I took a deep breath and tugged down the sleeves on my black sweater as I steeled myself. It took me another minute to get out of the Charger and move. I strode up the winding pathway to the wooden front door and knocked. It didn’t take Mila long before she opened the door and smiled at me, the lines in her elderly face more prominent today. Her gray-streaked black hair was pulled back in a bun, her lips pressed into a thin line as she shifted out of the way for me.
“Good morning, Mila.”
She smiled. The strain on her round face was strange because usually she was happy to see me. “Good morning, Mr. Divine, sir. Your mother is in the sitting room with their guest. Your father wishes to see you before you go in.”
“Guest? What guest?”
She didn’t get time to answer. Dad came into view, striding out of the sitting room, and he made a point of turning to close the sliding wooden doors behind himself. Then he was in front of me, face hard in a way I hadn’t ever seen.
“Dad—”
He grabbed my shoulders in a ferocious grip, and I cringed at the flare of agony that ripped through me when his fingers dug in. “Listen to me very carefully, Noah. We’ve done a lot of things for you in your life. We’ve supported you when any sane parent would have thrown you to the wolves. That art school garbage from a Divine is borderline intolerable.” He bared his teeth.
“Dad, you’re hurting—”
“I said listen to me.” Dad grasped my face between the fingers of his right hand, eyes a stormy gray, the same color as mine. His silver-streaked brown hair looked as if it hadn’t been washed in days, something I’d never seen my whole life, not even the one time he’d insisted on taking us camping. He had gotten thinner since the last time I’d seen him, and his cheeks were sunken, with the bones of his face more prominent than ever. Dark bruises marred the skin beneath his eyes, but they weren’t from lack of sleep. It appeared as though someone had actually punched him because he had more on his cheek and jaw. “Youwilldo what we tell you. I won’t have you arguing. We’re your family, and your siblings deserve the best, just like you got when you were their age.”
“Dad, what’s going on?” Fear curdled the coffee in my stomach, the genuine fright on my dad’s face a strange expression. I’d never seen him like this.
Mila let out a gasp that was half sob behind me and that only amped up the anxiety eating at my insides.
“He’ll kill us if you don’t do this, Noah. You understand that, don’t you?”
“No,” I whispered, my voice shaking. My entire body trembled. “Who will kill you?”
“I will.”
I hadn’t heard the doors to the sitting room open, but when I glanced over, I focused on the tall man who had spoken, and my breath caught. He wasn’t anyone I’d met before because I would have remembered him. I’d never seen anyone so handsome. He wasn’t just tall, with wide shoulders and hard muscles beneath his tight, white dress shirt and black pants, but he also had the reddest hair I’d ever seen, with a strong jaw and high cheekbones. A smattering of freckles splashed his pale cheeks, too. Lust coiled in my stomach as I fought the urge to go over there and introduce myself. My cock took notice in a way I’d never felt before. It was like a switch. One second I was soft, then on my way to hard as a rock upon hearing those words in a deep Texan drawl.
Oh, wow.
His words finally infiltrated my brain and it took me a moment to comprehend them.Kill. That’s what Dad had said, and this stranger easily confirmed it.
“What’s going on?” I whispered, fear returning and commandeering the sudden attack of desire, making it disappear altogether.What the hell is wrong with me?
“Hello, Noah.” The stranger smiled and the wickedness in it made my heart race. “I’m Alton, and you belong to me now.”
2
ALTON BOUCHARD
This was priceless.That spineless weasel, Edison Divine, had folded so damned fast. He was in a financial bind, and most of it wasn’t even of my making. I was more than happy to cash in on his self-made misfortunes, however. Over the moon to do so, in fact. His jaw ticked and he gave his son another shake. Anger worked its way through me at the way he was handling Noah, because he was touching something that belonged to me now, after all, and not very nicely at that. I carefully took a deep breath. If anyone bruised Noah I wanted it to be me, and I was a lot more purposeful about what I chose to do with my toys.
“You’re going to kill my dad?” Noah’s bold eyebrows dove and he pursed his lips, confusion chasing across his features. God, those fuckable lips of his slayed me. His curly dark hair brushed his eyebrows and was mussed, as if he’d been in a rush to get here. I liked that because it made me better able to imagine what he’d look like drenched in sweat and cum and freshly fucked.
“Not me personally. Too messy.” The smile I flashed Noah only made him frown harder.
He was every bit as handsome as I remembered from the first time I’d spotted him, and I had to give him credit. He’d walked into a pile of cowpie this morning and was managing to keep his cool. I didn’t blame him for not knowing what was going on. It had taken over four hundred hours of private investigation and digging from my team of lawyers and financial advisors to get enough dirt on Edison Divine to be able to get my way.
And boy howdy, when we hit paydirt, we really struck a vein of gold.
I couldn’t wait to have Noah all to myself. He was a nice bonus to getting my hands on the Divine Conglomerate in a semilegitimate way.
“Who are you?” Noah asked quietly.
“The asshole who owns Bouchard Enterprises.” I winked at him.
Being who he was, the son of a very wealthy man—at least on paper—I expected the news of my business to mean something to Noah. He only studied me with a curious head tilt.
