Splintered (6 page)

"True. Despite all that, the arrival
of Christmas wasn't the actual good news." Alec paused, as if he
needed the dramatic flair to keep me hanging on his every word.
"I've booked a holiday for us. Skiing in Aspen. You, me, Rachel,
Donovan, my mom, your mom. All of us."

I felt my eyebrows reach for the sky. "Alec,
you can't do that. What about the rest of the pack?"

"I've booked them trips to a wide array of
locals. Mostly warmer and widely dispersed, geographically
speaking. I think everyone could use a bit of a break from each
other."

"But the cost. I mean it's way
too…"

Alec cut me off. "It's that or I
stop trying to be a restraining influence on Rachel. I mean, you
think she's bad now, but really you haven't seen anything
yet."

I was fumbling for excuses now. "My mom. I mean
she'll never go for it. I don't even know how I'd broach something
like that with her."

Alec smiled again. "Don't worry about that.
I'll ask her. In fact that's part of why I told Rachel I'd drive
you home today. This way I can meet her and start the wheels
turning for our trip."

We'd just turned off the road and I
felt my stomach drop as my house came into view. Mom had been
worried enough about me dating Brandon. She'd flip at the thought
of another rich, gorgeous boy dating me…wanting to pay for
expensive trips for us.

"I don't think that's a good idea. I mean I do
want you to meet my mom, but I think it would be best if I had a
few days to prep her."

"I don't think that's the way to go here, Adri.
I mean she's bound to see me drop you off. That's going to tip her
off, and then I'll look less than honorable."

"Alec. Please trust me. I need some time to
prep her before something like this is even remotely
possible."

He had that look in his eye. He was going to
fight me on this. I gave him my best puppy-dog eyes. A few seconds
later he sighed. "I still think it's a bad idea."

"Thank you."

Flush with success at having brought Alec
around to my thinking, I watched him pull down the lane until he
disappeared around the corner.

Mom was
standing at the window waiting for me, and she didn't look
amused.

Chapter 6

Alec - 5 hours
previously

It was always a nightmare getting Sam off by
himself. On the one hand I understood where the three of them were
coming from. Sam, Jack, Alison, they'd all been through hell. In
Brandon's pack you could never be sure that a dominant getting you
off by yourself wasn't a prelude to getting the stuffing kicked out
of you or worse.

In that kind of environment the submissives
pretty much had to band together into miniature power blocs that
had half a chance of avoiding the worst of the excesses. Still,
they'd been with us for long enough now to know I wouldn't put up
with that kind of stuff even had the rest of the pack been so
inclined.

Based on that and the fact Sam knew exactly
what it was I wanted to get him off to talk about, I had to assume
he was trying to avoid the discussion. By the time lunch rolled
around I'd decided to force the issue.

A quiet word with Isaac pretty much
guaranteed that Jack wouldn't be offering to come along when I told
Sam we were leaving the campus for lunch. I'd done everything I
could to guarantee Isaac wouldn't kill Jack in his sleep or
anything, but since the animosity wasn't going anywhere, I might as
well get some use out of it. It was certainly making my life extra
hard to compensate.

Alison was a lesser concern. She wasn't very
good at reading the subtext in most conversations. If it wasn't for
Jack and Sam she probably wouldn't have survived a year in
Brandon's group. As long as I waited for Rachel or somebody to get
her talking about shopping I had known I could slip away with Sam
and she would hardly notice.

I led Sam over to my Porsche and then drove us
over to Kostas' so we could get a sandwich while we talked. Luckily
the place was pretty much deserted.

"What do you want, Alec?"

"You know exactly what I want. I want you to
give up the Georgia contact."

Sam jumped a little. It was starting to look
like he was either completely stupid or the most accomplished liar
I'd ever met. Living with shape shifters generally conditioned you
to tell the truth. Not many of us could lie with both our scent and
pulse.

"I don't think that's fair. I've
been more than helpful when it's come to helping you snatch up the
rest of Brandon's assets. Heck, without me you would have been in
the dark."

I shook my head. "We already knew
about every holding and operation you've told us about. We would
have had a harder time in a hostile takeover situation, but we
still could have picked them all up and turned a hefty profit over
the next couple of years."

"Fine, you and Donovan are omniscient. Why do
you need me?"

"Let's cut the crap. You've been
trying to let on that you were only peripherally involved with
Brandon's holdings. I haven't believed it for a moment. Brandon was
never out of contact long enough to be taking a really active role
in managing the pack's tithe. You, on the other hand, have entirely
too much lip for someone who supposedly spent his entire life at
the bottom of the food chain. You've been running the financial
side of things for at least the last three years."

"Okay. It was me. Can you blame me for keeping
my head down? You and Donovan were always right on our tails and
you had ten or fifteen times the working capital we had to play
with. I fought tooth and nail to keep you from absorbing us
financially because my and Alison's safety depended on
it."

