CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Tatum thought she wanted answers. I knew firsthand what it felt like to know your father would throw you to the wolves in order to save his own ass. There was no way she could ever know the truth about why I left. It would crush her.
And those reasons didn’t matter now, because I was back. She thought she didn’t want to see me. She thought she wanted me gone. The damp spot between her thighs told me what she really needed was time to process the way I made her feel. Hell, I needed time to process how she mademefeel. In all the years since I’d lost my virginity, I knew my… needs… weren’t typical. I thrived on obtaining the unobtainable. It had been ingrained in my mind since I was a child.Always the hunter, never the hunted.Holding the world in the palm of your hand only made you crave the things that were just out of reach.
Until her, I’d always been able to control my urges.
Until her, I’d only tested my boundaries with a tightened grip around a delicate throat and a rough fuck against a brick wall in a dark alley.
Until her, no one ever put up a fight.
Christ, just thinking about it now had my dick hard. All I wanted to do was see her face, inhale her scent, and remind her the quarterback wasn’t what she needed. But she awakened the beast.
I glanced down at the scratches on my forearm, then flipped my hand to inspect my palm. She broke the skin just below my thumb, enough to bleed but not enough to cause any real damage. The stinging sensation served as a reminder of her fire—a fire she kept hidden from the world and only showed me.
One month.
She had until my twenty-fifth birthday to sort her shit out, then I was coming after her with no holds barred. Which meant I had one month to come up with a solid plan because there was no way in hell my father, or hers, was going to let this happen. I had to be ready for them both.
She would have her peace—for thirty days.
I pulled my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and glanced at the screen.
Tick Tock, Little Troublemaker. I’m coming back for you soon.
I opened my contacts and scrolled down to Chandler’s name.
“Damn, dude. After four years, I expected it to last longer than that,” he said when he answered.
Fucker.
“What happened? She shoot you down for the quarterback?”
Now he was just asking for an ass whipping.
“Fuck off. She’s not that stupid.”She knows I would deflate his balls.“I’m two blocks from the office. Can you meet me? We need to talk.” I had a plan.
Chandler’s dad rubbed dicks with the elite, right along with my dad and Malcolm Huntington. They had their brotherhood. We had ours. While Pierce Carmichael was busy buying up property all over the country, Chandler ran the underbelly of NYC. If it was illegal, Chandler had his fingerprints on it. Not child prostitution or sick shit like that. He left that to the men our fathers associated with—men like Khalid. But guns, drugs, and gambling? That was Chandler’s empire.
“Yeah,” he said, “I’ll be there in ten.”
***
It took a week for Chandler and me to come up with a bulletproof plan and execute it without my father finding out. I spent the rest of the month sitting behind my desk in the office across from my dad’s, crossing my t’s and dotting my i’s.
He currently had me working on something his brotherhood called the “weaponization of social media.” Which was basically me creating an activist group on social media, establishing a cult following, then starting a bunch of shit to get the general population riled up. Then going back and doing the same thing, only this time creating an activist group with an entirely different viewpoint.
“Throw them a steak and let them fight over it,” he said.
According to the Obsidian Brotherhood, people were expendable. There was an order, a food chain, so to speak, and we were at the top. Money talked the loudest, so everyone else just did as they were told. With elite members from around the globe, the Brotherhood was one of the most powerful forces in the world. Their influence extended from the media to the military all the way into the deep roots of the government. No one said shit, because no one knew shit, and those who did run their mouth never lived long enough to prove anything. Their fucked-up rituals and exclusive membership roster were shrouded in secrecy. It was a society strictly for men, and leadership roles were confined to the pure-blood descendants of the five main families.
I knew all about the Brotherhood because I’d been initiated into it at thirteen years old. I spent every minute hating the game my last name forced me to play.
But it was almost over. I was about to cash in my chips.
Today was my twenty-fifth birthday.
Normally, that wouldn’t mean shit. Mom would order some elaborate cake from Ladurée, Dad would pick up the tab on a nice dinner, and we’d call it a day—except I was a first-born, fourth-generation, Donahue male.