CHAPTER THREE
MADDOX
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I wipe my mouth on the napkin and lean back in my seat. “So, are we going to ignore the elephant in the room or can we just get right to the fucking topic?”
I know they’re dying to bring it up.
So why haven’t they?
Killian lifts his brows as he slices a piece of bacon in half on his plate. He doesn’t bother glancing at me.
Parker sips his coffee, watching me with zero expression. Yeah, he’s an excellent poker player.
Just not as good as me.
Zayne and Travis frown.
I can’t understand why they are pussyfooting around the news. It might not be on the front page of The New York Times , but I know they all saw the announcement of my father’s upcoming nuptials to Kyra Fox.
“So, Pierce is getting married. And to a woman more than half his age. Are we surprised?” Killian replies after swallowing his bacon.
He has a point.
I lift my coffee cup and swallow the last of it down while I hold his stare. “No.”
“So, there’s no elephant,” Parker says, silencing his phone when it starts buzzing. “You hate the asshole. It’s clear the woman is a trophy bride for his midlife crisis. That’s what rich, middle-aged men who already have two Lamborghinis and ten Rolex watches do. Your father needs a new toy to show off.”
Is that what this is?
I thought my father would’ve remarried years ago—to someone more his age—but he never has. Probably because he likes playing with little boys.
Sick fuck.
“When are we supposed to get our first Lambo? Asking for a friend,” Killian asks, smirking, then chomps on a piece of toast.
He could afford ten of them, for the record.
“Why the Fox girl? Any ideas?” Travis asks.
I shake my head and drop my mug on the table. I glance around Dune, the establishment owned by Killian. It’s one of seven four-star Michelin restaurants dotted around the United States.
We meet at Dune Manhattan every Wednesday morning. I can count on one hand the number of times any of us have missed our weekly breakfast over the years since it opened. Our fight club days have matured, obviously.
While we mostly talk about business, women, and banter like the idiots we truly are, we all know there’s a deeper purpose to these catch ups.
Support.
Our friendship is the foundation of our lives because we don’t have families. Or more accurately, we’re estranged from them because of the abuse we suffered at their hands.
We are true brothers, bonded by a promise to not let the vile world we started life in define who we became.
Or who we are every day.
Every day we have one another’s back, motivating one another to achieve greatness...and one day, to the sweet promise of vengeance.
Clearly, they haven’t realized my time has arrived.
“Not to be crass, but have you seen her? She’s fucking gorgeous,” Zayne says, pulling out his phone.
Irritation flashes through me, and while I contain my reaction, I stiffen and do a long blink.
What the hell was that?
Yes, Kyra is beautiful—that is unmistakable—but she means nothing to me. I don’t know her. Have never met her or seen her in person.
In fact, I’m not even sure I knew that Derek Fox had a daughter. Nor cared.
Now, I do.
Now she has become a very important person in my life. Not that Kyra is aware of that minor fact yet.
She soon will be.
Over the years, several opportunities have arisen to destroy my father. Every company has its vulnerable times. But I’m a strategic and patient man. It’s almost like I knew something better would eventually come along.
I’m not an idiot.
I know Kyra isn’t the love of Pierce’s life. He likely doesn’t even know the girl. Unless I’m wrong and there is some fucked-up age gap chemistry between them.
She won’t be after his money. As the heiress to Fox & Co., she’ll have a trust fund to pay for all the Chanel purses and Louboutin shoes her little heart could desire.
And she is little.
The size two brunette with icy blue eyes looks almost childlike in the photos I’ve found online.
Imagining her with my father has me scowling.
But if this isn’t a match made in fucking heaven, Kyra is in for a shock after their nuptials. My father is a cruel man. He will hurt her and enjoy every second of it.
I grind my back teeth.
In any case, thanks to me, she won’t have to endure it because I’m going to kidnap her.
I’m about to strip him of his pride and humility. Something an insecure and controlling man like him would rather die than succumb to.
My lips twitch.
The moment he announced his engagement to Ms. Fox, I saw a vulnerability, and like a rapid dog, I snapped my teeth, knowing I was going right for the jugular.
Pierce won’t be marrying for love.
Kyra’s disappearance is going to cause all kinds of confusion and trouble. Trouble I’m going to coax and orchestrate like a conductor.
“Crass is your middle name?” Parker snorts and tugs Zayne’s phone, peering at the screen. “Jesus she’s young... and smoking.”
“Congratulations, you have a hot stepmom, Maddox.” Travis gives me a lopsided grin.
