43. Briggs
Chapter 43
Briggs
“Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind and has given up worrying once and for all." ― Ovid
F ootsteps echoed like stones being thrown into glass—heavy, like my racing heart.
I leaned back in the armchair, an ominous yellow light beside me on the small table Rose and I almost broke that first night in our house. The first of many, and after tonight, they’d all be just as peaceful as they should have been from the start.
“Look at what you’ve done to the place.” My father’s voice sounded from the door, full of disgust. He strode deliberately to the entryway table, where Rose had put the picture of us from when we were kids. His fingers whitened as he held the frame. “You’ve really fucked up this time, Briggs.”
I unbuttoned the top button of my perfectly ironed white shirt, loosening my collar as I sighed. “I know.”
His brow angled as he set the frame back down. “Where is she?”
I shrugged and raised the flask from the table. “I don’t know. Probably out spending my money or spreading her legs.” I downed long pulls of the whiskey as my father took a seat on the couch in front of me.
His tongue clicked. “Should’ve let me end it all on the rooftop. I don’t know what you were thinking, but I’m glad to see you’ve finally come to your senses.” I nodded, trying to hide the tick of my jaw by scrubbing a hand down my face. “Does that mean you don’t know when she will be back?”
His eagerness to see Rose was twisting my gut, but I shook my head, playing the role I needed to. I took my phone out and tossed it to him. “Her location is there. Bitch is tracked.”
A sly grin spread over his face as he tapped his fingers on the screen, still staring at me. “I’m proud of you, son.” That was the first time he’d ever said those words to me, yet it did not affect the rage simmering within me .
I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees. “She was at least a good fuck. Too bad she won’t be around much longer.”
Rose was going to fucking kill me for that line. She was a fabulous fuck. The best lay of my entire life. I couldn’t wait to remind her of that very fact once this was all over.
“Clarissa is still a viable option.” He tossed my phone on the coffee table between us. “Dean would be thrilled to have you tame his insubordinate daughter. It would be good for both of you. Good for the company.”
“Right.” I swallowed past the bile that sentiment forced into my throat. “Speaking of the company”—I leaned back, my knees hitting either side of the chair—“I’ve been thinking about VanLuxe and the revenue we’re missing out on.”
His brows shot up toward the ceiling. “Go on.”
“The girls,” I started, my fingers splaying over the armrests. “They should be monetized more…effectively.”
The side of his mouth twisted up. “They already are.”
I tilted my head, matching his smirk with my own. “How many are we exporting a year?” I shot for casual, though every nerve in my body was firing off.
“I’d be happy to share those numbers with you, assuming you’re ready to step into the role you’ve been raised for and leave this”—he swirled a finger, gesturing to the entire house and the life I’d made here—“all behind.”
“She was a mistake. One I won’t be making twice,” I growled low .
“Excellent.” He checked the time on his watch, then glanced between my phone that still sat on the table and me. “Since you’re finished, I don’t think you’d mind sharing before we end her?”
If it weren’t for all the times I’d been put in a chair that first year and wrung dry of every emotion I had to give, I would have wrung his neck right then and there. “Have at it.” My teeth ground together uncomfortably, and I took a heavy swig from the flask to cover that, too, before reaching for the phone.
The wickedness spread along Ben’s face at the prospect of him taking what was mine. “You’ve impressed me, Briggs. Truly.” He adjusted his suit jacket and took up a more relaxed position on the couch. “Now then. Why don’t you explain to me how our estate burned down.”
I pursed my lips and exhaled sharply. “It was time to end that chapter.” That was the first honest thing that I’d said to him since he walked in. I squared my shoulders back, knowing with absolute clarity that chapter— the one where my life had never been mine—was about to end.
“Ruthless. The way you should have been from the start.” The way my brother had been. I’d had every intention of asking if Beck knew about what was going on—to make him out to be a villain like the man before me. But that was the past, and he was gone.
My eyes fell to the photo of Rose and me as glimpses of my future stirred my thoughts. My father noticed before I could glance away. “It was foolish of me to think she’d fit in with the life I planned to lead. ”
“Women have a way of swaying our minds in the worst way.” He reached for the decanter on the coffee table and poured himself a glass. “Part of why selling them once they are done being useful is so”—he took a sip from his glass—“fulfilling.”
Fucking disgusting. But this is what I needed him to confess.
