He’d been home and was, of course, holding a dinner with potential donors when I arrived.
When he’d refused to speak to me in another room, I’d put his face into a very hot bowl of soup right in front of said investors. I didn’t give a shit whether I embarrassed him or not. The man deserved it after yanking his daughter’s health insurance away the way he had.
I’d first made a deal with Chandler in order to secure political clout when the man eventually ran for governor of the state. One thing my father had always reiterated to me in between long-winded lessons was that it was always beneficial to have enough allies with everyday legitimacy in your pocket in case you needed to get out of a tight space.
It had made total sense on all fronts to marry Peregrine Chandler. She was what I was looking for in a wife: younger, removed from the traditions of the Keane family, an omega and a fertile one at that, and she came with the political backing of her increasingly powerful father.
Never did I stop long enough to really consider what I was signing up for and today when Rhodes called me to tell me that Chandler had pulled her insurance had been enough for me not to care about Chandler’s fucking support even if he became the president of the whole damn country.
I would find another politician to support, and if I had anything to do with it, I was going to end Chandler’s political career in the process.
I’d just add it onto my never ending to-do list, right under finding out who the fuck was messing with my business if it wasn’t the Japanese.
My money was on Alessandro Amante.
The man was still pissed that I’d stolen his bride right out from under his chosen pack’s noses. It made the most sense for him to be the one fucking with me and my bottom line now.
Or at least it did on paper.
As I sat staring out into the garden, mulling over the events of the past two weeks, the pieces just weren’t fitting together the way they usually did when I puzzled my way through a problem.
It was what had helped me survive years in this estate while my mother was cloistered away in the tower and my father pushed me harder than any child ever should have been pushed. I could look at a problem in my mind and twist and turn it over like a mental Rubik’s cube until everything was seamless and I had a solution.
But try as I might, even blaming Alessandro Amante wasn’t a smooth solution. Amante, while not being my favorite of the leaders of the five families, had been around the longest. He’d also been the one, after the Irish, to lose the most in the last war.
He wouldn’t risk it all for one omega, would he?
The other two: Jifein Cheng and Vladimir Volkov were also not ones to rock the proverbial boat and mess with the relative peace the city had experienced for the past almost forty years.
Or would they?
The more I tried to think about it the more baffled I became. What if it wasn’t any of the five families but someone else entirely?
The Columbians in the South had been trying to stake their claim on Shuuhei’s drug market for years, so it would maybe make sense that they were trying to get me to do their dirty work of annihilating him so they could take over. Not to mention there had been an increase in the more rugged MCs in the North wanting a bit of what made our city so lucrative.
As I continued to try and parse my way to some kind of reason for all of this, someone knocked on the door.
“Sir,” Oona’s voice came through the thick wood. “It’s dinner time, would you like me to bring it to you here?”
“No,” I called, putting my barely touched glass of whiskey down on the desk. “I’ll take it in the dining room with my wife.”
There was a long pause before, “All right, I’ll set you a place.”
The way she said it was odd, but I pushed it away thinking I was just tired. It had been so long since I’d slept in my own bed or slept much of all for that matter, and I couldn’t help the strange feeling of anticipation at seeing Rhodes and Perrie again.
Truthfully, I’d never been away from Rhodes longer than a day or two, so two weeks without him had been a test of willpower that had only won out because I knew he was right where he needed to be: next to my wife.
I greeted the security at the door of the dining room with a smile and waited for them to open the doors before sweeping into the dining room to greet the two people inside.
“You’re back early,” Rhodes commented as I settled into my seat, his dark eyes warm as Oona set a plate of food down in front of me. “I thought you’d be busy all night with that last thing we talked about.”
“Well, I only stayed for the first course, and let me tell you, the soup there has nothing on Oona’s.” As if to punctuate my words, I took a sip of the homemade minestrone that Oona was famous for, relishing in the taste of home as I settled in for a nice night of conversation with the two people who I’d missed more than I would ever admit out loud.
“But it’s handled?” Rhodes asked around his own mouthful of soup.
I shot him a venomous grin, hoping he would get my message without me needing to spell it out for him, and when his dark eyes lit up with glee I knew he understood what my expression meant.
Turning, I finally faced Perrie for the first time in two weeks. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been flushed and writhing against me, practically begging for me to fuck her.
And now?
She was dressed in a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt with the logo of the local university on it, a fork in one hand and her camera in the other as she seemed to be flipping through the photographs she’d taken for class.
Perrie also hadn’t looked up at me once since I’d come into the dining room.
“How have classes been, pet?” I asked, prodding her for some kind of acknowledgement.
But Perrie didn’t look up.
“Fine,” she muttered, ladling a spoonful of soup into her mouth, her gray eyes still on her camera screen.
I looked over at Rhodes who shrugged, though he seemed to be enjoying his damned self watching me fail to speak with my wife because there was a ghost of a shit-eating grin on his face.
“Why don’t you put the camera down so we can have a normal dinner conversation like always?” I tried again.
Perrie looked like she wanted to roll her eyes, but instead she shut the camera down and put it aside, her eyes meeting mine. I found them to be exceedingly cold, the gray turning into silver ice as she looked at me.
“And what do you propose we talk about?” Perrie asked, crossing her arms over her chest.
