AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Fine.” I will take that burden from my sister. I have power in a relationship that Aurelia does not.
Charlotte turns to Kane. “Why can’t you be more like your brother?”
Kane glares at her with the heat of a thousand fires. “I didn’t say I wouldn’t do it. Just that I didn’t want to.”
“If we can marry Kane into the Adams syndicate and Lucas into the Easton family, we’ll be surrounded by allies,” Anthony says as he shoves his fists into his suit trouser pockets.
I try to ignore the empty feeling in my gut as my parents discuss the finer points of how to release Sariah Easton from her current betrothal. I feel all my control slipping through my fingers, and I hate it. As usual, though, I have to play the good little soldier.
“You know Wood will never allow this to happen.” Zeke drums his fingers on the table. “Trying to undercut him is going to result in a war between us and the Manchester syndicates.”
Zeke is right. Jeremiah will have to attack us to save face. Otherwise, he’s going to look like a weak prick. He is not going to want that to happen.
“Then what do you propose?” Charlotte demands. I can hear the irritation in her voice. Our questioning is pissing her off. Our mother is not a woman who’s used to having her plans scrutinised so deeply. “That we just allow them to consolidate their power? We might as well offer them an open invitation to take over our territory.”
Zeke shifts his shoulders. I can tell he’s getting irritated by the conversation.
You and me both, brother.
“All I know is, if you do this, you open us to up problems down the road.”
“But if we have the support of both syndicates and the Untamed Sons...,” Charlotte trails off, using her hands as scales, as if she’s weighing up the pros and cons. Neither exists. There are only winners and losers. The only thing we can do is make sure we end up on the right side of the win.
“And when they retaliate?” I ask.
It’s playing with fire. Even though our counterproposal may be more appealing than Jeremiah Wood’s, it doesn’t mean Declan Easton will break his deal and hand his daughter over to me. My mother is fucking deluded if she thinks that’s going to happen.
But Charlotte isn’t someone who likes to hear the word no. She has a plan, and I know my mother. She will not stop until she has enacted it. Charlotte wants me married to Sariah. It suits her narrative, and it would help shore up our defences against an Easton/Wood alliance. Particularly if Kane goes ahead with this proposal to wed one of the Adams’s. Fuck, I get sick of the politics, of all the manoeuvring and conniving. I hate it, even if I understand why it has to happen.
“They won’t. Besides—” Charlotte waves her hand. “—why would Declan Easton refuse our proposal? We are powerful, and he knows that. More so than the fucking Woods. Why would he choose such a weak alliance when he can have the strength of the Fraser family behind him?”
“For arguments sake,” I say, “let’s just imagine Declan Easton may have some scruples and decide to keep the deal he has in place. What then, Mother?”
She glares at me as if I’ve lost my mind. “But that’s not going to happen, darling, is it?”
That she believes in her own hype only serves to concern me. We are not as strong as she thinks, because if we were, she wouldn’t care about this alliance. The fact that it has her and Anthony worried tells me everything.
“I’ll talk to Declan, and I’ll see what he says. I’m very persuasive when I have to be.” She is very persuasive full stop. “The wedding is meant to take place in two weeks’ time. That gives us opportunity to lay the foundation. I have a registrar who can fudge the paperwork. It would normally take twenty-eight days, but we won’t want to wait that long.”
I ignore the churning in my gut at her words. If my mother gets her way, in two weeks’ time I will have a woman who I call wife. A woman I’ve never met before or even laid eyes on.
Fuck.
I turn to Kane and give him a wry smile. “It looks like we are going to have a double wedding on the horizon.”
The look Kane gives me could melt the polar ice caps. My brother never has had much of a sense of humour.
I rap my knuckles on the desk and push up to my feet. I’m bored of this conversation and where it’s going. “Just tell me where I need to be and when.”
As I step out of the boardroom and make my way down the corridor towards the exit, I find Aurelia sitting in one of the chairs near the lift. My sister is stunningly beautiful, something she got from our mother. Charlotte may be poison, but she looks like an angel. It’s that deception that draws people into her and gets them killed.
“What are you doing here?” I ask, going over to her quickly. She looks unharmed. In fact, she’s wearing high heels and a dark-coloured dress.
She rolls her eyes at me, flicking her dark hair over her shoulder. “Mum called me an hour ago and asked me to meet her here.”
“You didn’t come alone, did you?” My heart stutters at the thought. Aurelia is a prime target for abduction by our enemies.
“Aaron brought me.”