“I can see that. Is that what made you start with VanLuxe? When she left us? Or is that why she left us—because of the club?”
He swirled the amber liquid in his glass, his eyes darkening to that shade they always did right before he’d pummel into me. “Us?”
Shit .
Oh well. He was done soon, anyway. “Us—as in you, me, and Beck. You didn’t think it was just you that she left, did you?”
The jealousy I also inherited burned in his eyes. “She didn’t give a damn about either of you. She was ready to throw it all away and look, she ended up walking out without you. She never cared about you or Beck.”
“And you did?”
His nostrils flared. “I did what needed to be done. You were soft. Too soft to run my fucking company. Your brother was the stronger of you both, and you know it.”
“Yes, in an ideal world, I’d be the one buried six feet under, and you’d have the twisted protégé you always wanted.”
He laughed. “Yes. But that seems to have changed. Turns out, all you needed was a broken heart.” He topped off his drink, and I watched with bated breath as his fingers trembled around the glass. “Which reminds me—was she still a virgin? ”
He wiped his lip with his thumb, unable to hide another set of tremors. I smiled, but not from his question. “Yes. Although you tried to ruin that, didn’t you? Ruin her?” I scoffed. “As if that would have deterred me from chasing after her.”
His hazy green eyes locked on mine. “I knew s-she was your o-obsession. Your j-journals and all the f-fucking tattoos. J-Jesus, Briggs. You w-were disgust…disgustingly i-in love. L-love do… doesn’t exist”
I nodded, glancing down the hallway behind him. He was too far gone to notice. “You’re right. About one of those things, at least. She was my obsession and still is.” I stood and moved to sit beside him as he leaned his head on the back of the couch. “And no, you can’t fucking have her.” I yanked him closer to me by his hair as my mother, and Dean stepped into view. I guided his drooping head, granting him the angle he needed to see them through his slitted eyes.
My father blinked slowly at his business partner, then rolled his eyes to my mother. “S-should’ve fuckin’ know…known it’d be y-you.”
“Save your breath while you’re still conscious,” Dean replied. “Victoria told us about what you did with the women at our club. It’s me who should’ve done something before it got as far as it did.”
“F-feminist idiot,” my father got out before my mother walked up to him and slapped him across the face.
Dean slammed a packet of papers down on my father’s lap, then squeezed my father’s reddened cheeks together to get his vacant expression to meet Dean’s wary eyes. “Sign, Ben.” I believe confusion struck Ben, but he was too high to function properly. That’s what happens when you take a drink without knowing what’s in it. What a damn shame. “Time to give it up.”
I took the pen from Dean and wrapped my father’s fingers around it, guiding his hand to the one line that would give me the company and leave my father with nothing. But that wasn’t enough for me.
The hoard of officers that came in a few minutes later while my father was fast asleep were the ones that would end it all. I proudly stripped my wire from beneath my shirt and handed it over while my mother leaned back against the outer wall of my home, watching her ex-husband get taken away.
All I’d needed was a confession, along with my mother’s witness accounts and documents she still had, of what he’d done with the women at VanLuxe—the now very closed gentlemen’s club that was never truly just that—and he was never going to see the light of day again. With VanAndrews now headed by me, Ben would have no money for a lawyer and no family or friends to support him on the outside. He’d have no hope of ever getting out.
Dean’s hand squeezed my shoulder as we watched the lights fade from view.
“The original plan—you were ready to do it, weren’t you?”
I mulled over his words. “He wouldn’t have stopped unless I did.” Our original plan would have potentially driven Rose from me, but it was a risk I was willing to take to save her.
“I would have pulled the trigger for you. If we hadn’t made a deal with them, I would have shot him the minute he entered your house. ”
And that’s why I’d be loyal to him for the rest of my life. One of the many reasons
I jerked my chin toward the last car—the one driven by the blonde agent, Tracey, that Jim had tracked down. When I called the agent, I readily offered to provide her with whatever she needed before I even knew if my mother had anything concrete on him. It wasn't because of the faith I didn't have in my mother. No, it was my faith in my father's desire to hide whatever he'd been up to. He killed for it, lost his wife over it, and was losing his business partner and friend slowly by keeping the secret. Agent Tracey had been trying to take him down for years, attempting to gather any evidence she could. She thought we were using the house I signed over to Rose as a meeting place to sell women. The woman they’d been after—I’d been completely wrong about.
