Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Jack
Broken. Now I knew what it felt like.
When I’d met Quincy, he’d said he was broken.
Part of me was convinced that I could fix him if I just loved him enough.
My inner alpha was sure of it. But now here I was, six weeks after the Tech Expo, and instead of fixing Quincy, rescuing him from all the wrongs that had been done to him, and making an amazing life with him, I felt as broken as he’d said he was.
“Here’s the brief for the Portsmouth Care Home case,” Imogen said, coming into my office with a pair of thick files. “And I’ve gone ahead and done the write-up Senator Salisbury requested for the Avalon Brothers case you finished up last week.”
“Hmm?” I dragged myself out of my thoughts, and the picture of Quincy I had saved on my phone from our RV adventure, and questioned her with a sound.
Imogen responded with a sigh and a sad look. “Hang in there, kiddo,” she said. “There’s bound to be brighter days ahead.”
“Thanks, Imogen,” I said, reaching for the files. “If you say so.”
Imogen gave me the files, but instead of walking out, she glanced over her shoulder to make certain no one was lingering near the door, then helped herself to one of the chairs on the other side of my desk.
“Hey,” she said, leaning her forearms on the desk and looking intently at me. “It’s going to be okay, I swear.”
I gave Imogen a weary smile in return for her support, but I liked her too much to pretend.
“I don’t think it is going to be okay,” I said, wishing I didn’t sound so much like a moony teenager.
But no, I wasn’t a moony teenager. That’s what my dad wanted me to believe. I was an alpha who had had his omega, his soulmate, snatched away from him by a cruel tyrant who now held my life hostage.
Imogen reached out, and I gave her my hand. “I swear, you’re going to get through this, Jack, okay?”
It was probably some level of ridiculous that currently, my closest friend was my admin.
But I’d quickly learned in the last six weeks that I couldn’t trust a single damn person of my acquaintance who also knew my dad.
Friends who I thought were loyal to me had come out in favor of everything my dad had laid out in his plan for me.
A plan which, I might add, he actually had written down and had briefed me about on the Monday after the Tech Expo.
Sure, I’d tried to argue with him during that meeting, which Mom attended, too, and Chester fucking Monk, for some reason, but there was no point.
Dad did know about my new bank account. That wasn’t a bluff.
He’d had Chester hack into the bank to add my dad’s name as co-account holder.
Dad had promptly restricted my access, just like with my other accounts.
I’d been given a list of omegas I would date.
Within three months, I was to choose one of them to marry.
At Christmas, there would be a lavish, society wedding.
By Christmas the following year, there would be a baby or one on the way.
I would be given my own law firm to take what my dad called “charity cases”.
That was the carrot that was supposed to make everything better.
I was reasonably certain the manager and staff of my apartment building were on my dad’s payroll, and that they were reporting back to him every day if and when I went out and came back. I’d caught men in dark suits following me pretty much everywhere I went, too.
Worst of all, and probably thanks to Chester, I was almost certain my phone had been compromised.
Quincy had suddenly stopped calling and texting me.
I knew he would never do that, so the only reasonable answer was that someone had gotten into my phone and blocked my ability to contact him.
I’d tried buying a burner phone and texting him that way, but I got nothing in return.
I was worried Chester had hacked Quincy’s phone as well.
I wanted to warn my omega that we were under tight surveillance, but I had absolutely zero way of reaching him now.
The one time I’d tracked down his address and tried to drive to his house to see him in person, there had been a series of bizarre accidents on the roads that made it impossible to reach his neighborhood.
We were utterly fucked.
“Hey, hun,” Imogen said, squeezing my hand to get me back to the present. “Look at me. It’s going to be okay. Really.”
“I don’t see how,” I said, doing something I absolutely never would have done and letting my vulnerability show.
Imogen smiled at me, and even though it was nice, I didn’t want smiles or sympathy, I wanted my omega.
“Did I ever tell you about my nephew?” Imogen asked, sitting back in her chair and looking surprisingly confident for someone watching their boss fall apart.
“Nephew? No,” I said. “I…I’m sorry, but I’ve never asked about your family.”
“Oh, I come from a large family,” she said, as if we were having coffee, not watching my life implode. “And we’re all wily. Grandpa always said we might all look like angels, but we love trouble like the devil.”
