Chapter 17
The armored SUV waited in the shadow of abandoned warehouses, rain drumming against bulletproof glass. I settled into the leather interior, and my body registered the night's toll all at once. Blood stained my tactical gear, Hardin's mingled with my own, and exhaustion gnawed at my edges.
"Reid will oversee the cleanup personally, sir," my driver informed me, his expression blank in the rearview mirror. "He estimates no traces will remain within the hour."
I nodded. "Take us to the extraction point."
The vehicle pulled away from the facility where Hardin's body cooled on laboratory tiles.
I loosened the tactical vest crushing my ribs.
Vancouver's nightscape blurred outside rain-streaked windows, neon reflecting across wet pavement.
For the first time since the interrogation began, my thoughts returned to Cincinnati, to the penthouse, to Maxime.
I missed him. Not just his operational competence or his tactical mind, but his physical presence. The scent of his skin. The weight of him against me. Three decades of professional distance had never prepared me for the hollow ache of wanting someone near.
Once we reached the secluded airstrip where our jet waited, I pulled out my secure phone. It would be early morning in Cincinnati by now, and Maxime answered on the first ring.
"Algerone." My name in his mouth sounded like a prayer, rough with exhaustion and something deeper than the crisp professional greeting he'd used for thirty-two years. "Are you safe?"
The concern in his voice stripped away my professional armor more effectively than any weapon. This wasn't my COO inquiring about an operation. This was the man who had waited three decades for my touch.
"I'm whole. Tired. Blood on my clothes. Nothing fatal."
His breath caught through the phone. "I've been at the office since the board meeting ended. Couldn't sleep, so I came in to manage the fallout." A pause. "I keep checking the secure line for updates. I'm sorry. I don't mean to hover."
The hesitation reminded me how new this was, how fragile. Just hours ago, I'd told him this didn't mean forgiveness, that the debt remained outstanding. Yet here we were, thousands of miles apart, and the careful distance we'd maintained for decades had somehow become unbearable.
"Have you eaten?" I asked.
"Does coffee count?" A soft laugh. "Pathetic, isn't it? Thirty-two years of discipline, and a few days of having you has ruined me."
"Not pathetic." I stared at the rain battering the windows. "I feel it too."
Silence stretched between us. Decades of professional partnership had given us a thousand ways to discuss strategy, but no language for this.
"Hardin's dead," I said finally. "She gave us what we needed first."
"Good." No judgment in his voice and no hesitation. Just acceptance of what I'd done, of what I'd always done. "And you're unharmed?"
"Some bruises. Nothing serious." I shifted, and white-hot pain knifed through my damaged leg. "The prototype's in Macau. Shaw's planning an auction in two weeks."
"We'll get it back." Calm certainty filled his voice. This was Maxime, confident and capable, believing in me with a devotion that still caught me off guard sometimes. "Come home, and we'll plan the next move together."
Home meant anywhere he waited for me, not the penthouse or Spade Tower.
"Shaw knows about my past," I said, the truth slipping out before I could stop it. "Not just the public narrative. He's been digging deeper."
"I know." His voice softened. " Our sources confirmed he's been investigating your background for months. Castellanos gave us enough to start unraveling Shaw's intelligence operation."
The rain intensified outside, sheets of water cascading down the windows. I leaned back and let my armor crack open in ways I permitted with no one else.
"Jackson James Wheeler," I said, and the name tasted foreign after decades of disuse. "He's telling people about the trailer park. About my origins."
Maxime scoffed. "He thinks painting you as 'trailer trash' will undermine confidence in Lucky Losers. Thinks your origins make you vulnerable."
"I wonder how deep he's gone." My mind drifted to darker corners. "If he's found out about Shane."
Suddenly, I wasn't in the SUV anymore but back in that trailer, seventeen years old again.
Rain hammered the metal roof while the sour reek of cigarettes and stale beer soaked every surface.
Shane sprawled in his recliner with crushed cans scattered around his feet.
The TV blared some rerun of Coach, laugh track too loud, his belly laugh even louder when he caught me flinching as he raised his hand.
His face contorted with rage as his knuckles connected with my cheekbone, and the familiar copper taste of blood filled my mouth.
King, loyal King, bared his teeth and inserted himself between us with a growl I'd never heard from him before.
"That fucking mutt..." Shane snarled.
The Louisville Slugger appeared in his hands, and what followed came in quick succession: a crack, a thud, a whimper from the dog I loved more than anything in that godforsaken trailer.
Rage flooded every cell in my body. The bat was suddenly in my hands, heavy and solid, and I swung it with surprising ease. Shane's skull made a sound I'd never forget.
His eyes changed from angry to afraid, and a strange calm settled over me as rain drummed overhead. Blood splattered across the TV screen while the canned laughter continued as if nothing had happened.
"That would be harder to uncover," Maxime said, pulling me back to the present. "No body was ever found. No investigation connected you to his disappearance."
"But there were questions." My fingers tightened around the phone.
"The local police interviewed me. People in town talked.
The official story was that Shane had left town, but there were always suspicions.
