Chapter 15
Hook
Another day wasted with no sign of Peter.
I see evidence of him in the reports of my people finding chilly responses from small business owners in the southern portion of the territory.
I collect two percent of all profits. Not a huge amount in the grand scheme of things, not with the services I provide.
And I sure as shit do provide services beyond keeping all the other problematic players out of this area.
My people have a problem, they come to me or Nigel, and we ensure it’s handled.
Whether it’s an unexpected fire or some issue with inheritance or even that they need some shit moved around and don’t have the employees to handle it.
We’re multipurpose like that.
What we don’t do, the thing that’s fucking us right now, is put the fear of god into these people.
I don’t lead by love. That shit is for the birds.
Love can sour and go cold and any number of bad outcomes.
Fear works. And they do fear me, just not as much as they fear Peter.
Because I have lines that Peter will happily cross whenever he feels like it.
He’s got to this portion of the territory.
I don’t know how, because we’ve had people watching that area specifically, but the proof is undeniable.
I’m so fucking furious, I want to charge through the streets, bellowing his name until he meets me for the final battle we both know is bearing down on us. If I thought for a second it’d work, I might actually do it.
But no, I have to stay the course. Peter has to come to me, and I have to deal with him once and for all.
First, I have to deal with my wife.
I find her working over a desk that definitely wasn’t in my suite when I left earlier.
She’s got several colors of fabric draped over the open wardrobe doors and a dress form thing with thin white fabric pinned in place around it.
I can almost see the shape of the dress she’s working on, but the blue marks on it might as well be Latin for all I understand them.
Sap that I am, I stand there and watch her work.
Her brows are furrowed in concentration as she circles the dress form with pins carefully held between her full lips.
A tuck here. A fold there. Each deftly held in place in the span of a heartbeat, though I would have stuck my fingers several times by now.
Tink is always beautiful. Always fierce. Always a woman I’m drawn to, often despite myself.
Seeing her so lost in creating a piece of clothing?
It’s like seeing through a tiny window into her soul.
She’s more than the submissive with a snarky attitude and a quick mouth.
More than the strong person who survived shit no one should have to survive.
She’s a shining goddamn star barreling through the heavens and fuck if I don’t feel privileged to watch her trajectory.
“Stop staring at me.”
Apparently she’s more aware of her surroundings than she seems. I walk to the bed and drop onto it. My whole fucking body aches after today, and I can’t even blame the workout I snuck in before lunch. It’s stress, pure and simple. I still manage to dredge up a grin for her. “I like watching you.”
“Creeper.”
“Voyeur,” I correct.
She finally lifts her head to glare. “Pretty sure we both already knew that.”
“Indeed.” I allow myself to take her in fully, to let her see how much I appreciate the view.
She’s wearing a pair of jeans that look worn and comfortable and hug her ass and hips in a way I truly appreciate.
A fluttery green crop top gives flashes of her stomach beneath.
She looks as fresh-faced as a college girl, and it’s like viewing the woman I know through a lens of what-if.
If things had fallen out differently, she’d have already graduated college.
She’d be exactly as wholesome and innocent as she looks right now, standing there with her bare feet and toes painted pink.
Tink narrows her eyes. “What’s got that look on your face? You look almost … wistful.”
I could lie, but I’m curious about how she’ll respond. “You look like the horrors of our world have never touched you.”
She snorts. “Shows what you know. Appearances are deceiving. That’s literally my job now; helping my clients accomplish the image they’re trying to project, all without saying a word.”
“If you hadn’t met Peter—”
“Stop.” She carefully sticks the remaining pins into a cushion that looks remarkably like Hades’s head.
“I can’t afford to play the what-if game.
There’s a reason he found it so easy to get to me.
My life wasn’t as bad as a lot of kids’ experience in foster care, but it wasn’t easy, either.
Whatever rose-tinted vision of this alternate universe you’re looking at, it’s not what would have happened.
” She shakes her head. “I can’t look back, Hook.
I can’t. It’s what he wants, it’s why he’s trying to show up and fuck up my life all over again. I won’t let him win.”