“Guess you were right—they were after Jasmine.”
Dean coughed into his fist, the thought probably just as vulgar in his mind as it was in mine. “Yeah. Suppose I was.”
“Did you know?”
His brows furrowed. “That Stan came for her?” His face twisted. “Fuck no. I just had the same thoughts as you—save my girl. You know, all that.”
Dean wouldn’t lie about that. He may have hidden his suspicions, but I believed him. “You’ve been watching for a tail for a while now, haven’t you?”
“Yep. Knew something was bad with that place for a long time, just didn’t know how to go about doing anything.” He drew in a deep breath, then exhaled, forming steam against the cold air .
“And you took Jasmine out before she could get wind,” I concluded.
He moved to stand in front of me, the lightness in his shoulders almost as visible in the dark as mine felt. “You know damn well why I took her from that place. Didn’t need anyone’s eyes, hands, or even feet near her. And selling her?” His jaw jumped. “I would have shot Ben myself right then and there if he tried anything like that with her.” His shoulder brushed mine as he made his way to the front door. “Going to go check on her. Don’t wait up for us.”
I turned to follow. “You both need to be gone by the morning.”
He tapped the door frame as he passed it, then glanced over his shoulder at me. “Sure thing, boss.”
Rose knew not to leave our bedroom until I came for her. I unbuttoned my jacket and shrugged it off as I entered, unable to move my eyes from the woman who made everything possible.
“Rose, baby.” Her attention didn’t shift from the gun in her hands. My gun. My promise to her that I wouldn’t take it as far as I wanted to, and that if anything had gone wrong, she’d have it as protection against him. I sat down beside her on our bed. “It’s over.” I held my hand out while hers trailed over the fully loaded weapon.
She finally placed it in my hand, and I removed the magazine before placing it on the bedside table. “I don’t think I’m afraid of it anymore.” Her startling, beautiful blue eyes met mine, shining with a vibrance I hadn’t seen in a while.
“Guns?”
She nodded. “Yeah.” My fingers threaded through hers. “Are you okay?”
“Never been better,” I replied without having to think if that was right or not. I was now the CEO of a company I thought I’d never want, and I had the woman of my dreams at my side. I smiled softly as I lifted her chin and pressed my lips to hers. “I’m going to spend every last minute of my life showing you how much I want to be everything for you. How much I love you. You make me want to be better. You have made me better, Rose.”
Her fingers wrapped around my wrist. “You’ve always been good, Briggs.”
I slid my arms around her waist and pulled her flush to my body as I laid back. “Tell me you still love me and that I didn’t fuck anything up.”
Her laugh was delicate, just like her. “You didn’t fuck anything up.” Her soft lips brushed over mine, those teeth she never tried to hide anymore, taking my bottom lip roughly. “I love you,” she whispered, making warmth course through my veins. I rolled us, putting her on her back. Rose fit so well beneath me that my entire body hummed above her—all of my adrenaline saved for her. She flattened her hand on my chest before I could take it further, and I pulled back with a groan. “Tell me one thing first.”
“Anything.”
Her brows dipped together. “Are you going to forgive her? ”
I wasn’t expecting her to ask that so soon. I thought for a moment, then decided against waging a war in my head when my other one was ready for much naughtier things.
“I don’t know,” I replied truthfully. “Should I?”
She bit down on her lip, seemingly just as conflicted by not wanting to think too hard about it. “I think if you don’t want her to be in our lives, then that’s what we’ll do. If I’m being honest, I wanted to reach across the table and slap her when she showed up this morning.”
I chuckled, her wrist slackening enough to let me lean in. She brushed my hair from my face, her hand warm against my skin as it settled behind my neck. “You mean to tell me my little viper wanted to strike for me? And here I thought I was the only one refraining from turning murderous.” I’d been honest about whose blood was on my fingers when I returned home. I’d also been honest about letting him live. Neither one made her kick me out, so I believed I did the right thing.
“She hurt you, which hurts me.”
I kissed her neck. “I’m very familiar with the feeling, Rose.”
“If you want me to hate her with you, I will.”
“Let’s decide that later.” I kissed her with everything I had, my tongue sliding in with hers like heaven to my senses. “As long as I have you, my life is already complete.”