Someone might remember. There might be notes in old police files, preliminary reports from when he was first reported missing.
" I let the thought hang between us. "If it gets out I killed my stepfather. .."
"It won't change anything," Maxime said. "If anything, it humanizes you. Shows you were capable of defending yourself even then."
"I didn't kill him in self-defense." The admission came easily for Maxime, who already knew the worst of me.
"I killed him because once I started hitting him, I couldn't stop.
I wanted to keep going. I wanted to erase him completely.
For everything he'd done to me, but especially for what he did to King. "
"You were seventeen. And you'd taken beatings for years without fighting back. What he did to King was just the final straw."
"If Shaw knows that part of my history, he'll use it." The possibility tasted bitter. "Paint me as unstable. Dangerous. A violent child who grew into a violent man."
"Shaw fundamentally misunderstands what drives you," Maxime replied.
"He thinks exposing the violence in your past will undermine confidence in your leadership.
He doesn't realize that everyone already knows Algerone Caisse-Etremont is dangerous.
It's why they trust you with their security contracts. "
"According to Hardin, Shaw thinks of me as 'trailer trash who reinvented himself.' Says I crawled out of the gutter on the backs of better men."
"Then he's already lost." Ice crept into his tone. "The nobody from Oklahoma built an empire that makes governments tremble. That scared little boy became a man even Shaw fears enough to target. What could be more impressive than that?"
"I miss you," I said, and regretted it immediately. The admission revealed too much.
His breath caught. "I haven't stopped thinking about you since you left. About what we did on the plane."
"Good." I let the word land hard, reclaiming control. "You should be thinking about it."
"I still have the bruises." His voice dropped lower. "I press on them sometimes."
"To remind yourself who you belong to?"
"To remind myself it was real." A pause. "Part of me keeps waiting for it to disappear."
"It won't disappear," I said. "But don't mistake it for absolution."
"I know." No self-pity in his tone. Just acceptance. "I never have."
There was a long pause.
"The board meeting went mostly as planned,” Maxime said eventually.
“Patterson actually approached me privately afterward to assure me that your 'personal affairs' were irrelevant compared to keeping the company secure.
I showed them the intelligence we'd gathered about their own indiscretions.
The mistresses. The offshore accounts. The recreational drug use.
Amazing what people think remains private in the digital age.
Then I reminded them of Lucky Losers' reach.
How easily accidents can be arranged when necessary. "
"You threatened the entire board?"
"I protected what matters." Simple certainty rang in his words. "They understand now that your personal life is inviolable. That any attempt to weaponize it will be met with overwhelming force."
"And Shaw's infiltrators?"
"We've identified seven in total, ranging from security personnel to one of the executive assistants on the Diamond level.
I've personally interrogated the security contractor who installed the cameras.
" Dark satisfaction colored his tone again.
"The others are being held for questioning once I've finished dealing with the immediate crisis.
The security team has already started preliminary work. "
My chest tightened at the thought of him confronting traitors alone. "You'll conduct the remaining interrogations yourself?"
"Yes." Pride slipped into his voice. "I want to look in their eyes when they realize who they've betrayed. I learned from the best, after all."
The image of Maxime, elegant and precise in his thousand-dollar suits and immaculate appearance, conducting brutal interrogations on my behalf ignited something primitive in my chest.
"I wish I could have seen that. You, making them talk."
"Next time, I'll record it for you." The promise carried equal parts tenderness and threat. "You might be surprised at how effective I can be."
"I'm never surprised by your effectiveness, Maxime. It's why I've kept you by my side for thirty-two years." I paused. "It's why I need you."
His sharp intake of breath told me he understood the significance. Algerone Caisse-Etremont needed no one, had built his life around needing no one. Yet here I was, confessing dependence to the one man who'd never used my vulnerabilities against me.
"I need you too," he whispered, and then more carefully: "Come back safely."
"I will. By this evening, if the flight goes smoothly." I glanced at my watch. "I want you to get some rest."
"Of course." A pause. "And after?"
"Afterward, we'll see." I let the ambiguity hang between us. "But I expect you at the penthouse tonight. We have unfinished business."
"Yes, sir."
The formal address stirred something in me that had no place in a phone call conducted from an airstrip in Vancouver. Even now, even after everything that had changed between us, that word in his mouth still carried the weight of three decades of submission disguised as professionalism.
"Nothing could change this," he said. "Not distance. Not Shaw. Not the past. I've been yours for thirty-two years, Algerone. The only difference now is that you've finally claimed what was always waiting for you."
I ended the call and stared out at the rain.
I thought about the mother I'd believed dead, about the past Shaw thought could destroy me, about the man waiting for me in Cincinnati.
The skinny boy from Oklahoma had come a long way and had transformed himself into someone who mattered, someone who commanded respect and fear.
Yet, for all the power I'd accumulated, for all the empire I'd built, the thing I found myself most eager to return to wasn't Spade Tower or Lucky Losers' global reach. It was a man who had spent thirty-two years showing devotion in ways I'd been too blind to recognize.