Chapter Seven
NOT A PAWN. A queen. One with enormous power to run the board. That was why he’d captured her.
Axel hadn’t amassed this much wealth and power so he could be treated as a pawn, though. And that was what Otto wanted to do. Axel’s solitary focus right now was performing this checkmate on Otto.
Or should be. He was having a hard time thinking beyond the way his wife had shattered under his touch a few hours ago. And how sensual and flustered she’d looked when he’d had to wake her.
He hadn’t meant to let their kiss flare out of control, but she had smelled so damned feminine and sweet. Her body was both strong and softly curved. He had felt her shiver and heard her breath catch, and the most primal part of him had taken over.
He had nearly lost himself behind his zipped fly. Everything in him had wanted to pick her up and set her wilted body on the bed. To continue what they had started.
She could unravel him as easily as he had her, he had realized while she’d been trembling and panting in reaction. That was sobering enough to make him walk away if only to prove he could. The last thing he wanted was to be under her sexual spell if Otto managed to turn her against him.
He was reminded he had higher priorities than consummating his marriage when he picked up a panicked message from Vorstoben’s CFO a few minutes later. Mira was making good on her threats to pull the properties she’d allowed to be used as collateral. Refinancing was necessary. And urgent.
A second message from Otto demanded Axel come see him the moment he landed, to discuss their plan of action.
Axel’s plan was to oust Otto and negotiate with Mira. He would have to hit the ground running if he wanted to keep the financial impact of her anger from cratering the whole organization, but he was confident he could do it.
The stateroom door opened, and Joy came into the main cabin.
Wrestling his libido back into its crate was next to impossible, however, when she looked so delectable.
She wore a fitted, cream-colored dress that closed with two gold buttons beneath her left breast. It hugged her curves to her knees and dipped modestly in the front to reveal the beaded lace that decorated the top of her slip.
Her muscled calves made his mouth water.
“Do I look okay?” she asked with a self-conscious brush of her hand against her hip. “I bought it when I got my wedding gown.” She smoothed her hands down her backside as she sat in the chair across from him.
He’d blamed their prickly banter in the stateroom on sexual frustration and lack of sleep, but it struck him that she was nervous about meeting Otto.
“You look perfect.” She wore enough makeup to hide her jet lag and her hair was gathered into one of those braided patterns that mysteriously consumed its own tail. She looked chic and feminine. Aloof, sophisticated.
Yet there was an underlying vulnerability that pierced through his thick armor.
“Don’t let his opinion matter to you,” he asserted. “I’ve seen that movie. It ends poorly.”
“I can’t help how I feel.” She defensively crossed her legs and looked to the blur of gray morning clouds they ducked beneath to land.
A protest rose in him, but he couldn’t allow softer feelings like pity and protectiveness impact him too deeply. He needed to be completely impervious as he faced down the man who had double-crossed him.
They deplaned for his car and, a short while later, arrived at the Vorstoben building amid the usual morning bustle.
Axel was greeted with respectful nods. Security guards hurried to open gates and press buttons for elevators, glancing curiously at her, but Heskel had already registered their approved guest. No one asked her to identify herself.
The way Joy twisted her new ring while they rode the elevator had Axel capturing her cold fingers in his, refusing to allow any show of weakness. Her nails cut against his skin as they moved through the top floor of white and chrome decor, spiking the aggression simmering within him.
Outside Otto’s office, they were greeted by a pair of assistants who scrambled to open the doors for him and Joy to walk through.
Otto was at his wide desk, the city showcased through the floor-to-ceiling windows behind him. It was a deliberate arrangement. Otto liked to be backlit and make people squint.
His features were sagging with age, but his golden-brown gaze sharpened as he sat back. He didn’t smile, only stared at Joy in a way that picked her apart.
“Joy, Otto Braun.” Axel heard her swallow. “Joy Youngston,” he provided to Otto. “Your daughter.”
“Enja.” Otto rose to come around to the front of his desk. “Umberto said you’d done the test.” He gave her a calculated study. “You look like your mother.”
“Axel showed me a photo of her.” Joy’s expression flickered with a hesitant, unsteady smile. “I have so many questions about her. And you. It’s nice to meet you.” She tried to take her hand from Axel’s so she could move forward and offer it to Otto.
Axel didn’t allow it. He kept her by his side in the middle of the room.