I let out a breath that might have been a laugh and smiled. “Sounds fun.”
“We’re a ball of fun,” she said. “Unless you cross us. Then you’ll learn just how clever and petty we all can be.”
I laughed more genuinely at that. “I want to be friends with you all.”
“You already are, Jack,” she said, planting her hands on the arms of her chair and pushing herself to stand. “You already are. And when I tell you everything is going to be okay, you need to believe me.”
“I believe you, Imogen,” I told her as she headed out of the room, even though I didn’t, not really.
Imogen stopped at the door. “Trust me,” she said. “The Schuberts always get their man.”
She winked at me, then disappeared around the corner.
I was so incredibly lucky to have Imogen as an admin and as a friend. I doubted she could sweeten the bitterness of the pill that my life had become, but I would be happy to take her with me when I opened my new law office.
Her surname was Klein, though. I didn’t know why she was bringing one of my favorite composers into the conversation.
It was a mystery for another time. For now, I had briefs to look at and a life to drag myself through.
Half an hour of not really being able to concentrate later, there was a knock on my office doorframe. I glanced up with a smile, expecting to see Imogen again…but it was my dad.
“Junior,” Dad greeted me with his usual frosty demeanor.
“Have I done something wrong?” I replied, not bothering to correct his use of the name I hated.
“No, not this time,” Dad said.
And then he did something that made my skin crawl.
He smiled.
“You should be preparing for your lunch date with Gretchen Montgomery,” he said, checking his watch.
I sighed and sat back in my chair. I wasn’t going to ask him how he knew I was going out to lunch with one of his list of omegas. He’d probably already ordered at the bistro where I would be meeting her.
“This work can wait for later,” he said, as if I’d told him I had work to do before I left.
I said nothing, just looking up at him, waiting for him to tell me whatever it was he’d come all the way down to my office to say.
“You need to eat more,” he said, which surprised me. “You’ve lost too much weight.”
In my head, I answered, “No shit. I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, and I can’t think after you ripped me away from my omega.”
Outwardly, I just stared at him.
“I’ll tell Dr. Lawrence to prescribe you some anti-depressants. Your mother takes lithium, but I’m not sure that’s right for you.”
“Are you a physician now as well as a lawyer and a senator?” I asked, not trying to hide my contempt for him. “Does your plan to keep me in line with your image of a happy, perfect family involve keeping me drugged up, like you do Mom?”
“Don’t be absurd,” Dad snapped. “This sullen rebellion is not becoming of a Salisbury.”
Again, I said nothing in response to that.
I was tired of fighting with him. He’d spent the last six weeks showing me that I was well and truly fucked.
He didn’t get to crush my spirit and then expect me to follow along when he crooked his finger, smiling vacantly and being the perfect prop to his political campaign.
He had Chester Monk to do that now.
A long silence stretched between the two of us. I assumed Dad knew he wasn’t going to get the reaction out of me that he wanted, so he gave up with a small shrug of his shoulders and said, “You should know that Monk is marrying that omega freak ex of his today.”
A bomb could have gone off in my office and I wouldn’t have been more stunned.
Quincy was marrying Chester Monk? Today?
I just stared at my dad, fighting with everything I had not to let the agony of my heart exploding show on my face.
Why would Quincy do that? He definitely wouldn’t marry Monk willingly.
I knew my omega too well to doubt that. Quincy had to be under some sort of threat, or, like me with my past and future clients, he was fighting to protect someone from an even greater harm.
Either way, it didn’t matter. He’d won. My dad had destroyed me on the field of battle and won absolutely everything. What was the point of fighting back when he could use his power and influence to convince Quincy to marry Chester Monk?
I stood, stepping calmly to the side, where my coat hung, and reaching for it with shaking hands.
“Well?” Dad said, definitely expecting a reaction from me.
I sighed as I put my coat on, then turned to him with a shrug.
“What do you want me to say?” I asked. “That this kills me? That I’m devastated? Well, I am. But you’ve bludgeoned me over and over again, in the last six weeks and in my whole life, with the knowledge that you control me completely and there’s not a damn thing I can do to resist.”
I walked past him to the door of my office, but turned back long enough to say, “I hope you’re happy. You just shattered the prize you worked so hard to win.”