Chapter 40
CHAPTER FORTY
ADDIE
Ididn't get up.
That was new. I was a woman who got up first thing in the morning.
I had been getting up at five-forty-five since my first year at Yale, before the alarm, before the coffee, before the city had fully committed to being awake.
I got up because work was waiting and work was the only thing that had ever been reliably mine.
This morning, I stayed in bed.
In Vidar's bed. His sheets, his pillows, his scent soaked into every thread of the fabric I had burrowed into like a creature that had finally found somewhere warm enough to stop moving.
The morning light came through the curtains in long, pale bars.
I watched them shift and did absolutely nothing about it.
My hand went to my neck again. The mark was tender; a deep, pulsing ache that radiated outward every time my fingers brushed the edges of it, sending a low current of sensation all the way down to my toes. I touched it again. Pressed, gently. Felt my own pulse knock back against my fingertips.
I was sore in ways that would make a porn star blush. I was tired in a deep, cellular way that had nothing to do with the kidnapping or the wolfsbane— though all of that was probably somewhere in the total — and everything to do with the hours after we came home.
Dante Lupetto felt very far away. I knew, with a certainty that sat in my bones rather than my brain, that he was no longer a problem.
I didn't know exactly what Gunnar had done, and I didn't need to.
That was the thing about being a Blackwood, I was realizing; there were people in your corner who handled the things that needed handling, and you were allowed to simply trust that they had.
My father had enforcers too, but they had always felt like his weapons, aimed inward as often as out.
The Blackwood brothers were something different.
I thought about Mei Ling smoothing the bandage over my finger. Selecting the one with the tiny pink crowns.
I thought about the phone call that ended in Dante screaming.
I thought about Vidar on his knees on the family room rug, pressing his mouth to my hand.
My fingers found the mark again without my permission.
And then I thought about my husband's smile. He had called me brilliant. It was the sexiest thing a man had ever said to me.
My phone rang from the other room. I knew it was my phone because I recognized the ringtone. I lay in Vidar's bed for one more moment, resenting it. Then I untangled myself from the sheets, pulled one of Vidar's shirts from his closet, and pulled it over my head. It fell to mid-thigh.
The phone was on the nightstand charging when I came into the other room. I hadn't brought it up. But again, it was a thing about being a Blackwood. I had others to take care of menial things like finding and charging my cell phone.
The caller ID said it was Elias.
I answered. "Are you okay?"
"I can get you out."
I spoke exactly one language. English. The five words that came out of my brother's mouth did not compute.
"Out," I repeated.
"The Ironwood seizure, I've been going through everything since they gave me archive access.
The Ironwoods were thorough. They documented everything on their side.
Clean records, clean transfers. But I kept pulling the thread on their partners.
Who they were. How they operated. And Addie—" A pause.
"The Ironwoods didn't move against the Blackwoods alone. "
I sat down on the edge of the bed.
"They had silent partners," Elias continued.
"Pack and human. People who backed the Ironwood play — provided capital, cover, strategic support — in exchange for a piece of what the Ironwoods were going to take from Blackwood Enterprises when it was over.
These aren't people who wanted to be found.
I only found them because I was looking at the Ironwood side of the ledger. "
"How many?" I asked.
"Four packs, two human businesses."
"Which ones?"
"Does it matter? There are only six packs. Only one isn't moving against the Blackwoods. Addie, we need to get out of here."
"No. We need to figure out how to use this to our advantage."
"Our advantage? Who is our? The Blackwoods stole you and forced you into a marriage."
"You stole from them."
"Because that's the world we live in. Kill or be killed, and I was trying to figure out how to live with our father fucking the entire pack over.
I did what I thought I had to do as future alpha.
What I didn't know was that everyone was after the Blackwoods as well.
Now that I know, I need to get you out of there. You're my family."
He was right. Elias was my family. Even after I left him with a monster, he was still trying to hold on to me. But I wanted to hold him with one hand and my husband with the other.
"I know they're not all bad," Elias was saying. "But with everyone coming for them, you are definitely going to get caught in the crossfire as his wife."
I pressed my fingers to the mark on my throat.
The thing was this didn't have to be a weapon pointed at the Blackwoods at all.
Elias had found something valuable. The silent partners were still out there, sitting on their secret, which meant the Blackwoods had leverage over them that they didn't know existed yet.
Pack partners who could be brought to heel.
Human businesses that would do almost anything to keep a Blackwood from making a phone call.
Handled correctly, this wasn't a problem. It was an asset.
"Is that her?"
From the other end of the phone, I heard a door slam and a familiar voice.
"Are we going to pick her up now?"
"Nell?"
A click, and then I heard the background of the room Elias was in. He'd put me on speakerphone.
"Addie, girl, who the fuck did you marry?"
"Elias, tell me you did not drag her into this?"
"She found me, actually." A shuffle, the phone shifting. "She had a tripwire in the Sterling system. I tripped it."
Nell's voice rang through the speakerphone. "If Sterling is acquired through a process I haven't consented to in writing, the client relationships I personally cultivated revert to me. Not the firm. Not the acquiring entity."
I had watched Nell build every one of those relationships from the ground up. They weren't Sterling's. They had never been Sterling's.
"Together," Elias said carefully, "the partner list and the poison pill give you two things the Blackwoods need and don't currently know are at risk."
I stood up. Walked back to the window. There was a version of this where nobody got hurt. Where I brought Elias's list to Vidar. Where Nell took over the company and they kicked the Sterlings out. It was a clean solution. I could see the whole shape of it.
"I can hear her brain thinking," said Nell.
"She's trying to figure out a compromise.
Before you start solving this, know that I'm not part of the restructure.
Not exactly. They were never going to keep me here.
They were going to use the acquisition to disappear me somewhere I couldn't cause problems. Somewhere in bum-fuck Alaska. "
The mark on my throat pulsed. They had taken my freedom. They had taken my baby brother. And now they wanted to take my best friend too.
Well, fuck all that to hell.