Chapter 43
“For the love of anything holy, will you try to find some semblance of an agreeable mood? If you insist on this sour fucking state, you may as well fuck off back to New York and leave Bri and I to do this alone.”
My friend sits with regal solemnity, sipping his drink and working that granite jaw; my boss glowers at me from across the table in the bar, wanting to punish my insolence with action. His gaze pivots to Bri and Zac Grenfer near the doorway before sliding back to me with a glacial coldness.
“It’s a simple yes or fucking no, Trys. Why does he need to lean in, and what the fuck is on his phone that’s so important for her to be leaning? Send it as a fucking email. Jesus Christ.”
“Are you… jealous?” My question both surprises and annoys him.
The muscles in his jaw are clenched tight, visible even under the fuller beard he sports nowadays.
His hair is longer too, the thick waves ending past his collar with more of a pronounced roll than an uptick.
If it wasn’t so damn sexy, I’d tell him to get his ass back to the barber pronto for some long overdue grooming.
He’s never felt the need to comment on or judge my appearance, so I do him the same courtesy and remain silent.
“I’m not fucking jealous. I’m annoyed. I cannot understand why the simple always seems to drag on into the unnecessarily complex.” He huffs out an exhale.
Mason pinches the bridge of his nose between his index finger and thumb, a move oozing frustrated sex appeal and making my mind wander to places it shouldn’t.
The three of us flew into Charlotte this morning for a super-secret poker tournament that Isaac Grenfer is also here for.
Mason has given Bri and I an ultimatum to either get Grenfer’s signature or forget the deal was ever considered.
In his mind, we’ve wasted enough of his precious time and our energy pandering to a man who clearly can’t make up his own.
His ire grew wings and a body of its own when Sabrina stepped out about two hours ago and was unaccounted for.
Security tailed her to a hotel further down the block, where she went straight to the bank of elevators and walked into a waiting one.
The door slid shut before anyone could join her.
According to George, it had stopped on the fourteenth floor.
That doesn’t mean Sabrina exited the elevator; it just means that it stopped there.
Upon returning to the suite, Bri was flushed and energized.
She moved with her usual grace and poise, and something else.
A glide of mystery, perhaps, or an air of contentment.
I wasn’t the only one to notice her subtle change in demeanor.
In true Mason style, it was cataloged for later, when it could be unpacked and examined more thoroughly.
Then, and only then, would it be annexed and used in a way to benefit him.
“They’re fucking. I know it,” Mason exhales, his brows pinching together. There is no way. None.
“There is no way. She’s loyal to you 100 percent.
” She’s in love with you, you idiot. Even after everything that’s happened in the last two months, she’s wholly committed to him because she loves him.
Until his last outlandish statement, I would have put every chip in this place that he was in love with her too.
He may not have come out and said so in as many words, but it is so fucking obvious to anyone but him.
“Is she?” His eyes hood, somewhere between pissed off and turned on.
Zac Grenfer looks up at that exact moment, and recovering his manners, straightens and smiles at the two of us.
He says something to Bri, and she mirrors his smile, turning to lead the man over to our table.
Mason doesn’t move other than the flex of a jaw muscle just under his ear.
Anger, frustration, jealousy, hopelessness.
Every emotion washes over his face from that minute jaw movement, under his beard and up toward his eyes and brow, where all the movement peters into nothingness.
His eyes remain impassive, as if goading anyone to challenge him, that his posture and mind radiate nothing but the controlled stoicism so often drummed into us as youths.
What also thrummed through me when I was around anyone channeling such powerful emotions under the surface, was the bitter feeling of unease that a war was about to be savaged upon all in reach of the tenacious tendrils of destruction.
Bri stammers forward, eyes downcast and cheeks flushed a shade of red similar to her dress. Dress is drawing a long bow. A bow so fucking long, it’s flirting with imagination and humiliation.
“Perfect.” His drawl is clipped. “Let’s go.”
I stop for Mason to shrug into his dinner jacket, leaving Bri tottering near the door.
The stoic king bypasses the jacket and both assistants, opening his own door and meeting the steely gaze of the gathered security.
The men are trained professionals and, as such, school their features into focused alert mode.
They are not paid to gawk at a woman trussed in scraps of barely-there material twisted into dramatic and revealing sections to masquerade as a dress.
Almost every inch of Sabrina’s figure is on display, her full tits pert and round behind slashes of thin rouge-red satin.
The garment hangs from one shoulder, clinging to her skin like a lifeline.
One breast is almost fully exposed, save for gravity and fuck knows what else saving her modesty.
Her distress is obvious and must surely mirror my own.
He put her in this abomination of tawdry impudence as a form of punishment.
Only her humiliation is a public punishment.
Eerily similar to the flaying of his family six weeks ago in front of the assembled media.
Mason is sending Bri to her fate in a room full of cigar smoke, poker chips, and predacious assholes.
When the elevator reaches the room set up with four round tables, it’s clear she was brought in as a gambling chip too.
Tied together in strings of red, she totters behind him in ridiculous heels that bring her eyes almost level with his.
Her gaze is locked on the patterned carpet, a silent plea to avoid a misstep or the unnerving stares of men who seemed to view her as a potential prize.
Livestock at an auction are treated with more dignity than this. What the fuck is he mad at her for?
“Mason, Bri is uncomf—”
“I don’t give a fuck. She’s my employee, just like you. If I wanted her opinion, or yours, I would ask for it.”
Mason takes his position at the table, ignoring the request that he be fitted in a jacket like the rest of the assembly.
I pity the poor staffer. Mason doesn’t think like the rest of the assembly.
Mason doesn’t think he is the rest of the assembled guests.
He is above—unflappable, and untouchable.
The staffer mumbles and backs away, keen to avoid any kind of scene.
This is a room where deals are done and deals are killed off just as quickly.
Political preferences can swing with the turn of a card.
Fortunes won, and fortunes raked away across the felt.
A room more dangerous than any situation room, because the situation is as dangerous as war.
An aloof, measured Mason Mercer is out for redemption somehow.
For me, so attuned to his whims, moods, and nuanced tells, I can’t get a read on this man, and that scares the shit out of me.
“You will stand right here,” he says, vicing her upper arms with his palms and guiding her to a spot in between his chair and his table neighbor to the right. “You will not slouch or sit. You will stand straight and tall, and you will remain there until I say so. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” Her eyes dart to mine for a moment, imploring me to help her. How? I’ve never seen him so intent on self-destruction before, not even when he discovered the truth about his paternity. If I can moderate his alcohol consumption, maybe it’s an early night?
Bri’s arms hang by her sides as she begins her boss’s request. Following her line of sight, I see he has placed her directly opposite a furious Isaac Grenfer.