The thought of Peter winning anything, of what it would mean, leaves me cold. “I won’t let him.”
Her attitude melts away, and she gives a sad little smile. “It’s not like he’s going to ask your permission first.”
I push to my feet and cross to her. Without her heels, she barely hits my shoulder. Tink gives the impression of being bulletproof now, but I know better. I’ve seen her broken and terrified. I’d do damn near anything to avoid seeing it again. “I won’t let him touch you,” I repeat.
“Don’t make promises you’ve already broken.”
She keeps saying she doesn’t want to talk about the past, and then she nails me to the fucking cross and crucifies me based on shit that happened in that same shared history.
If not for the frustration riding me hard, I would never let my control slip enough to say, “You don’t get to lay that sin at my feet. I tried to get you out. The first chance I got, I offered to get you away.”
I can still remember that night, how fucking scared shitless I was.
Both my father and Peter were out of the building for the first time in months.
I had a truck parked on the corner, and Nigel had risked his neck by stashing enough cash to at least get her out of Carver City.
To get us both out if it came to that. We hadn’t interacted more than a scattering of words over the years, but she had to know I had the best of intentions.
I wasn’t one of Peter’s men. I never had been, for all that I was trapped in the territory, same as her.
When I laid it out for her, Tink stared at me with lifeless eyes out of a wasted face sporting a new bruise on her cheekbone, and told me to take my escape and go fuck myself.
I still don’t know why.
She doesn’t look lifeless now. No, she looks like she wants to knee me in the balls. “That’s not fair.”
“It sure as fuck isn’t; just like you blaming me for shit like I didn’t try to help.”
“You call that help?” She laughs hoarsely and moves away from me, charging into the kitchen and hauling out a bottle of vodka.
“You idiot. Do you really think Peter didn’t have little spies who reported my every move, my every conversation to him?
That he wasn’t ready to take any sign of disobedience and punish me until I wished I was dead?
” She flashes me a dark look. “We never would have made it out of the building. And we wouldn’t have survived the night. ”
“You don’t know that.”
“I sure as hell do know that.”
I follow her into the kitchen and snatch two glasses out of the cabinet. “No matter your reasons for saying no, don’t fucking pretend like I didn’t try.”
“Trying doesn’t mean shit when it’s done so recklessly!”
“Then stop punishing me for it!” I realize I’m yelling and try to moderate my tone. “Either you blame me for not getting you out or you realize we were both trapped in dangerous situations.”
“Didn’t stay trapped, did you?”
Ah. There’s the crux of the issue. Not what happened while she was still in the territory. No, it’s what went down after she left. “You have something to say. Might as well get it out.”
Tink dumps vodka into each glass. I hate that her hands shake, but she won’t take comfort from me. We need to get this out now before it undermines our ability to work together.
Yeah. Sure. That’s why I want the air cleared. For the endgame. Not because I can’t stand the way she looks at me sometimes, like I’m the enemy. Like I’m a monster akin to Peter. Even if I am.
She downs her glass and flinches. “Should have had a chaser,” she gasps.
“For fuck’s sake.” I stalk to the fridge and yank out the first thing I find—orange juice.
I pour a second glass of it and pass it over while she watches me with wide eyes.
When she doesn’t immediately drink, I give her the look, the one primarily reserved for Dominants when their submissive has pushed back too hard and is edging over into disrespect.
Tink drinks the orange juice.
When it’s halfway gone, she sets the glass aside. Her voice has lost its hoarseness. “You say you hate what he did, but here you are, squatting in his territory.”
“It’s my territory now.”
“That’s exactly my point.” She waves a hand. “You’re occupying the same space he did. If you really loathed everything he and your father did, why didn’t you leave? You could have gotten out. Your trying to get me out proves it. But you chose to stay, and you chose to fight him and take his place.”
The truth is there, edging my tongue. Speaking it means peeling away parts of myself I never show anyone.
Oh, Nigel and Colin get pieces of me no one else does because they’re the kind of family a person actually craves, rather than one linked by miserable accident of blood. I got lucky with them. Everyone else?