14. Sawyer
Chapter 14
Sawyer
A new recruit had given us information on how to find Roth, but by the time I left Fiona at the restaurant, Roth had moved on. We needed to find him; it was crucial to dismantling his company. But since we had no new leads, I was itching to see Fiona again.
That next afternoon, I immediately went to her apartment, driving myself. Her new car was gone, but she was supposed to be off from the library.
Where are you? I sent the message, waiting for those three dots to indicate that she was typing. Finally, they appeared.
At the library, she sent.
I sent back a question mark, waiting for her explanation.
Gotta beat my rival one way or another, she responded.
I couldn’t stop myself from grinning. When it came to what she wanted, Fiona wasn’t simply smart; she was also stubborn and ambitious. A day off didn’t mean relaxation; it meant that she had things to accomplish. It had been like that since I first started watching her. And that was the fire that I enjoyed messing with so much. I had wanted to ruin her. To make her question why she tried anything. I wanted to teach her how none of her worries actually meant anything. It wasn’t the kindness of helping people that mattered like she so desperately believed. The only control that mattered was power over others.
But that desire for power didn’t seem as strong anymore. It seemed… off.
Perhaps that was because I hadn’t taken control of Fiona yet. But once I did, everything would fall back into place.
By the time I got to the library, she was still messing with the encrypted file. It was pride; she didn’t want to ask anyone, including me, for help, because that would admit defeat. But what she needed was another mind. Someone else to work with. To see things from a different angle.
“You’re stuck,” I said. Her shoulders sank. I settled into the seat beside her. “Part of success is knowing when you can’t win by yourself,” I continued. “And knowing when you need to ask for help.”
“Do you ever ask for help?” she asked, her words blunt.
“No.” She rolled her eyes, and I grabbed her chin, forcing her to look at me. “But I also don’t set myself up for failure. When I look at my family’s business, I see exactly what each person is capable of.”
“And what am I capable of?”
There were so many ways to answer that question. Building her up, telling her the truth—that she was strong and ambitious, that there wasn’t much in this world that could stop her—was what she wanted to hear right then. And I wanted to tell that to her.
But she needed the whole truth, not just the good parts.
“You were never going to be a doctor,” I explained. “ You set yourself up to fail. You were never going to follow through with it.”
Her face reddened. “I tried my hardest?—”
“But you knew you couldn’t keep a full-time job at the library and go to medical school. But you also couldn’t tell your parents ‘no.’”
She shrank inside of herself. “They had already gone into so much debt to put me through college.”
I didn’t have any sympathy for them. “That was their decision.”
“I just thought I could do it, you know?”
I didn’t know. Any logical person would have been able to see that she was crushing herself under the impossibility of doing it all, and once the passion was sucked out of her life, there was no way to get out from under it.
“I had to do it for my parents,” she said.
According to my research, her parents were healthy. They didn’t need a personal doctor.
“Why? What reason could they possibly have?” I asked.
“Elaine and I loved school. But then she died. And Maisie ran away. So I was the only one who was left. The only daughter that was already in college, that they needed to be successful, to fulfill their dream of having a daughter who had made it. And I was good at school. I could do their dream, then fulfill my own.” She wrapped her arms around herself. My fingers twitched at my sides, wanting to hold her. “College was hard. And med school was even harder. Maybe you’re right. Maybe I over-burdened myself—” she paused, considering her words. She lifted her eyes to me. “You are right. I knew I could never do it. And in a way, I thought that maybe that would give me a way out.” A few seconds passed, then she added, “But now if I fail, it’s all on me.” Tears welled in her eyes. “I’ll never be good enough. ”
I couldn’t explain it: the pit in my stomach, her shoulders sinking like that, matching my heart. I wanted to hold her. To push the hair from her eyes. To tell her that she was wrong. That it wasn’t her fault.
But she had to do this by herself.
No. Damn it all. I could say what needed to be said. She deserved that.
“You are good enough,” I said, my voice hard.
“You said it yourself. I’m going to fail,” she said quietly, the tears slipping down her cheeks.
“That’s stupid,” I said. “I’m a temporary obstacle. Sure, you’ll lose a game with me. I’m being honest when I say that no one beats me. Not even my father.” I tilted my head. “But you have a chance elsewhere. This isn’t your final stop. You will not fail your dream, Fiona. I can promise you that.”
Her eyes switched between mine until she finally opened her mouth: “How can you be so confident in yourself?”
