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“That’s not another way, Declan. That’s your way, with my name on it.” There’s anger in her voice, but it doesn’t shake. “We do this shit my way.”
“I thought you wanted me out of here.”
She flinches. “You know I want you out of here more than I want my next breath.”
I stare at her, then nod once. “Then pick it up.” I’ve got the wolf in my voice and I don’t care. “You’re handing it back because of how it came to you? Turning down my freedom?”
“No. I’m turning down the reversal that will follow if anybody asks what I just asked you.”
She plants her hands on the table and leans in. Christ. She’s fucking magnificent.
“I walk into court with a sealed file, the first thing the state asks is how I got it. I can’t answer. So it’s excluded, I’m under investigation, so is Cillian, and everything we found on Mallory is useless by association. Best case, we lose and I’m disbarred. Worst case, we win, and six months later someone pulls the thread and you go right back in here for the rest of your life.” She shakes her head. “I’m not getting you out for six months. I’m getting you out for good. And the only way to build something nobody can tear down is to build it clean.”
The room’s quiet.
Fuck, she’s right.
She’s standing on strategy, three moves ahead. God, she’s so fucking smart it makes my dick hard and my chest hurt at the same damn time.
I’ve run my family for twenty years. I don’t take orders. I don’t back down. I have never once in my life handed another living soul the last word on anything that mattered to me.
I look at the envelope, then look at my wife.
“Cillian. Give me your phone.”
“Oh, for the love of…”
I hold his gaze. He hands it over, muttering about his bar license. Rian picks up on the first ring.
“The man with the marker,” I tell him. “Cut him loose. We never met him. And nothing else comes to the firm. The appeal’s Zahra’s. We don’t go near it.”
A pause. Rian doesn’t ask questions. But I can hear him wanting to.
“You got it.”
I hang up, push the envelope back across the table. “Shred it.”
Cillian looks like he’s about to have a stroke.
“Fifteen years,” he says faintly. “Fifteen years, I’ve been asking you for one goddamn inch. You’ve told me to go fuck myself every single time.” He points at Zahra, shaking his head, incredulous. “She says no once, and you fucking fold?!”
I cock an eyebrow.
“She didn’t even ask!”
“Get out, Cil.”
“Gladly.” He picks up the envelope.
The door shuts.
My wife comes around the table. There’s a camera, but she doesn’t seem to care. She stands in front of me and lays her hand on my jaw.
Ours, he says. Ours ours ours. Strong. Pups. NOW.
Our omega showed her teeth and held her ground against two Alphas and didn’t give a fucking inch, and as far as he’s concerned, that’s the hottest thing he’s ever seen. He wants to put a baby in her. On this fucking table.
She smiles. Then she sits down in the chair next to mine, and her ankle finds my boot.
