Chapter 29 Drowning #2
“There will always be bad people. Always. But they don’t outweigh the good.
And this world, for all its ugliness, is still a beautiful place.
” Her voice softened to barely a breath.
“Every life, even the broken ones, is still worth living. Do not waste it. People want to love you, Jack, but you have to let them.” She pressed her forehead gently to his.
“You have to believe you’re worth loving. ”
It took Jack days to read through the messages waiting for him. By the time he reached the end of his inbox, he lacked the energy to respond to a single one.
He didn’t care about any of it anymore.
He only cared about Daisy. His Walden. His green light in the dark.
Rather than respond to the outside world, he focused on his world. He had Nick replace the files Daisy had destroyed and dig a little deeper. Every waking moment revolved around small steps that came without promises.
He wouldn’t be like the others. Couldn’t deal in transactions meant to pressure certain outcomes. So he did only what he could, with a clear conscience, and without expectation.
He would always love her. Across any distance. Through any length of time. He didn’t need her to love him back. He needed to accept that his love for her was a part of him now, as present as his pain and as permanent as his scars.
Unconditional.
Jack sifted through the file Nick had left on his desk, finding everything he needed to make his next move. His head lifted as voices drifted from the hall—Nick’s and a much deeper one.
He closed the file as their footsteps neared. He knew that if he ignored the calls long enough, this visit would eventually come.
“Sir, you have a visitor.” Nick stepped aside as Wolf moved in like a blinding fog, demanding full attention.
“Thank you, Nick.”
Nick backed out of the room, and Jack waved Wolf to the seat in front of his desk.
He didn’t sit immediately, because Wolf never committed to a position in any room until he’d surveyed it first, cataloging exits and occupants and the precise emotional temperature of the space with the same cold efficiency that built his empire.
Taller than most men, he carried his age the way old cathedrals carry grandeur—in a way that made deterioration look intentional.
White hair swept back from his broad forehead, impeccably groomed, as his perceptive eyes—paler than a January sky—held the flat, unblinking patience of someone who planned to outlive his own mortality and every enemy.
Wolf mentored him the way a sculptor raises a monument, with purpose and precision, chipping away everything soft until only the useful remained. He showed Jack how the world really worked. Not through parliaments or courtrooms but through favors and fear.
The leather chair creaked as he lowered himself into it with the practiced ease of a man who understood the power of stillness. One leg crossed over the other as his liver-spotted hands folded, and his gaze settled on Jack.
“You look like shit.”
“I haven’t been sleeping—”
“I didn’t come here to discuss your habits of repose.” A strange, manufactured refinement shaped every syllable of his words. “Though it concerns me. You’ve gone dark, Jack. Four weeks without returning a single call. That’s not like you.”
Jack leaned back in his chair. While Wolf might have employed him once upon a time, those days were long gone. “So?”
“You’ve been hiding.” The accusation carried more truth than malice. “Cowards hide.”
Jack would normally agree. But rather than defend himself, he sat back and examined his cuticles. Some men took vacations every spring. Others migrated to warmer climates in winter. And some even wasted entire summers on beaches in the countryside.
Jack did none of that. And he was not going to waste a single fucking breath justifying his decision to take time off for the first time in his entire life.
Reading his silence, Wolf understood what Jack refused to say and sighed. Accepting his actions were not up for discussion.
“Someone has been digging, Jack.” He got to the meat of the matter. “Searching for sealed juvenile records, financial trails, and old business deals that suddenly vanished.”
“Who?”
Wolf reached into his breast pocket and pulled out a folded paper pinched between two fingers. “A fifth-generation aristocrat by the name of Hadrian Welles. Old money, Cambridge educated, father sat on two boards—”
“I know who he is.”
Wolf raised a brow, leaned forward, touched the corner of the paper to the candle on Jack’s desk, and dropped it in the amber ashtray. “Why is he after you?”
Visions from the hunt flashed in his mind. “Because I let him live.”
A long silence absorbed the confession before Wolf made a sound between acknowledgment and disapproval. “Leniency is a messy thing.”
No question about what the other man had done.
There never was.
Wolf trusted Jack’s judgment the way he trusted his own instincts, completely and without sentimentality. If Jack said a man deserved to die, the man deserved to die. If Jack said he let him live, there was a reason, even if Wolf considered it a poor one.
He steepled his liver-spotted fingers. “Could you kill him?”
Wolf wasn’t asking about Jack’s capability. He could dismantle Hadrian Welles in a dozen different ways without ever touching him. Wolf knew that.
What he was actually asking was why Jack had not.
He’d planned to. Just like he erased every other predator that revealed itself to him. But first, he liked to make them suffer. Financial ruin had a certain sting that death did not. Humiliation didn’t make it to the grave, and he liked to give that gift before his targets were gone.
But his conscience was fucking with him.
In the end, he settled on the truth. “Yes. I could kill him.”
Wolf flicked an invisible piece of lint from his sleeve. “He’s involving others in his crusade. Making legal threats, hiring investigators, talking to a journalist. I suggest you figure out, one way or another, how to make this little issue go away.”
Jack’s mind was already turning over appropriate consequences. It wasn’t about protecting himself. Jack wasn’t afraid of anything Welles thought he could do to him. It was about the reason he’d made it onto his list in the first place.
Daisy.
She might never want to look at him again, but Jack still had to face himself. This was the ugly truth of who he was. Who they made him into.
The holiday was over.
It was time to get back to business. He’d dismantle Welles, as planned. Strip his assets, sever his connections, and leave him in ruin. At that point, pricks like him typically begged for death. Chances were, he’d put a gun in his mouth and do the messy part himself.
It didn’t matter to Jack. The only thing that mattered was that he never preyed on another helpless person again.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Good.” Wolf rose from the chair with the deliberate grace of a man who never rushed.
He rested his fist against the desk in a gesture that was equal parts farewell and command.
“The world needs punishers, Jack. They keep the order of things fluid. Don’t let morality weigh you down too much, or you’ll drown.
” He met his stare with those pale grey eyes.
“I’d hate to find you floating in a pool of your own making one day. ”
Wolf didn’t wait for a response. Didn’t need one. He’d said what needed to be said, and then he was gone.
Jack knew what he needed to do.