“I know what I can take.” I put a finger under her chin again. “And I can take you, Fiona. But you? You can’t put that kind of pressure on yourself. Sure, maybe you fail at this. But you’re not going to fail at everything. I know you. I know you don’t stop until you get what you want.”
Her copper eyes searched me. “What about you? Isn’t it bad for you to put that kind of pressure on yourself too?”
For some reason, my mind went to the deaths in our families, and how much pressure it was to live up to what her family lost, or what my family stood for.
“My mother died when I was four years old,” I said. Her jaw dropped. “And my brother? When she died, it was like losing him too. Wilder was never the same.” I bowed my head. “Things changed after that. ”
“How did that make you feel?” she asked, her voice barely above a whisper.
But it wasn’t that moment that broke me. It was the years of enduring manipulation from my father. Of realizing that the world was broken. And the only thing that I could do to fix it was to control it. Especially when it came to people like Fiona, those rare gems that didn’t break without one hell of a fight.
And seeing her like this, on that precipice? I wanted to save her, to yank her back from the edge.
“It made me feel like nothing would ever be fixed,” I answered. She nodded, her lips closed, taking in my words. At least my honesty had stopped her tears. “My father died last year.” She swallowed hard. “I was relieved.”
She blinked her eyes rapidly. “Why are you telling me this?”
And for once, I didn’t have an immediate answer. There was no reason to tell Fiona anything about this. But it spilled out, like it meant something to me, when death was nothing. It was simply the final act.
“You can’t let someone else’s death rest on your shoulders,” I said. “Your sister is gone. You can’t make up for her absence by being a doctor for your parents.”
Her lips trembled. “I don’t remember what Elaine was like anymore,” she whispered. “I hate it.”
“I can’t remember my mother’s face.”
“What happened to your dad?”
When I pulled the trigger, the electric energy had pulsed through me, knowing that it was finally over. The bullet went into his chest, knocking him down.
“I killed him,” I said.
Her eyes widened. “You gave him a heart attack or something? ”
I smiled softly. “Something.”
“I don’t understand your sense of humor,” she said.
And there was so much about her I didn’t understand either. For the longest time, I had thought I knew exactly what Fiona was like, how to make her tick, to show her the kind of woman she truly was. But she was so much more. She was ambitious and kind, even when I was playing games with her, even when the world didn’t deserve that kind of brightness. And she was annoyingly persistent, in her beliefs, in her goals, in me.
I guess part of me wanted to let her believe I was joking about killing my father.
And what am I capable of? she had asked.
“You are so much stronger than you think,” I said. “You just have to figure out how to harness your power.”
She scoffed. “How can you even say that?”
“You stand up to me,” I said. Her pupils dilated, her lips parting. “And I love that about you.” My shoulders tensed, but I couldn’t stop myself: “You are incredible.”
Her lips trembled, a tear going down her cheek. I wiped it with my thumb, then held her. The tears built inside of her until finally, her chest convulsed in a sob. My shoulder soaked, but I gripped her tighter, hoping she understood. Hoping I could make her see how amazing she was.
As the tears stopped, I made sure she was okay, then nodded toward the dark library. “Grab a book,” I said. “A book that speaks to you. And bring it back here.”
“But—”
I put a finger to her lips. “Go.”
Her walk was messy, like she couldn’t concentrate on what she was doing, but she made her way through the shadowed aisles. After a moment, I followed her. She emerged from the fiction section with a book in her hands. I motioned for her to bring it to the table in between the aisles.
A globe rested on one end of the table with a handful of knickknacks, a computer station on the other. But in the middle was a flat space, perfect for us.
“Hands on the table,” I said. She placed the book in front of her. “Read,” I commanded.
The pages feathered under her fingers as she found a passage she wanted. I grabbed a paperweight from the corner of the table and propped the book open.
“ Even across the state fair, she knew he could see her, ” she read, “ with terror and adoration in his eyes. ” I let my hands skim her hips, enjoying her curves, a shiver erupting down her spine. Her neck sprinkled with goosebumps. She paused, holding her breath.
“Keep reading,” I ordered.
“ Despite everything that danced around them ? — ”
I lifted her shirt, grazing my fingertips over the bells of her breasts, then took her nipples between my fingers. She whined as I twisted, her stomach curling inward.
“Read.”
