Chapter 32 – Alec
ALEC
It’s late. Late enough that I should have left the office hours ago.
I shouldn’t still be here, shifting through memos and financial projection reports, listening to the distant hum of a vacuum as the custodial staff that maintains Sterling Enterprises’ head office slowly works their way through the building.
Outside the floor-to-ceiling windows behind my desk, the sky is pitch black, illuminated from below by thousands of city lights. Fortune City always looks better at night. Bright. Alive.
And I shouldn’t be here.
I should be at home, back at the compound, sorting through these same reports and godforsaken memos in my home office.
But the compound doesn’t feel like home right now. Not when Sebastian is never there. Not when Ashton won’t even look at me. He’s giving me the silent treatment, storming out of the room anytime he sees me. They both blame me for Sydney’s absence, for everything that’s fallen apart.
And they’re not wrong. It is my fault.
I tap my finger on my mahogany desk, trying to focus on work.
The security report from the incident at Oscuro is open in front of me.
Our cameras caught a single unidentified person placing the bomb outside the club’s emergency exit, face obscured under a hoodie.
Unidentifiable. Two more attempted attackers were discovered when all the footage from that night was reviewed, both scared off by our security team before they could gain access to the building.
I click my tongue as I stare down at the report.
These weren’t professionals. Dante is doing this cheap, hiring random thugs off the street.
Even if we were to track one down, they wouldn’t know anything about his organization that could help us.
It’s not hard to find people in a city like this who are desperate enough to do anything for a few hundred dollars.
I lean back in my chair and press my thumb and forefinger to my eyes, a headache brewing behind my temple.
“You’re here late.”
The voice grates against my nerves before I even look up, opening my eyes to glare at him.
Daniel Whitmore.
He’s leaning in the doorway, all sanctimonious piety and starch. A man who’s made hypocrisy an art form. Even in this city—teeming with liars and villains—Pastor Whitmore stands out above the rest.
I can’t stand men like him. Religious men, who preach the good word of God on Sunday and then spend the rest of the week spitting on every ideal they claim to uphold.
He reminds me of the priest who ran the orphanage where we grew up.
A man who smiled and accepted people’s praise and donations while he starved us.
Who spoke about God while beating us with a belt.
Men like him and Daniel Whitmore are cut from the same cloth.
I lower my hand from my face. “What the fuck do you want, Daniel?” I ask.
He raises his eyebrows at my tone, feigning offense, as if my swearing wounds him. “Just checking in. Have you seen your brother lately?” he asks. He runs a hand over his hair—grey, dyed blond, and thinning even with the hair plugs.
“No.” I don’t trust where this is going. “Why?”
He shrugs. “I haven’t seen him around the office in a while. People are starting to talk.”
People like you, I think.
“Has there been a problem with my brother’s work?” I press, closing the security file on my desk. “Has his team missed a deadline I’m unaware of?”
He waves the words away. “We both know his team runs perfectly fine without him.” A thin smile. “Makes you wonder what he’s doing to earn such a sizable paycheck.”
My patience is running thin. “What do you want, Daniel?” I repeat, standing.
Daniel sucks his teeth. “Look, I’m sorry to do this to you, really I am.” He’s not sorry. Whatever he’s here about has him practically glowing with self-satisfaction. “But I thought you should know. There will be a board meeting at the end of the week.”
I blink, mentally reviewing my calendar. “No one informed me of that.”
“Why would they?” he asks, grin widening. “The meeting is about you, after all.”
He pauses there, savoring my discomfort.
“There’s going to be a vote of no confidence,” Daniel says, and my world tilts.
“Too many things have been slipping through the cracks lately, and some of us aren’t happy with the direction you’re taking the company.
Especially with this new club of yours. Something this expensive, already causing so many problems?
And now there are rumors…” He tilts his head, voice dripping with false concern.
“People are saying it might be involved in a sex ring.”
Cold dread grips my chest. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
Daniel holds up his hands defensively. “We’ve been hearing things. That Oscuro is going to have a special access VIP lounge that offers…more than bottle service.”
My hands tighten into fists. He doesn’t understand. Men like him never do.
Sex work isn’t legal in Fortune City. Not yet, anyway. Mostly because of pricks like Pastor Daniel Whitmore, preaching the idea that sex is immoral, and blocking any legislation that might challenge that.
But what we have planned for Oscuro isn’t illegal. It’s not Second Circle. It’s a private sex club, no money exchanging hands, no sex workers. Oscuro’s VIP level would be a place for consenting adults to explore their kinks and pleasure without shame.
But try explaining that to a man who thinks sex itself is a sin.
“We just can’t have something like that sullying Sterling Enterprises’ good name,” Daniel insists. “Davidson and Smith agree with me, by the way.”
I smile, but I know it doesn’t reach my eyes. “That’s three votes. Out of nine. You need the majority to get rid of me.”
He shrugs again, unconcerned. “Richards won’t like it, once he finds out. He’s always complained about how much money Ashton makes, for how little he does around here. And Deskmukh will vote with him. He always does. You know how these things go, they snowball.”
This mother fucker.
“You really think you can kick me out of my own company?” I ask him, my voice a low growl. “The company I built with my own two hands? When my name’s on the fucking building?”
Clearly he does. There’s no fear in his eyes as I stare him down. “I am sorry, Mason,” he says again. And he at least tries to look sympathetic this time. “It’s not you. It’s business.”
“My business,” I remind him, through clenched teeth.
