Chapter 15
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Jack
By the time the first day of the Tech Expo arrived, Quincy and I were ready to put our plan for freedom through blackmail into action.
“I got here as soon as I could,” I said, a little breathless from dashing up from the parking garage of The Grand without my dad seeing me as I approached the registration table where Quincy stood. Dad was there at the hotel already, but he thought I was on a client visit for the day.
“Great,” Quincy said, darting a look around as restlessly as I was. “Bethany, can you take over here for a bit?” he asked the alpha woman standing at the other end of the line of tables where volunteers sat, checking attendees in for the conference.
“Yep,” the beefy woman said, adding a wink to let Quincy, and me, really, know that she was in on the whole thing.
Quincy smiled at her, then grabbed my hand and pulled me back through an open doorway into a small room stacked with boxes of conference programs and a table with blank badges and the other stuff that volunteers were putting into gift bags.
“Is your journalist friend coming?” Quincy asked in a whisper as soon as we were huddled together, out of sight of the doorway.
“Yes,” I said. “German said he’d meet us by the hotel pool in—” I checked my watch, “fifteen minutes.”
“And you’re sure this guy has the clout to break a story about your dad and Chester colluding on this app and its potential for election fraud?” Quincy asked.
“I’m as sure as you can ever be with a journalist,” I said. “He was interested in the story. Deeply interested.”
“But you explained to him that we’re only using the threat as a way to corner your dad into letting you go?”
I smiled and pulled my anxious omega into my arms, despite the pair of volunteers stuffing gift bags and watching us.
“Would it be so bad if the story actually broke and both my dad and Chester saw some sort of consequence for their actions?” I asked.
Quincy breathed out and sagged against me. “It’s your family,” he said. “If you don’t want them to get hurt, I’d completely understand.”
I kissed the top of Quincy’s head, then nudged him back. “My family isn’t like your family,” I said. “It’s not that I don’t care about them, but they can take care of themselves.”
“If you say so,” Quincy said.
My omega was incredibly nervous, I could tell. He worked his lip back and forth over his lip ring and gripped my arms, pressing his fingertips into my biceps.
“Don’t worry,” I told him, bending down to kiss his forehead again.
“This is a good plan. My dad will do anything to save face. And I got a good price for all the art in my apartment and for that sound system. It’s squirreled safely away in a bank where it will remain a secret and untouchable until we need it. ”
Quincy didn’t look convinced. “You shouldn’t have had to do that.”
“I know, but I’m willing to do whatever it takes to be with you.”
I could tell from the angst in my omega’s eyes that he didn’t think he was worth it. It didn’t matter that we’d only known each other for weeks instead of years. I felt like I understood Quincy’s soul and everything it held.
It actually made me wonder if bonding made alphas and omegas lazy about putting in the relationship work to really know each other. There was so much more to knowing and connecting with a person than being able to feel inside the other’s heart and brain.
“We’d better head up to the pool if we’re going to meet German on time,” I said, giving Quincy one last kiss, on the lips this time.
“Yeah,” Quincy said. He took a bracing breath, squared his shoulders, looked up at me with an astounding amount of confidence, and said, “Let’s do this.”
We headed out of the small office and made our way to the nearest bank of elevators.
I was still deeply concerned about stumbling across my dad and blowing the whole thing before we had a chance to put the pieces in motion.
Fortunately, the hotel was already busy with expo attendees, and since a lot of alphas were deeply into tech, I didn’t stand out with my height and my breadth.
There was virtually no one up in the pool area. A few families seemed to be enjoying the amenities, but the hallway outside of the glass-walled pool area was empty.
Except for Roger German from the Barrington Times and a twenty-something beta man carrying a dozen bags who looked like his assistant.
“German,” I nodded to the man as Quincy and I approached.
“Salisbury,” German nodded back.
We shook hands when we were close enough.
I was familiar with German, but I wouldn’t have called him a friend.
Maybe slightly more than an acquaintance.
He’d worked with our law firm before, and I knew he’d been angling with the Times to do more political coverage.
This whole thing would advance his career as much as it would set me free.
“This is my…my omega…friend, Quincy,” I introduced Quincy awkwardly. I wasn’t sure if I could truly call him my omega until this whole thing was done, but it felt like a cop-out just to call him my friend.
