Chapter 29 - Dredyn
TWENTY-NINE
DREDYN
I know who it is before I look at the screen. There’s only one person who’d call this early—who’d have the audacity to wake me after the night we just had.
Father.
I let it ring. Once. Twice. Three times, before it goes to voicemail.
Beside me, Mara’s still asleep, curled into Jasper’s chest with Talon’s arm draped over her waist. The three of them are tangled together in the king-sized bed, dead to the world after the adrenaline crash from last night’s escape from D.C.
The phone starts ringing again.
I slip out of bed carefully, trying not to wake them, and grab my phone. The cold January morning seeps through the windows as I pad down the hallway to the kitchen, putting distance between this conversation and the people I’m trying to protect.
I answer on the fourth ring.
“Dredyn. We need to talk.”
“It’s six in the morning.”
“And you’re awake, which means you’ve been expecting my call.”
“We were invited guests—”
“Don’t play stupid with me, boy. You weren’t invited until that little bitch threatened to cause a scene during the swearing-in. Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”
“Attended a dinner?”
“You publicly aligned yourself with a girl who just declared war on her own father. A girl who’s trending worldwide with hashtags calling her a rebel and a traitor. A girl the Syndicate has very specific plans for.”
I grip the phone tighter. “What kind of plans?”
“The kind that don’t involve three college boys thinking they can play hero. End it. Today. All three of you. Cut ties with Mara Black before this gets any worse.”
I grip the phone tighter. “No.”
Silence. Then, “Excuse me?”
“I said no. I’m not ending anything. None of us are.”
“Dredyn—”
“She’s ours, we’re hers, and we’re not hiding it anymore.”
“Do you have any idea what you’ve done? The Syndicate had specific plans for Mara Black.
Her engagement to Chase Harrington wasn’t just political theater, it was strategic positioning.
And now, Chase is missing, she’s publicly aligned with OCK, and you’ve turned her into a liability we can’t control. ”
“Good.”
“This isn’t a game. The Syndicate doesn’t tolerate rebellion, especially not from its own legacy members. You, Jasper, Talon—you’re all sons of the organization. You’re supposed to understand how this works.”
“I understand perfectly. You wanted Mara Black as a controllable asset—a future First Lady you could manipulate through her husband. But Chase is gone, she chose us instead, and now you can’t have her.
That’s what this is really about, isn’t it?
Control. You’re pissed because she slipped through your fingers. ”
“Watch your tone.”
“Or what? You’ll threaten me? Too late. I know what you are, Dad—what the Syndicate is. What you do to girls like Mara when they don’t comply.”
“How long have you known?”
“Long enough.”
“And you said nothing, did nothing. You’re more like me than I thought.”
“I’m nothing like you.”
“No? You kept secrets. You watched and waited and planned. You chose your moment to strike.” Another pause. “That’s exactly what I would do.”
The comparison makes my stomach turn. “The difference is I’m using what I learned to destroy you.”
“Are you? Because from where I’m sitting, you’ve just painted a target on yourself, your friends, and that girl. The Syndicate doesn’t take kindly to rebellion, Dredyn. You know that better than anyone.”
“Let them come.”
“They will—we will. You have forty-eight hours to end this relationship publicly. Issue a statement, cut all contact with Mara Black, and we’ll consider this a youthful indiscretion. Refuse, and there will be consequences. For all of you.”
“What kind of consequences?”
“The permanent kind. I’m trying to save your life, you ungrateful—”
“You’re trying to save your empire, there’s a difference. And I’m going to burn it to the ground.”
“You’re making a mistake.”
“The only mistake I made was waiting this long.”
I hang up before he can respond.
The kitchen door opens behind me and Talon appears, hair disheveled, wearing nothing but gray sweatpants. “Your father?”
“Yeah. He wants us to publicly end things with Mara—issue statements saying we’re just friends. Distance ourselves immediately.”
“Mine said the same thing last night at dinner.” Talon moves to the coffee maker, starting a pot on autopilot. “Told me I was throwing my life away for a girl who’d choose her father’s world over me when it came down to it. Said I had forty-eight hours to walk away or face consequences.”
“Same timeline.”
Jasper emerges from the hallway, phone in hand, face grim. He signs, “Anthony called six times. Left voicemails saying I need to ‘remember my legacy’ and ‘stop disgracing the family name.’ Also forty-eight hours.”
“They’re coordinating—all three fathers giving us the same ultimatum, same deadline. Which means they’re working together on this,” I say.
“Why? I mean, yeah, Mara’s the President’s daughter, but she’s also free from Chase now. Why does the Syndicate care so much about who she’s dating?” Talon asks, pouring coffee into mugs.
“Because it’s not about dating.” Mara’s voice comes from the doorway and we all turn.
She’s wearing one of my T-shirts. “It’s about control.
They had a plan for me—marry Chase, become First Lady eventually, be a puppet they could manipulate.
But that plan required me to be isolated, dependent, and broken down enough to comply. ”
She moves into the kitchen, taking the coffee mug from my hands. “The three of you are the opposite of that plan. You make me stronger. You give me options. You make me impossible to control. That’s why they want you gone.”
“How long have you been listening?” I ask.
“Long enough to hear your father threaten permanent consequences. So what are we going to do about it?”
“We have forty-eight hours. That’s their deadline for us to publicly end things,” Talon says.
“Then we have forty-eight hours to make sure they can’t enforce that deadline,” Mara says.
Jasper signs, “What are you suggesting?”
“I’m suggesting we stop playing their game. They want us to hide? We go public. They want us separated? We make it impossible to separate us. They want to threaten us into compliance? We remove the people making the threats.”
“You’re talking about going after our fathers,” I say slowly.
She crosses her arms. “I’m talking about going after the Syndicate leadership—the people who actually have the power to hurt us. My father is just a puppet, a useful idiot they put in the White House. But Dredyn’s father? James Steele? He’s the real threat.”
I clear my throat. “Okay, so we have three targets: James Steele, Edmund Mercer, and whoever eventually fills the DSN seat. But right now, it’s just two men we need to worry about.”
“Three,” Mara corrects. “Valen says there’s someone acting as the DSN proxy. He doesn’t know who yet, but they’ve been at the meetings. Three seats, three threats.”
“Then we need a plan—a real one. We can’t just walk up and shoot them,” Talon says.
“No… But we can create a situation where they’re vulnerable. Where taking them out looks like an accident or collateral damage rather than assassination.”
“Like what?” I ask.
She’s already typing on her phone. “I don’t know yet, but I know someone who might. Valen’s been inside this world his whole life. If anyone knows how to draw the Syndicate leadership out, how to make them vulnerable, it’s him.”
“You trust him?” Jasper signs.
“I trust that he wants his father dead as much as you want yours dead, and I trust that Milo wants to protect me. Between the two of them, plus Kade’s inside access to PTO security protocols, we have resources we didn’t have before.”
“I love when you talk strategy. It’s hot,” Talon says, reaching for Mara and pulling her into him.
I roll my eyes. “All right. So we have a two-pronged approach. Public: Mara makes a statement owning the relationship, refusing to back down. Private: we meet with Valen, Milo, and Kade, gather intel, and plan our strike against the Syndicate leadership.”
“And we do it all in forty-eight hours,” Mara adds.
“Ambitious timeline,” I say.
“They gave us the timeline, we’re just working within it. I’m texting Valen now. I’ll ask him to meet us at the OCK house at noon. That gives us five hours to prepare talking points and figure out exactly what we need from them.”