Chad's Chase (Loving All Wrong Book 2) (42 page)

“No.”

In a flash, the gun was off the table and in his hand, pointed straight at my mouth. “Don’t fucking lie to me, Jhay.”

“It’s not a lie.”

His free hand balled up and thumped down on the table, seeming as if he would go mad just at the thought of “no” not being the truth. “Why are you lying to me? Why? I watched you for a whole week with him. You were content with
him
. Because you were fucking him.” His hand shook slightly, like he was barely holding it together. “I fucking told you it was me or no one, Jhay.”

“A whole week?” I said, incredulous. “You knew where I was for
a whole week
and you never tried to save me?”

“You never tried to escape.”

“Because I thought you were dead!” I yelled at the gun pointing at me. “I never fucked him!”

“Because you think I’m dead you just let him take you and own you without a fight?”

“Yes!” I hissed, getting really, really pissed off. “Just like you made me believe you were doing with your father!”

Chad bit his lip, chewed it, chomped it, hand still shaking, eyes on mine. Then slowly, unhurriedly, he set the gun back down on the table. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t risk getting you hurt, and I couldn’t deal with Sambo and Rafail at the same time. So I chose to fry the bigger fish first. I just never knew Org had planned to fuck me around.”

Hot, stinging tears sprang to my eyes. For nearly a month I’d suppressed my grief, and now I couldn’t believe the man I was so madly in love with was sitting right across from me. Living, breathing, still hating me.

He reached out across the table and took my hands in his. “Hey, don’t break now. You’ve been doing well so far. Not a tear. Don’t break. I’m here, baby. Right here.”

With a nod, I beat back the tears, sniffling. “What happened with Rafail?”

Chad filled me in on everything. On how he’d planned it all from the get-go, but things got a little screwed when Rafail showed up at Ricardo’s place a day early. On how Org showed up and helped him with Rafail’s men, then shockingly revealed that he wanted Chad to be the inheritor of his seat in The Organization.

“But the gavel is yours, Jhay,” Chad said, “It belongs to you.”

I laughed, thinking he was messing around. “Ridiculous. Me? Lead The Organization?” I guffawed now. “I wouldn’t know the first thing to do with so much power in my hands. I’m unqualified, Chad. It won’t work. Not to mention The Organization is pure
evil
.”

“The Organization does not work on qualifications. I told you, high seats are inherited. Once your predecessor steps down or dies, you
have to
claim your seat. And you have to learn your role and do what is expected of you. You only have two options if you’re an inheritor: you assume your role, or you die. The Organization, they wear both the white hat, and the red horns. They play God but they also dirty dance with the Devil.”

“But I’m not the inheritor of the gavel anymore, Chad.
You
are.”

He just stared.

I sat back in my seat, mulling this craziness over. After a few quiet minutes, I asked him, “Why do you want me to take the gavel so badly?”

Letting go of my hands, he rubbed his eyes. “My father said something to me in Portola Valley: ‘Make new rules. Get rid of the ugly. Save the world from people like me’. Although this came from the most depraved man I’ve ever known, it’s unquestionably something good, Jhay. Something good coming from something really, really bad.”

“So why don’t you lead and make new rules?”

“Because I don’t trust that I can do it,” he said bluntly. “I’m not good, in any way, and I don’t want that kind of power to turn me into something worse.”

“And me?”

“You’re more humane than I am.”

I wasn’t sure about all that. But I was sure I could never be like Rafail or Org. I could play God more, and dance less with the devil. I could end the kidnappings, and stealing innocent lives.

With all that power, there was much I could change and make The Organization for the better, more like The Altrus. But
holy wow
, being the Pinnacle scared the bejesus out of me. Would all those members from around the world, representing their country, listen to some impulsive, hot-headed amateur?

As if hearing my thoughts, Chad took hold of my hands again. “You will get used to all the power. You will learn to control it and not let it get to your head. You will rule wisely. You will be an excellent leader. You will get your respect without working for it. You will be light, but will be stark darkness when crossed. You will have mercy, but you will not hesitate to order the kill when it is essential. You will be loved. You will be feared. You will be the best Pinnacle they’ve ever seen. You will be The Organization.”

My heart thudded in my chest, intimidated by the mere idea… “How are you so sure of this?”

Piercing those confident dark eyes into my timid green ones, Chad gave me a half-saint, half-satanic grin. “Because I will be right there next to you.”

W
e never went to Barbados.

Chad had asked me, “Are we still taking an island trip?” and I’d replied, “Not today. Today, I want to go
home
.”

He’d liked the sound of that.
Home
.

We would be going to Barbados alright, but that’s after our shit was in order. As it was, there was still too much to digest, too much to acclimatize to, too much to accept.

Rafail was down and—for the time being—I was free. The Organization would be claiming me when Org stepped down. Yeah, sure, I would be the Pinnacle, but that wouldn’t make me any less of a slave to it.

Chad had also relayed some awful news about Ricardo. My brother. He’d gone mad, being treated at a private facility. Watching his wife and unborn child get murdered in cold blood had done his head in. But I figured the trigger was in his undergoing such a horrific experience all over again. Imagine losing your family twice. Not just losing them, but witnessing their deaths from front row seats.

I demanded Chad take me to see him, so we’d stopped by before heading home.

Aside from the cast on his right leg, Ricardo was clean and fresh, in a massive customized suite Chad paid extra for. My brother saw us and knew us, but was a mute. He wouldn’t talk to us. Just stared off at nothing, rocking back and forth in a rocking chair situated in the corner of the room.

“When did this happen?” I’d asked Chad, my voice shaky, eyes burning. It ripped my heart to shreds seeing my brother like that.