They are all fucking perverts.
Not that I blame them.
Kyra Fox is beautiful.
“Not yet,” I reply darkly and keep my plans to myself. It’s so tempting to tell them, but while we all might have some questionable morals—I mean we spent half our lives beating kids into a bloody mess so we could sleep at night—this might be going too far.
She’s innocent, after all.
They’d stop me.
Or try to talk me out of it.
I know this is the right path to take. Nothing will bring my father to his knees faster than being humiliated. His young bride suddenly leaving him days before his wedding is going to be hard to overcome in today’s public world.
I have the power and financial backbone to do this.
The five of us have spent the last ten plus years accumulating wealth and influence.
Killian, who owns Dune, is a successful restaurateur where the rich and famous from around the globe come to dine.
Parker is an investor. If you can call it that. He buys failing businesses, pulls them apart, and then puts them back together again. Ruthlessly. If he’s not in the business news once a quarter for letting go of a few thousand people, someone journalist hasn’t done his job. What they fail to report are the new jobs he creates, which are far more sustainable, and the contribution that has made to the economy.
Those jobs would have gone when the companies inevitably failed. But then again, that’s a boring story and doesn’t get clicks and likes.
Zayne was an early investor in AI and works with both policy makers and industries as an independent to ensure it contributes positively to humanity and doesn’t fucking destroy us.
It scares the shit out of me, while also being exciting.
“It’s been around for a lot longer than people realize.” Zayne told me one day. “And everyone is using it. Like every stage in human civilization, we need to keep pivoting and evolving. Or we die.”
“Or the bots kill us.” I lifted my brows.
“Well, we won’t be around to complain about it, so right now we have to put policies in place to ensure it doesn’t. Not just put them back in a box. That day has long since passed.”
Jesus.
I knew he was right.
“The risk of nuclear war is the greatest it’s ever been.” He shrugged. “People should be more worried about that.”
“Very true. Just...do a good job, all right. I didn’t survive my fucking father to watch some tin can with legs destroy us all.”
He saluted me with a grin.
Cheeky bastard.
Travis almost became a pro golfer. When he didn’t, he decided to use some of his trust fund to create one of the top golf courses in the country located just outside of Manhattan.
He didn’t stop there.
Travis added a club to his portfolio—a grown-up’s club, if you get my point. The Alliance Club, named after our underground fight clubs, is a place you’ll find us most Friday nights if I’m not attending work events.
The exclusive membership is outside of most people’s budget, and each person is personally approved by Travis. You won’t find innocent young women like Kyra Fox there, although I’d enjoy watching her face as she stepped inside the door.
Not that I know her, but I can tell by her photo and the submissive way she held herself in the photo.
And I know women.
I’ve fucked enough of them.
Personally, I like strong women who think they like an equal lover. It turns me on to watch them fight and eventually break, submitting to their true nature.
Kyra is way too submissive to get the attention of my cock. Which makes her the perfect prisoner. She will do as I tell her, stay quiet, and not cause any trouble.
Meanwhile, I can torture my father and destroy him piece by piece.
First, I need to go get my bait.
My phone buzzes with the message that I’ve been waiting for since Friday. About fucking time.
I’ve paid a huge sum to get this man’s number and do it anonymously. Apparently, black ops people don’t have websites or TikTok accounts.
Go figure.
“Pierce can enjoy his new toy.” While he still has her. “Meanwhile, I have a company to run. I’ll see all your ugly mugs at Alliance on Friday night.”
It’s time to go catch my fish.
I walk out the door and lift the phone to my ear, spotting my driver two cars away. I wave to Mitch, my driver, and he nods and pushes off the side of the car.
“Maddox Sterling,” I answer, my voice a rumble.
“Mr. Sterling,” the man replies.
I smile darkly. He has a digital layer over his voice so I can’t recognize him. One that my company probably created.
If I wanted, I could trace the call and follow the breadcrumbs back to him.
But I don’t.
“You needn’t have bothered,” I say. “I don’t care who you are. I just want the job done.”
He’s silent.
“I’ll need the first million in the bank in an hour, then the other three when I deliver her.”
I climb into the back of my town car and Mitch shuts the door. He jumps in behind the wheel and we head to my office on Seventh Avenue.
My lips quirk as I spot the coffee cup on the console beside him. Every Wednesday, one of Travis’s waitresses, Jenny, takes him a cappuccino and bagel to eat while the boys and I have breakfast.
I don’t know why he hasn’t fucked her yet.