“I know how much you care about this company, Mason,” he continues. “But we’ll take good care of it. And who knows, maybe you can keep a position here. Not as CEO, obviously. But something less public.”
Hubris is a funny thing. Clearly, I’ve underestimated Daniel. Underestimated how much he must hate me. Funny, how that hate is what might save me, that him being here, needing to rub my face in it, is all the warning I need to remind these fuckers why I shouldn’t be messed with.
I pull my phone out and text the names to Sebastian.
Whitmore, Davidson, and Smith.
We’ll need three new board members to replace them before the end of the week. And remind Richards who the fuck he works for.
“Mr. Sterling,” I correct him, slipping my phone back into my pocket. I force myself to stay calm as I pull the laptop on my desk toward me, using the fingerprint access to turn it on.
“What?” Daniel asks, confused.
“My name,” I explain coldly. “Not Mason. It’s Mr. Sterling, to you.”
His smile twists into something uglier. “For now.”
A few keystrokes are all it takes to access the files I need. A failsafe, for just this sort of occasion. “Do you know what I hate about men like you, Daniel?” I ask conversationally.
He opens his mouth, but I don’t give him a chance to answer.
“You’re hypocrites,” I tell him. “You preach good family values and look down your nose at the way other people live. You think you’re virtuous, but men like you are always hiding the ugliest skeletons in your closet.”
His face twists. “I don’t know what you—”
I turn the laptop screen to face him and press play.
The video has no sound. It doesn’t need it. The grainy footage says everything.
Color drains from Daniel’s face as he watches.
“Does your wife know you’re fucking her sister?
” I ask. I glance at the screen, where he has her bent over a pew at his church.
There’s nothing arousing about it. He looks like a plucked chicken, rutting into her.
The best thing you can say for it is that it’s short, the whole thing lasting less than five minutes.
“Or are you saving that sermon for next Sunday?”
He stammers. “This is…” He gestures at the screen, hands trembling. “This is a fake! AI-generated nonsense!”
I chuckle, the sound low and cold. “You and I both know that’s not true. And it’s not the only one I have. Would you like to see the rest?”
He’s shaking now. Scared. Searching the deepest cavities of his mind for any excuse that would get him out of this.
“Here’s what’s going to happen.” I close the laptop with a click.
“You’re going to resign from the board. Tonight, effective immediately.
And you’re going to get the fuck out of my city.
Take your family, take your church, take whatever you need.
But you’re gone by the end of the week. Or this video goes to your entire congregation, including your wife. ”
“You wouldn’t!” Daniel protests.
“Oh, but I would,” I tell him, letting him see the truth on my face.
Happily.
Fuck, I want to do it. Men like Pastor Whitmore have had their tight grip on this city for far too long. I should have wiped him off the board years ago, instead of placating him with a position on the board.
Some problems you fix with bribery, and some with blackmail and threats. Daniel is a problem I should have just put a fucking bullet in.
It takes a moment for him to understand. For it to really sink in how completely fucked he is.
It’s almost beautiful to see it.
“Where am I supposed to go?” he whispers, a noticeable tremor to his voice.
“I don’t give a single fuck.”
He swallows, straightens his back. “And if I don’t? If I refuse to leave?”
I smile, and it feels good to watch him flinch seeing it. “If you don’t leave by the end of the week, me releasing that video will be the least of your problems,” I promise him.
He stares at me, pale and trembling. “My God. It’s true, isn’t it?” he breathes. “All the things they say about you. The things they say you’ve done. It’s all true.”
“No, Daniel,” I tell him quietly. “The rumors don’t even begin to cover it.”
I let him see it, in my eyes, the truth of me. I’m not the monster everyone says I am behind closed doors.
I’m so much fucking worse.
When he finally flees my office, I check my phone. No reply yet from Doc.
Daniel didn’t just decide to grow a spine. Something made him think this play would work. Someone made him think this play would work. And he was right. If that smug dickhead had just kept his mouth shut, if he had been able to stop himself from gloating…
I could have lost my position, my company.
Everything I’ve worked so hard to build.
Furious, I send another text.
Check their financials, all three of them. They’ve been paid off.
But I already know what he’ll find.
This was never about Oscuro. The club, the bomb, all these pesky little problems that just keep popping up in my businesses.
Annika was right. These were all distractions. Things to keep me occupied, to keep my attention away from the real threat.
Because Dante is coming for my empire. He’s trying to take down everything I’ve built, push me out of my own company. And he almost accomplished it, all while I was looking exactly where he wanted me to.
A sharp knock on the door cuts through my thoughts.
“Sir?” Devon, my assistant, steps in holding a manila envelope.
I glance at the clock on the wall, noting the time. “It’s too late for you to be in the office, Devon,” I say. “We don’t pay you enough to stay here after five. Go home.”
“I will, sir. But this just came for you. It’s marked urgent.”
I take the envelope from him and dismiss him with a nod, waiting until he’s gone before looking at it.
There’s no return address on the envelope, no stamps. Just my name and scrawled above it in thick black ink: URGENT. PRIVATE.
Suspicious, I slide a letter opener under the flap and tear it open.
Distractions. That’s been Dante’s play this whole time.
And this is his final move, the last piece to keep me occupied while he worked behind my back to push me out of my own company.
The paper inside is glossy, and when I pull it out and flip it over, my vision goes red.
A photograph.
Of Sydney, fast asleep on her couch.
A photograph taken from inside her apartment.