“Two nights after Portola Valley,” he informed me. “Heard Vivian screaming in the middle of the night. Found him in the kitchen stabbing himself over and over in the bullet wound on his leg.”

“Jesus.”

Wrapping his arms around me, Chad kissed the top of my head. “He’s getting better, babe. He was a lot worse than this, believe me.”

“Come back to us, Ricardo,” I’d whispered to my brother. “I forgive you for everything and…I love you.”

“
We
love you,” Chad corrected.

When we’d finally gotten home at sundown, Org was there waiting for us
. Inside
Chad’s bulwark. A fortress no one was supposed to be able to get inside of. Immediately I remembered Chad telling me,
“If Org wants me dead, I’m dead.”

How true that was. If Org could get inside that particular building, then there was obviously nowhere inaccessible to the man.

“My entrance could have been much easier and less damaging if you had given me a key like I asked, Shadreek,” Org said when we both stopped short at the sight of him sitting placidly at the table in the dining area, sipping a cup of tea and typing on a skinny laptop.

Vivian was seated at the other end of the table with her hands folded in her lap, complaisant, her eyes like saucers, her body rigid.

Interlacing his fingers with mine, Chad strode over to the table with me and signaled for Vivian to leave.

Vivian looked uncertain, confused, her eyes darting between Chad and Org, as though wondering whose order was the order to act on. When Org nodded slightly at her, she whooshed out a breath of relief and scurried off.

Easing down into the seat still warm from Vivian’s ass, Chad tugged me down on his lap, and I went easily, pressing close, wishing I could melt into him.

I swung my right arm around his neck and deadened my wrist so my hand would fall loosely onto his pectoral, right where I knew his birdcage was. I trailed my fingers back and forth over his plain white tee—he’d taken off the pilot shirt on our way home, remaining in just the under T-shirt, the navy blue uniform slacks, and shiny gentleman shoes. The man was so goddamn sexy it would be a crime not to acknowledge it. Death penalty to joke about it.

“You’re the last person I’d want to have my key, Org,” Chad said trenchantly.

“Ah…” Org hummed. He closed down his skinny laptop and folded his hands above it as he fixed his gaze on Chad. “But I should be the first.”

Chad snorted.

“A father should be welcomed in his son’s house, should he not?”

Probably as dumbfounded as I was, Chad just stared at the man.

Compressing his lips at our silence, Org carefully picked up his teacup and leaned back in the chair. He took a hot sip, flicked his eyes down at the cup, then up at Chad. “Your father was a sorry excuse for a man. And your mother was a worthless delinquent. I know what you did the other day. You toyed with my emotions to get me to admit I cared about you. I realize you like to make people’s minds your playing field. You are good at it. I commend you. But if you wanted to know, all you had to do was ask.”

With a pensive pause, he took another sip of his tea, then went on, “You never asked, but I will tell you: The moment Isabel began calling you son, Shadreek, I did, too. Whatever she loved, I loved. And she loved you. You do not know this, but she favored you over Ricardo. Isabel thought Ricardo was lazy and reluctant and wanted to be babied in everything. But you, you liked to take control, you liked to learn, you liked to lead. And she
loved
that.”

Another slow, drawn-out sip of coffee. “I have followed your life through and through ever since you left Russia. How do you suppose your men detected those assassins Rafail continually sent to snipe you? No matter how much training you and your men have, nobody is good enough to stop one dozen different assassins in their tracks. It was I,” he apprised. “I am the one who always tipped your contacts off with time and location.”—I could feel the change in Chad’s heartbeat at this revelation, but outwardly he remained stoic—”I have always been with you, Shadreek. You just did not know. One, because you are everything my own son was not. He was a disappointment, and I wished you were my own. And two, because I knew if my daughter was still alive”—he fixed his green gaze on me—”one day, wherever you were in this world, she
would
find you, and I would finally find her.”

Nothing.

No words. From me or Chad. This man, Org, was so confusing. So…strange.

Seemingly annoyed with our continued silence, Org put his teacup down, pushed his chair back, and stood up, buttoning his suit jacket.

That was the first I’d ever laid eyes on the man. My father. He had my eyes, exact almond shape, exact color, so I knew it wasn’t fiction that he was my real father. He was tall, though. Taller than Rafail, taller than Chad. Slender, wiry, but not to be thought of as weak.

He had long, silver hair, like a wizard. But instead of looking like an old bastard, the white hair kind of made him handsome, like he was from the Targaryen lineage. His all-black suit was sharp, expensive, without a crease.

I must point out that he’d pointedly avoided me since we came in. Maybe he was still sulking about what I’d said about acknowledging only Michael Byrd as my father. Taking it to heart.

“We are no test for each other, Shadreek. Apparently neither of us can outsmart the other, and that is why I want you by my side,” he said, pressing the tips of his long fingers on the top of the chair. “Just like you knew my plans, knew my game, I knew yours. So I know you want my daughter to inherit my seat. I will not fight you on it. I will not rule her name out as the inheritor. Both of you will be at the top of the table, so when the time comes—as I am not sure if I will step down five years from now, or have a heart attack tomorrow—you may figure things out yourselves.”

He picked up his laptop and tucked it under his arm. “Until then, I will speak only with you, Shadreek. My daughter has denied me the chance to be her father. Therefore, she may not speak to me directly. She may not come into my presence without your escort. She may not—”

“Can’t be serious,” I muttered. Then I said aloud, “I’m right here you know, asshole.”

Taking a deep, impatient breath, Org kept his eyes on Chad. “I expect a key to this building first thing tomorrow. If I have to break in again, I will level this place to the ground.”

Then he walked off to the elevator.

That’s it? I find out this man is my father and that’s how he behaves? Like a fucking pre-schooler because I said one simple thing out of anger?