway that would take us straight to Norwalk.

"We're bonded now, boy," I said. "Not only do I want you near me at all times, I might start keeping you on a leash to represent the bond."

"Yes, Master," Simon said, breathless with happiness.

His expression fell, and I felt thoughtfulness from him for a good five minutes before he went on with, "I'm going to have to explain all of this to my parents."

"What do you think they'll say about it?" I asked, curious myself.

Simon let out a breath and leaned back in his seat. "If you had asked me this morning, I would have said they'd be ashamed of me and so, so disappointed. I'd've thought they would rail at you for doing bad things to their son, and they'd try to break us up."'

"And now?" I asked.

Simon smiled. "I had a great talk with Hayden. I honestly didn't know our parents were kinky, too."

"That's what you meant by DNA," I said, remembering the tail end of that conversation.

"Yeah," Simon said, relaxing even more. "Which makes me think that maybe, just maybe, they'll actually get it. They won't judge me. Not even for wanting to be your slave."

"You're lucky to have such a wonderful, understanding family," I said, reaching across to rest a hand on Simon's knee. I glanced in the rearview mirror as I did, noticing a pair of headlights coming up behind us at a fast speed. "I wish I could say the same."

"You do have an understanding family," Simon said with a smile for me. "You have me."

I tried something new. I reached for him through our bond, sending gratitude and love to him, along with something I hoped he'd feel physically.

Simon sucked in a breath, a look of wonder coming across his face that told me he had felt it. More than that, I felt a tentative stroke through our new bond that told me he was testing things out as well.

It was beautiful and exciting, and I wanted to play with it more, but I was distracted by the headlights in the rear-view mirror. The other car was approaching us so fast that it made me tense.

I expected the car to veer off into the left-hand lane once it reached us, but it didn't. It drove right up on our tail, so close I thought it was going to ram right into us. I was surprised when it didn't, but when it continued to tailgate us at high speed.

"What's going on?" Simon asked, twisting to look over his shoulder out the back window.

"Hang on," I ordered him. "Make sure your seatbelt is tight."

Simon whipped to face forward, checking his seatbelt, then leaning a bit to the side to look through his side mirror.

I kept one eye on the road in front of me as it twisted and turned treacherously through the mountains and one eye on the rearview mirror. Within seconds, I was sure the car behind us wasn't a random vehicle that also happened to be driving to Norwalk in the middle of the night.

"Hang on," I told Simon, glancing around at everything, the road, the car behind us, the navigation map on the dashboard console, looking for a way out of the danger that had just snuck up on us.

It really was the worst stretch of road to end up in some kind of high-speed pursuit, but I supposed that was the point. The road twisted around cliffs and edged long drops. It was wide enough that I could avoid most of them, but one wrong move at the wrong time and we ran the risk of driving right off the side of a cliff and rolling down a steep hill into the forest.

The car behind us knew that. When I refused to be intimidated by them nearly ramming us from behind, they switched to the left-hand lane and drove until they were right beside us. I had a brief glimpse of a man dressed in black wearing a black cap in the driver's seat before he jerked his car right into us.

It took every ounce of calm and control I had not to instinctively veer to get away from whoever it was. We were just about to reach another of the more dangerous curves, and I gripped the steering wheel tight.

That didn't stop our pursuer from veering into us again, actually hitting us this time.

"Master!" Simon cried out, grabbing anything he could and bracing himself as the car jumped to the side, far too close to the flimsy guard rail for my liking.

Size was on our side. Mason and Hayden's SUV was large and heavy. The car pursuing us was a sedan. They veered and smacked us again, but as long as I held my nerve, they didn't have the power to push us off the road.

At least, they didn't have the power to push us off the road when we were on one of the straight stretches. There was a bit of curved road ahead that would throw the balance right off.

On a gamble, I put my foot on the gas, speeding up as we approached the sharp curve, heading into it at a speed I never would have in other circumstances. The pursuing car followed, its engine revving loud enough for me to hear, even though we were driving at full speed with the windows up.

Just before we hit the curve, I slowed down quickly, pressing the brake enough so that our pursuer shot ahead of us. He tried to slow down when he saw what I'd done, but as soon as he was more than a car's length in front of us, I shifted into the left-hand lane.

"Look out!" Simon gasped as we hit the hardest part of the curve.

"I've got it," I said, wincing at the force of the curve as I gripped the steering wheel.

The pursuing car wasn't as lucky. He'd gone into the curve too fast, and by the time he tried to make a move, I was in the right position behind him. As he shifted lanes to the right, I moved in behind him. When he tried to get back to the left, I moved behind him again. There was no way I was going to let him get behind us enough to force us off the road.

The cat-and-mouse game continued for a good ten minutes. We passed a few other cars, but maneuvered around them without the dynamic between us changing. I tried the same intimidation tactic on our pursuer that he'd tried on us when we hit a stretch of straighter road as we started to come down from the mountains by driving right up on his tail.

That must have been the final straw for whoever it was. When we neared the next exit, toward the bottom of the western side of the hills, he veered off to exit the highway. A minute later, he was far behind us.

"What was that?" Simon panted, still bracing himself and gripping his seat hard.

"My uncle," I replied with a grim scowl.

It hadn't been him directly, but I knew Uncle Vincent was responsible for whoever it was.

"I don't like your uncle very much," Simon said, loosening up a fraction.

I huffed a humorless laugh. "I don't either," I said. "I don't think whoever that was knew what they were doing," I added. "Someone who knows how to use a car as a weapon wouldn't have given up so easily."

"I'm not sure that makes me feel better," Simon said, wariness radiating at me through the bond.

"It doesn't make me feel better at all," I said.

Uncle Vincent might not have been entirely adept or committed to ending my life to get his way, but he was making an attempt. That was worrying enough.