Chapter 20 #2
“Fuck the consequences,” Jack snapped back at him. “I love Quincy and he loves me. I don’t care what you want to do to stop us from being together. We belong together.”
“Oh, wow!” the woman gasped. “This is amazing! This is the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen!”
“Maybe we should just let the two of them be together,” Chester said, keeping his distance from the heart of the scene.
Salisbury ignored him. “I won’t allow this,” he shouted as a larger and larger crowd gathered around to see what was going on. “I have told you what your place is in this family. I have explicitly laid out for you what you will and will not do. I will not be defied like this.”
“Yes, you will,” Jack said, sounding so certain that I would have dropped to my knees and sucked him off, or maybe just hugged his leg like the subbiest sub, if we hadn’t been the center of so much attention. “I want Quincy, not your so-called plan.”
“Then you will be disowned!” Salisbury shouted. “I will strip every cent from your bank accounts. You will never be able to sign a lease or buy a house or a car or anything.”
“I don’t care about your money,” Jack said, sounding surprisingly calm, all things considered. He gently set me on my feet so we could face Salisbury together. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”
“Do you want to see your omega suffer?” Salisbury demanded, pointing harshly at me. “Do you want to see him descend into madness when you could have helped him by turning him away?”
His threats were terrible, but I burst into a smile anyhow. Salisbury had called me Jack’s omega.
“Do you want to see your clients defeated and impoverished?” Salisbury went on.
I gasped. “He’s still hanging that over your head?”
Jack looked guiltily at me, then nodded tightly.
I couldn’t have been prouder of my alpha if I’d tried. He’d been willing to give me up to save others. Not that I wanted to be given up, but knowing he’d done it not for the family money and prestige, but to save all the people he’d helped over the years was a beautiful thing.
My smile vanished and my heart dropped.
“We can’t do this,” I whispered, realizing how complete Salisbury’s trap was. I looked up at my alpha, grief in my heart. “Jack, we can’t do this. If he’s going to hurt all those people…. We can’t seize our happiness at the expense of all those others.”
“I—” Jack looked stricken. “We can make it work somehow.”
Salisbury grinned and crossed his arms like he knew he’d finally won.
Except something else was wrong. A ton of people had gathered around to see what was going on, and they were all murmuring and whispering and staring at Salisbury. A few of them had newspapers in their hands. A bunch of others had their phones up and were reading something.
“You’re Senator Salisbury, right?” a random guy in the crowd asked. “And Chester Monk?”
“Yes, that’s them,” the woman who had come in with Jack said.
“Senator John Salisbury, one of the wealthiest and most influential members of high society ever. That’s his son, John Salisbury, Jr. We were supposed to have lunch today, but I think he’s in love with that omega instead.
And—oh! This is so exciting! That’s the omega Chester Monk is supposed to marry today!
The one who, rumor has it, he doesn’t want to marry at all.
Chester Monk is filthy rich because of his tech innovations, but there are other rumors that he actually stole all the ideas and doesn’t have an original idea of his own at all. ”
“Gretchen,” Jack told her warningly.
“Hey!” Chester shouted, face beet red and eyes shifty. “That’s a lie. I borrowed those ideas, I mean came up with those ideas fair and square!”
“So you and Senator Salisbury are in cahoots,” a beta woman in the crowd said. She was one of the ones holding a newspaper.
“What? What are you saying?” Salisbury said, marching toward her. “What does that say?”
He snatched the newspaper out of her hand and read it.
His face went white.
“Slander,” he hissed. “Hearsay and gossip.”
“What’s going on?” Papa asked as he and Dad moved around Chester to come stand with me and Jack.
“It’s all over the news,” the man who had originally spoken said. “The story just broke everywhere. Senator Salisbury and Chester Monk have colluded to defraud their investors and to manipulate the results of the upcoming gubernatorial election.”
“This is so exciting!” Gretchen squealed.
“Do you want to see?” a third person from the still-growing crowd said, bringing a newspaper over to us.
There it was, taking up the entire front page.
“Fraud and Scandal in Salisbury’s Inner Circle”.
There were pictures of Salisbury and Chester together, some of them from the Tech Expo, some from other events.
Several different articles showcasing different elements of the scandal blared out from the page.
Of course, the main detail that I noticed was the name attached to the byline. Adam Schubert.