German seemed to get the gist of things. “My assistant, Adam Schubert,” German said, nodding to the beta.
“Hi,” Schubert said, raising a hand to wave. The bag over his shoulder slid off, and he scrambled clumsily to catch it, which knocked his glasses askew. He fixed those as well, as his cheeks went pink.
German ignored the man. “What’s going on, Salisbury?” he asked. “Your message was enticing but cryptic.”
I shifted my stance and puffed my chest up a bit, which was probably alpha instinct, since this whole thing was about protecting my omega, and said, “I’ve got a story for you about Dad’s involvement with Chester Monk and the app Monk has been developing.”
“Okay,” German said with a shrug. “What’s the story?”
“Chester is developing an app with a hidden feature that tricks people into linking the location tracking part of their phone to a central command center,” Quincy explained.
“It seems harmless on the surface, but with information about where everybody is and what they might be doing, Chester, and Senator Salisbury by extension, will be able to control all sorts of aspects of people’s lives. ”
Again, German shrugged. “So? All sorts of apps have backdoors these days. I’m surprised people dare to use their phones at all, to be honest.”
Doubt rushed in where confidence had been so certain in me up until that point.
“This technology could easily be used to manipulate the upcoming gubernatorial election,” I said.
“How would it do that?” German asked.
“Do you want me to record this conversation or write this down?” Schubert whispered by German’s side, holding up his cell phone.
“No, of course not,” German told him with a dismissive wave.
Schubert sagged and lowered his phone.
“Chester Monk has billions of dollars,” Quincy said, an eager light in his eyes.
“We were once together, a long time ago, and back then, he told me all about his ambitions to make more money than God. We know that he’s contributing to Senator Salisbury’s campaign.
Between you and me, I think he has the technology to hack into the voting system to change people’s votes.
I also think there’s something in this app that Senator Salisbury is helping him to push that will enable even more election fraud.
Plus, it seems almost definite that Salisbury is planning to hand Chester all sorts of government contracts once he’s in office. ”
“That’s illegal,” Schubert said, eyes wide behind his glasses.
German glanced over his shoulder at him like he wondered why he’d hired the man.
He turned back to me and asked, “What do you want me to do about all this? It’s a story, yes, but also the kind of story that my paper would suppress before I so much as typed word one.”
“We don’t necessarily need you to break or print the story,” I said. “We just need you to use it as a threat to hang over my dad’s head.”
German scowled. “Why? Why would you do that to your own father?”
I stepped back and reached for Quincy’s hand.
“He doesn’t approve of my choice of omega,” I said, smiling down at Quincy and probably looking like a dope.
“Aaw,” Schubert said, tilting his head to one side with a dreamy smile.
German rolled his eyes, then stared right at me. “So let me get this straight. You want me to threaten to expose your dad’s shady dealings with a tech superstar so that he’ll let you take pinky here to the prom?”
Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all. I knew German was hungry for a good story, but I didn’t think he’d be this rude and dismissive.
“I want out from under his control,” I said. “I want to show him that I have the power to get away from him, even though he thinks he has the power to force me into whatever mold he wants me in.”
“You want to prove you’re a big boy by showing Daddy that you can play hardball?” German asked, arching one eyebrow.
Maybe he was right. Maybe this whole thing was silly and impossible after all.
“I’ll do it.”
I gaped at German. “Did you just say—”
“I’ll do it,” he repeated with a shrug. “Salisbury is a schmuck. All politicians are crooked, but he’s as rotten as they come.
To be honest, I don’t really care what you want to do with an omega your family definitely wouldn’t approve of—” he glanced Quincy up and down with a sneer, “—but I don’t mind the idea of Senator Salisbury, and possibly Governor Salisbury, thinking I have the power to ruin him if he doesn’t dance to my tune. ”
I blinked, a little disgusted by the implication behind what German was saying. Politics was a dirty world, but the media was just as nasty, when you got right down to it.
“Great,” I said. “So we’ll gather all our resources, and when Monk gives his keynote speech this afternoon, you can stand in the crowd and ask him a pointed question about all this.”
“Got it.” German nodded.