Chapter 21 Dominic
Dominic
Father calls the meeting for eleven o'clock and doesn't bother framing it as a request. His assistant sends the calendar invite at ten forty-five, fifteen minutes of lead time that's designed to prevent me from preparing a counter-argument.
I read the subject line twice: Personnel Reallocation, Executive Assistant, and my hand tightens around my phone hard enough that the case creaks.
I text Amos: Father is moving on Mattaniah. My office. Now.
Amos arrives in four minutes with his laptop under his arm and his glasses already pushed up into his hair, which means he was expecting this. He drops into the chair across from my desk and opens the laptop.
"Personnel reallocation," I tell him. "Executive assistant. He wants to reassign Mattaniah."
"To what?"
"I'll find out in fifteen minutes. What do we have that keeps the Omega under our authority?"
Amos' nose scrunches up at my use of ‘the Omega’ before his fingers start moving across his keyboard.
"The Southeast division audit. I flagged inconsistencies in the travel reimbursement accounts three weeks ago and we never formally assigned anyone to assist. Mattaniah already has the financial literacy to support the review.
I can generate the assignment paperwork in ten minutes. "
"Do it."
He does it in eight.
Father's office smells like old leather and single malt. He's standing behind his desk when I arrive because he always stands when he wants to look down at whoever walks through his door.
"Sit." He gestures to the chair across from his desk.
I stay on my feet. "You want to reassign Mattaniah."
"I want to optimize our personnel." He straightens a stack of papers that doesn't need straightening. "The Omega has been underutilized as a general assistant. His skill set would be better served in a more focused capacity."
"Focused how?"
"He'll work directly under me." Father looks up and holds my gaze. "Personal assistant to the CEO. It's a promotion. Better title, better access, more responsibility."
The words land exactly the way he intends them to. Under me. Better access. The Omega who's been sleeping in my bed would spend every working hour within arm's reach of the man who's been testing how far his hands can travel for two weeks.
"He reports to me now." I set the assignment paperwork on Father's desk. "Southeast division audit. Amos flagged financial inconsistencies that require a dedicated review, and Mattaniah has the analytical skills to support it. The paperwork was filed this morning."
Father picks up the paperwork and reads it without hurrying, his face giving away nothing even as the move in front of him gets blocked.
"This morning," he repeats. "How convenient."
"Amos is thorough."
Father sets the paperwork down and leans back in his chair. The silence stretches between us while he studies my face, and I let him study it because my face gives away nothing I don't want it to.
"You've shown your hand, Dominic." His voice is conversational. "Every time you step between me and something I want, you give me another lever to pull."
"I'm protecting a company asset. The audit needs completion and Mattaniah is qualified."
"You're protecting an Omega you've been scent-marking for two weeks." He says it without inflection. "Don't insult my intelligence by pretending otherwise."
I hold his gaze until he breaks the silence.
"Take your audit." He waves a hand at the paperwork. "For now."
I leave his office with the signed paperwork and my jaw aching from how hard I've been clenching it.
Mattaniah spends the rest of the day working from my office.
He sits at the small table by the window with his laptop and the Southeast division files spread around him, his pen tapping against his lower lip while he cross-references account numbers.
His focus is absolute. The pen stops tapping every time he finds a discrepancy.
He flags each one with a yellow sticky note and moves on, his brain finally doing the work it was built for.
I watch him from my desk. I'm supposed to be reviewing the quarterly projections but the numbers keep blurring because the Omega at my window has tucked his feet under himself on the chair and his curls have escaped their professional taming and his scent has warmed the room into something that smells like he's stopped performing.
"You're staring," he says without looking up.
"I'm supervising."
"You're staring." His pen taps twice. "I can feel your eyes on me. It's distracting."
"Good."
The corner of his mouth twitches but he doesn't look up, and I go back to the projections.
Amos joins us around three with coffees and a USB drive containing updated forensic data.
He perches on the corner of my desk and walks Mattaniah through a series of account transfers that don't add up, and the two of them fall into a rhythm of analysis that excludes me entirely.