“The Schuberts always get their man,” Jack said in an awed voice. When I glanced questioningly up at him, he blinked out of whatever thoughts he was having and looked right back at me as he pulled his phone out of his pocket. He tapped it a few times, waited, then blurted, “Imogen, what is this?”
I couldn’t hear what Imogen, whoever that was, said, but Jack’s confused look turned to a smile, and that smile turned into a look of victory.
“I knew it,” he said at last, then, “Thanks, Imogen. I’ve got to go, but I’ll circle back with you shortly.”
He ended the call, put his phone away, then shifted to face me directly, hands gripping my arms.
“Adam Schubert,” he said. “German’s assistant. He’s actually an undercover investigative reporter who was researching corruption between the media and politicians. He recorded everything at the expo, then followed those leads to discover, well, everything.”
“He did? That nerdy little beta?” I couldn’t believe it. I was in absolute shock, but coupled with absolute joy.
“What does this all mean?” my dad asked.
Papa was reading the newspaper, his eyes wide and bright. “Conspiracy, fraud, collusion,” he said. “It’s all here. I’m surprised they haven’t arrested—”
“Senator John Salisbury?” a deep voice sounded from the end of the hall.
We all glanced up in time to see no fewer than six alpha policemen striding down the hall, looking like they meant business.
“Mr. Salisbury, you’re under arrest,” the alpha cop said.
“No! I refuse!” Salisbury shouted. “You can’t do this to me!”
Chester let out a yelp and turned to run. He didn’t really have anywhere to go, though, and two of the cops broke away from the others to chase after him.
The best thing I’d ever seen in my life, outside of Jack naked and hard, was cops tackling Chester as he tried to get away, then Chester bawling like a baby as they cuffed him and read him his rights.
Thirty seconds later, Salisbury was in handcuffs, too.
He didn’t fight or cry or try to get away, but he shouted, “You’ll hear from my lawyers about this!
” and threatened everyone in sight as he was marched away.
“I’ll never forgive you for this!” he shouted at Jack before they goosestepped him around the corner. “You’re no son of mine now!”
“Good,” Jack said, not with anger or spite, but with relief. “I don’t want to be anyhow.”
“Go on with your days, folks,” the alpha cop announced to the room once Salisbury and Chester were gone. “There’s nothing more to see here.”
“This is all so incredible,” Gretchen said, still recording. “I’m going to post this all over my socials.”
“If you really think that’s a good idea, dear,” my papa told her.
“I think it’s an excellent idea,” Gretchen giggled.
She lowered her phone, finally, and gaped between me and Jack.
“Do you know what this means?” she asked, hardly able to stand still, she was so giddy.
“It means that the two of you can get married now! Aaw!” She clutched her hands and phone to her heart and tipped her head to the side, like Jack and I were a couple she’d been shipping for ages instead of five minutes.
Jack turned to me clasping my face in his hands. “It does mean we can get married now,” he said.
My jaw dropped. “You would really want to marry me?” I asked, head spinning. Not only that, my sever seemed to be throbbing with new life and energy, like it was determined to heal with or without ReBond, because it knew Jack and I belonged together.
“Absolutely,” Jack said, leaning down to kiss me.
It was the most beautiful kiss in the history of the world. It made me hot and sparkly and so confident all at the same time. It was a symbol that the two of us could and would be together, no matter who tried to stand in our way.
I pulled back and glanced worriedly up at Jack. “What about your mother? Will she try to get revenge because of your dad? And what if the charges don’t stick? What if he comes after us again?”
“Mom won’t care,” Jack said, exuding confidence. “She’ll probably take as much money as she can before the courts really get to work and run off to some European country.”
“But you?”
Jack’s smile deepened. “I don’t need my dad’s money or anything that comes from him. I only need you.”
Tears filled my eyes, but they turned into laughter when Gretchen “aawed” loudly.
She had gone back to filming and prompted us with, “Kiss him! Kiss him!”
Jack sent her a wry grin, then focused on me entirely.
“I love you, Quincy,” he said. “I don’t care what happens next or how difficult our path might be.
I have dreamed of someone like you. You changed my world in a single night, and I can never go back.
Whatever happens, we can make a life together. We are meant to be together.”
“We are,” I said, more certain of anything than I’d ever been in my life. “I love you, Jack.”
I could have smiled forever as my sever buzzed and sang with promise, but Jack drew me into his arms and kissed me thoroughly.
I knew we would be okay.