“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 indexfinger 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.Dressis 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 fromone 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.
Hand after hand is dealt. Cards are clutched tight to chests in a gentle fan, or secreted to the table with only a corner lifted to reveal suit and stature. I’m a cards on the table guy, not seeing the point of holding in your hand what is never yours to begin with. Cards were just a representation of value at that time. You don’t own them; they own you. The similarities between these spades and diamonds and Sabrina Broe. She’s paid to cater to my whims, pander to my requests and present a meeting between print media and finance if the occasion demands. Paid by me, for me. The illusion of us being any more was exactly that. Her care and attention, simply an extension of the deposits landing in her bank account every month. I don’t have friends; I have staff. I don’t have family; I have foes, and the only value I display now is the woman done up to resemble a dollar whore over my shoulder. The woman I was planning on taking around the world on a yacht once I extracted myself from Mercer Media with an infinite check of my own. The same woman who disappeared for two fucking hours today, only to visit Isaac Grenfer in his hotel room. If it were business, Trystan would accompany her. If it were business, it wouldn’t be clandestine and lied about. If it were business, the deal would already be done, and we’d be back on the jet toward New York.
It didn’t matter that her pussy wasn’t dripping or swollen when she returned to me; she could have used her mouth onhim, or perhaps his dick is slender and doesn’t fill her the way mine does. The evidence I need lies in what she wouldn’t tell me. The evidence I received came in the form of her silent omission. And for that, she will walk a similar path to those who have wronged me. As will Zac Grenfer. Smug fucking asshole. He’s older than me by almost a decade and a half. Abe made buckets of money from television, but it pales compared to Mercer money. Why would she put everything on the line for someone like Zac? His short ebony curls and light brown skin are handsome. Is it that he doesn’t hail from roots of toxicity and scandal? It doesn’t matter now; the river cards will turn just like she did.
“Mr. Mercer, a word, please?”
I gaze up into his chocolate eyes, earnest and pleading. Here to gloat? Perhaps, only he doesn’t reek of any arrogance. He’s more insular, more protective.
“No.”
“Mason, please. I?—”
“I said, no.”
Trystan rises from his plush chair, buttoning his jacket and following the insistent man into the anteroom foyer. Through it all, Bri stands statuesque and still, ignoring the raised glasses proffered her way in silent invitation before they meet meagre lips through sinister sips. And I sat through it all. Impervious. Oblivious. Furious.
“How much, darlin’?”
“Fuck off.” To her credit, only her mouth moved.
“Oh, come on now, don’t be like that. Here I was thinking you might be my good luck charm. Red is your color, darlin’. Mmm, mmmm, mmmm you look good in red. I bet you’ll feel good bouncing on my enormous cock.”
“Enough!”
When Trystan returns, he is a picture of passiveobedience. Christ, if he had any objections, he would’ve voiced them when Bri came out of her bedroom in nothing but tensioned string and scraps of satin. He remained mute because he knew his place, and he knew his place was with me. My loyal subject. My soldier. The only one I can count on after all this time. Inhaling sharply, he touches my left cuff in a gesture for my attention, but not to raise alarm with others.
“I need to tell you something,” he begins, his eyes on the dealer readying the next round.