Mattaniah asks questions that make Amos' eyebrows rise, and Amos answers with a patience I haven't seen him use since he started teaching me bridge in college.
The afternoon is the closest thing to normal the three of us have ever had, coffee and spreadsheets and the occasional argument about methodology in an office that smells like all three of us.
By six, Mattaniah has flagged twenty-three discrepancies that Amos confirms are legitimate leads.
He pushes back from the table and stretches, his shirt riding up enough to show a strip of skin above the waistband of the slick panties, and I look away before I do something that disrupts the fragile professionalism of the last seven hours.
I pull out my phone and text the housekeeper. Is my father home?
The reply comes in thirty seconds. No, sir. He left for a dinner function at five. Not expected back until late.
"Go home," I tell Mattaniah. "Father's out for the evening. We'll pick up tomorrow."
His shoulders drop half an inch at the confirmation, a tension releasing that he probably didn't realize he was carrying. He gathers his things and leaves with a "goodnight, firefly" from me and a kiss on the forehead from Amos that makes him flush from his collar to his hairline.
The evening goes wrong at eight fifteen.
Amos and I are in the study reviewing the forensic data when we hear voices in the upstairs hallway. Mattaniah's voice first, tight and controlled. Then a woman's voice, sharp enough to carry through the closed door.
We move without discussing it. The study is on the second floor, twelve steps from the hallway where the voices are coming from, and by the time we reach the corridor I can hear every word.
"—cut my cards." Mattaniah's mother is standing in the hallway outside his bedroom door, her posture rigid with fury. "Richard cut my credit cards this afternoon. Every single one."
Mattaniah is backed against his door with his arms crossed over his chest, his body angled away from her the same way it angles away from Richard. His scent has gone sour with stress.
"I don't know anything about that," he says. "I don't have access to Richard's accounts."
"Don't lie to me." She steps closer and Mattaniah presses harder against the door. "I know about your arrangement with your stepbrothers. I can smell them on you. Two Alphas, Mattaniah? After everything I taught you about keeping your head down and your legs closed?"
Amos' hand touches my arm. Wait, the touch says. Listen.
"Richard already knows." Mattaniah's voice comes out flat, the terror buried so deep only someone who's been listening to him for weeks would catch it. "He doesn't care. He wants me anyway."
His mother's face flickers. The anger stalls and something scrambles behind her eyes as she tries to recalculate an argument that just lost its foundation.
"Then I'll tell the board." Her voice sharpens. "The press. Everyone. Your stepbrothers, the CEO's sons, sleeping with the CEO's personal assistant. That's the kind of scandal that tanks a stock price, Mattaniah, and you know it."
"Enough." I step into the hallway and Amos follows a half-step behind.
Mattaniah's mother turns. The fury on her face gives way to something more calculated as she takes in the two of us standing in the corridor, close enough to have heard everything.
"How long have you been listening?" she asks.
"Long enough." I cross the hallway until I'm standing between her and Mattaniah. "The credit cards were cut by Richard, not by us. If you have a problem with your household allowance, take it up with the man who provides it."
"This doesn't concern you."
"Everything that concerns Mattaniah concerns me." I let that land. "And everything that threatens this family's reputation concerns Amos."
Amos steps forward. His voice is conversational, the same tone he uses when presenting data that he knows will make someone uncomfortable.
"We've been building a file on you since the day you arrived.
Bank records, spending patterns, the timeline of previous marks.
" He adjusts his glasses. "Mattaniah mentioned a few names in passing, and my team has been very thorough in following up. "
Her face goes white.
"Here's what's going to happen." I keep my voice level.
"You're going to receive a monthly allowance of five thousand dollars, deposited into a personal account that has nothing to do with Richard's name.
You're going to stop approaching Mattaniah about money, about us, about anything.
You're going to smile at dinner and play your role and wait for the arrangement to run its course. "
"And if I don't?"
"If you speak to Mattaniah again without our permission," Amos says, "we'll make sure every man you've ever honey-trapped knows who set them up.
Financial records, hotel receipts, communication logs.
" He tilts his head. "Some of those men have wives.
Some of them have lawyers. All of them have reasons to want your name public. "