“ The lights, the people, the thrill rides, ” she breathed. I went down, letting my hands enter her skirt—that bare skin, the hair on her pussy, her wet lips. I shoved a finger inside and she gulped down a breath. I stopped.
“If you want to keep going, then you will keep reading, plaything.”
Her eyes sparked to me. I nodded toward the book.
“ She had been waiting for him, ” she read as I moved my finger harder into her cunt, “ And somehow, he had always known and loved her. ” I kept one hand on the curve of her pussy while I used my other hand to shove down my pants, letting them fall to the floor. Her head twisted to see me, but I pressed my dick to her pussy lips. She gasped, pressing back against me, but I refused to enter her. I clenched my jaw.
“Sawyer,” she whispered.
She was so close to begging me.
“It’s two words,” I said. “Two words. That’s all it takes.”
“Sawyer.”
She wouldn’t say it. No matter how much I messed with her.
And I hated it. Hated that she was so much stronger than I had given her credit for. Hated her for that desperate ambition and loved her for it at the same time. She was stubborn and irritating and sometimes a damned mess, but she was incredible.
“Read to me,” I howled. And she did. Her words jagged with each panting breath. But neither of us paid attention. None of it made sense. But no matter how much I twisted and pulled at her nipples and clit, teasing my cock against her dripping pussy lips, she read those words like her life depended on it. Because she wanted to prove me wrong, to show me she was capable, even when it came to this. To show me she was so much more than that.
And she did. Every damn time.
I smacked my palm down on her pussy and she jumped back onto me, pushing her ass into me, wanting so badly to take everything.
“Fuck it,” I growled.
I pressed her head into the book, then slammed into her, giving in to what we both wanted. Her walls squeezed around me and she drooled on the book, moaning into that empty room. And I couldn’t stop myself anymore. I knew what I wanted, and it was all her. I came inside of her, then pulled out, letting my come drip down her legs .
“Now,” I said, smirking as she gathered herself together. “Finish closing up.”
“You’re leaving?” she asked.
That glow on her face made me want to shove her up against the wall and do it again, but I held back.
“Two words,” I said. “And I’ll drop everything to worship you right now.”
And that’s when I realized it.
I wasn’t there because of work. I wasn’t there to prove to myself that I could control her. I wasn’t there to teach her who she truly was.
I was there because I would do anything for her.
Her eyes sparkled up at me. My throat ached. I needed to get out of there now. I had to remove myself.
“I’ll call you,” I said.
“You better,” she said. And I was there, back in that college bar, looking at her while she tried to prove herself to me. All I had wanted was to fuck her like I had fucked other women. To prove to myself that she was nothing.
But now I was falling in love with her.
As I opened the exit door to the parking lot, a man backed away from Fiona’s new car, shuffling out of sight. I rubbed my forehead as I made sure she was still inside.
“What’s wrong?” Fiona asked.
“Work,” I said. “I’ll see you later. Lock up.”
I closed the door, then removed my gun with a silencer, and found the man waiting around by the entrance, getting another view inside. The best course of action would have been to let him kill Fiona, watch where he went, and see if he would take the corpse back to Roth.
But I wasn’t going to let anything happen to her.
I pulled him into a headlock, dragging him toward my SUV. He struggled, shoved his elbow into my chest, throwing his gun into my chin.
I should have kept him alive. We could question him.
But he was threatening my girl.
I put a bullet in his temple.
Peace washed over me. I had to deal with a corpse, but she was safe. I called one of my men to tail her back to the apartment, then took care of the Hatchcom scum.
Back at the farm, one of the recruits checked; sure enough, the man was Hatchcom Focus, one of the few soldiers they had left.
Letting them get close to Fiona in any capacity wasn’t acceptable. It was time to put an end to this. Now.
Wilder rounded up the rest of the new recruits and some of our veteran men into the Dairy Barn. The new recruits kneeled down, guns in front of them, waiting for my command.
“Roth treated you like ammo,” I said. “Objects to be used, to be discarded like shells. But at the Feldman Farm, we know that our business depends on our men. You are our business.” A pleased grunt came from some of them. “Roth only has half of his soldiers left. You know where they are. You know what to do.” Their eyes locked with mine. “This is how you will prove your loyalty to our family. And in return, we will take care of you.”
They grabbed their guns, our men accompanying them. Wilder looked at me, though he didn’t say a word. I nodded at him, confirming that this was what I wanted.
I knew our business. And I knew how to win.