“Message me the details and I’ll have the funds transferred in five minutes,” I reply. “I’ll send you the address to bring—”
I catch myself. I don’t want Mitch to be involved in any way. No one can know that I’m kidnapping Ms. Fox. Getting the room set up in my penthouse without leaving any footprints has been a challenge in itself.
“I understand,” the man’s scrambled voice says.
Then he hangs up.
We pull up outside my building and I climb out, staring up at the Sterling Tech sign on the Manhattan skyscraper. It’s a level of success even my father has never reached.
He won’t be unaware of who I’ve become.
“Take the rest of the day off, Mitch. I have meetings until late, so see you back here at six.”
“Yes, sir,” Mitch says. “I might take my boy out to play some ball.”
“You do that.” I smile as I shut the door and stride into the building.
Some days I envy Mitch. He might be divorced, but it’s amicable and both of them are dedicated to raising their son, Denzel. He’s a good kid who loves math and baseball. Little does he know, but I’m going to pay for him to go to college.
I’m not some nice guy.
I turned my inheritance into a billion-dollar empire with a single-minded vision of destroying my father. I have such an enormous amount of hatred inside me that the world feels like it's black and white.
People are either good or bad.
Of value to me or not.
Except my brothers. Nobody else gets inside my world, my heart, my soul, to see the dark truth.
So, when someone like Denzel slips inside by accident, I notice. I should never have let him ride with us that first time, but the kid was sick, and his mother was working.
“Pick him up,” I told Mitch as we headed to a meeting.
“We’ll be late, sir.”
“Fuck the meeting. The kid is sick. Pick him up,” I demanded.
“Are you sure?” Mitch glanced at me in the mirror.
I nodded.
Well, fuck me. That little face, full of snot, and just six years old, sat up in front with his father and talked nonstop. Finally, Mitch shut him up and told him that I was his boss.
Denzel swiveled around and stared at me like I was an alien or something.
“Why are you in the back seat if you’re the boss?”
Fucking kid.
I nearly laughed.
I didn’t want to tell him that his father was my driver. Something just didn’t feel right. I wanted him to keep looking at Mitch like the sun shone right out of his ass.
“I can’t drive,” I replied, then glanced away.
“You should learn. Dad could teach you,” Denzel said, “Right, Dad?”
Mitch glanced at me in the rearview mirror, and I could see the gratitude in his eyes.
“Maybe. I thought you were sick? You’re doing a lot of talking for a sick child.” His father shot him a look as he turned the car into the next street.
Denzel had slumped back into the seat, but those innocent brown eyes eventually drifted back to me. I let him watch me for a long moment, feeling the weight of his curiosity.
When I turned to meet his gaze, his face lit up and his smile crashed through the barrier around my heart. I hadn’t been around children much as an adult, and the pure innocence took my breath away.
I smiled back.
That was all he wanted. A fucking smile.
Satisfied with his success, Denzel snuggled back into his seat and sighed happily.
I shook my head, envious of his little life, and was somehow changed by the experience. He’d softened a little spot on my heart and made me want more. Like he’d given me a little glimpse of the good that was available in life, if I only opened to it.
From that moment on, I was determined to make sure he had everything he always needed.
That Christmas, Mitch got an enormous bonus, which took me about an hour to insist he take, and he bought his ex-wife a house.
Idiot.
I was expecting him to buy the house for himself.
“Denzel lives with his mom eighty percent of the time. It’s better for him to have a safe home to live in.”
Jesus Christ.
Now I was going to have to give him another big bonus, and it would take another year.
I knew he wouldn’t accept a handout. The hour in my office forcing the money down his throat proved that. The man has honor and pride. I respected that.
Don’t go thinking I’m a good guy.
I’m not.
If I could, I would have my father strung up in a dungeon and peel pieces of his skin from his body every day. Waiting for it to scab up, then taking a knife and peeling it away just before it healed once more.
Oh, the things I’ve fantasized about. Between the nightmares. After all, Pierce taught me to be a monster.
Denzel just feels like my redemption.
Kyra won’t be so lucky.
I transfer the money and send an encrypted message with the address.
Then at the end of the day, I get a message.
Package is ready for delivery.
I stride through my office, ripping my Armani jacket off the hook on the door, and walk out the door. “Have a good night, Janice.” I tell my secretary.
“Goodnight, Mr. Sterling,” she replies. “I’ll have that report from finance to you by ten tomorrow, as promised.”
Nodding, I reach the elevators and press the button, my heart thumping.
I’ve just kidnapped a woman.
There’s no coming back from this now.