Otto’s attention swept down to their locked hands, then snapped up to meet Axel’s gaze. Questioning. Narrowing with suspicion.
Axel smiled with raw satisfaction. Grim triumph.
“You insisted I marry her.” He lifted her hand and turned it, flashing the ring he’d given her on the plane before twisting the other way to reveal the plain band on his own finger.
“You were supposed to come to me first,” Otto snarled at Joy.
Axel felt the jolt of shock travel through her. Her features contorted with injury.
“Don’t take this out on her.” Axel stepped forward, reflexively angling to shield her while drawing their linked hands behind his back so his bulk was between them. “This is the deal you struck.” Axel had no compromise in him. “I’ve held up my side. Now honor yours.”
“Like hell.” Otto shifted so he had a line of sight on Joy. “He’s taking advantage of you. He married you because he thinks he can get my money. My company. I was saving it for you.”
This was why Axel had wanted her vow to him before she met Otto. The old man was already trying to manipulate the situation to favor himself. That infuriated Axel, but it didn’t surprise him.
“She’s seen the contract,” he told Otto. “She knows exactly what you expected from your biological daughter.”
“I wouldn’t have forced you to marry him. Is that what he told you? That you had to marry him? If he bullied you, this can be annulled,” Otto said.
Over my dead body, was Axel’s very primitive and disturbing thought.
“Come. Let’s talk.” Otto waved at the sofa, cannily trying to read Joy, trying to find the inroad to turn her against Axel.
She looked to the sofa, confused. Tempted. “Why did you want to meet me?” Whatever optimism had been in her face had faded into a frown of anxious wariness.
“You’re my daughter. Why wouldn’t I want to meet you?”
“But why did you set up that contract before you had?” she asked. Her nails were cutting into Axel’s hand again.
“That was business,” Otto dismissed with a patronizing wave that said, Don’t trouble your pretty little head.
“He’s known about you for three years,” Axel reminded her with brutal honesty. “He didn’t reach out until I threatened to leave. He wants to use you to keep me in line. She’s no longer available for that.” Axel turned spitefully toward Otto. “She’s already my wife.”
Otto muttered a word in German that was very foul.
Joy didn’t need a translator to know what he had called her. Her breath cut in as though he’d struck her.
“Watch your mouth,” Axel warned in a lethal tone.
She looked to Axel with eyes full of disillusionment. Blame. How could you bring me here for this? Tears gathered in her eyes, and she flexed her fingers, trying to extricate them.
He held on, unable to regret bringing her here even though she might never forgive him for it. “You’re already bleeding cash reserves,” he reminded Otto. “Step away from the company, and Mira will have no reason to continue her attacks on it.”
“It’s my company,” Otto insisted with a rabid shake of his jowls. “I decide what happens here.”
“You signed a contract. Honor it.”
“You questioned the validity of that contract yourself,” Otto threw at him. “We’ll see what the courts say.”
“Lawyers it is, then,” Axel said darkly. “But make no mistake. I will get this company if I have to join forces with Mira and take it, brick by brick.”
* * *
Joy didn’t pay attention to where Axel took her.
She was aware of feeling cold until the weight of his suit jacket was draped over her shoulders.
She heard him say something in biting words she couldn’t understand.
Her vision was blurred, and there was a scorch in her throat that stretched into her chest, making even her shoulders ache with the effort to hold back her tears.
In those first seconds of meeting Otto, her hopes had been sky-high. Surely Axel was wrong about him. Surely her birth father—who had asked her to come meet him—would be glad to see her. Surely, he was eager to know everything about her, the way she wanted to know everything about him.
Seeing him had given her a disconcerting sense of recognition, one that disarmed her because she thought she ought to feel a sense of belonging from that vague familiarity.
But as she had looked for an answering interest in his expression, her soft, jumbled emotions had collided with instinctual dislike.
It wasn’t Axel’s warnings poisoning her opinion.
Otto had radiated coldness. He had kept a distance between them and made her bristle with the way he looked at her.
His gaze hadn’t had the lecherous quality of the men at the club, but it had been a cousin to it.
He had called her by her birth name and mentally calculated her intrinsic worth based on her off-the-rack dress and how likely he was to get what he wanted from her.
He’d regarded her as an object, not a person. She’d felt it.