I unwrapped my sandwich to buy time while I
decided exactly how much of what I knew to place on the table. "No,
you did what you did because you enjoyed it and it brought you
power. More importantly, while you may have ended with one-tenth of
our holdings, you started out with somewhere around two percent.
That's astonishing growth by almost any yardstick I can
imagine."

Sam leaned back, smiling at the
perceived compliment. "That's exactly why you should go ahead and
let me run the Savannah group. I'm good at this kind of
stuff."

"What's the prime rule of finance?"

"I don't know; whoever has the gold makes the
rules?"

"No, the prime rule of finance is that you can
only grow as fast as the rate of return on your capital unless you
have outside funding."

I thought I detected a slight blip in Sam's
heart rate. A good liar yes, but not a perfect liar
still.

"In layman's terms, your nest egg didn't double
nearly three times in three years without either someone else
loaning you a whole heap of money or experiencing the kind of
growth that is almost never found in legal endeavors. Probably
both."

"I don't know what you're talking about. The
Georgia group is completely above board. I ran a lot of the
business, but Brandon kept his hand in some. That's where the real
growth was."

I slipped my hand under the table,
shifted it over to nine inches plus of retractable claws, and sank
a couple inches into Sam's leg. "You're lying. The so-called
Savannah group isn't even based in Savannah. We tracked Vincent
over to Savannah three times and the round trip time between when
he dropped out of sight and when he resurfaced was perfect for
Charleston."

Sam was sweating now, very obviously
fighting the urge to squirm, which would just drive my claws
further into his leg. He opened his mouth, likely to lie again, but
I cut him off.

"The profit we'll turn on the holdings we've
swept up in the last couple of weeks will undoubtedly come in handy
at some future date, but that's not the only reason we've been
interested in Brandon's old activities. Donovan and I have been
hunting down your illegal golden goose."

When lying didn't work Sam turned to anger. It
was a useful piece of information.

"I brought a lot to the table when we offered
to join you. We could have gone to any number of different packs
and been treated like royalty based on the amount of money we could
produce. I could still do that. I'm sure the Coun'hij would be very
willing to cough up a million dollars as seed money knowing that I
could double it inside a year."

I shook my head again. "There's been
a bank error. All of your assets have been frozen. You won't make
it very far, especially if you drag Alison and Jack along with
you."

I let Sam process that fact. I was pretty sure
he had the odd fifteen grand hidden here and there, but he had to
know most alphas would just torture him for the information and
then discard him once they had it.

"I want a name and a location, Sam. You've been
running something illegal and it needs to stop."

Sam sighed, rubbing his wrist where
James had thrown him into a table earlier. "Okay, it's illegal, but
it's not a big deal. The contact distributes marijuana, but those
kinds of deals are always cash at the time the transaction goes
down. Our guy is pretty successful but he likes to spend his
earnings, so every time he looks to expand we're the ones that he
turns to for financing."

I let the silence radiate out, watched it work
on him. I wasn't surprised when he was the first to break
it.

"Look, could you please let go of my leg? I
swear I'm telling the truth."

"Fine, give up your contact and everything will be okay.
Refuse and you're going to find out just how unpleasant I can
get."

Chapter 7

"Adriana Paige. You can't really think I'm
going to believe that!"

"It's the truth, Mom. We just
started hanging out together. It's nothing, we're just really good
friends."

I'd known Mom would freak out about the idea of
Alec taking us on a trip. I hadn't expected she'd be so concerned
about my having a new guy friend. We'd been arguing for the last
ten minutes and it was starting to look like Alec had been
right.

"You're lying to me. Don't tell me you're not,
I can tell."

I opened my mouth to protest and she cut me off
again. "You obviously like him, and based on the way he was looking
at you, he's very much attracted to you."

That made me pause. It was so easy to forget
Alec really liked me. Without outside reminders I was always
talking myself into believing it was a temporary thing for
him.

"What have you been up to while I've been gone?
He's probably been over every night."

I shook my head emphatically. "Mom, I can
promise nothing has happened that you need to worry about. It's
true that I'd like for Alec and I to be more than we are. He's
really a good guy."

"Alec…Alec Graves?"

I hadn't expected Mom to know his
last name. That didn't seem to bode well.

"Yes, he's Rachel's brother."

"Sweetie, I really liked Rachel, but
the Graveses have more money than is healthy for any six families.
Everything I told you regarding Brandon goes double for Alec. Boys
like that just aren't sincere about things. They grow up learning
how to manipulate everyone around them."

"Mom. You were right about Brandon,
okay? Alec is completely different though. That's why he and
Brandon never got along. Alec is an incredibly thoughtful, mature
guy who always does the right thing."

Mom shook her head again. "What kind
of boy dates a girl without coming in and meeting her parents? I
mean, really."

"First of all, we're not dating. Not
really. Second of all, Alec wanted to come meet you just now but I
convinced him not to. I wanted to prepare you for the idea
first."

"Adri, you wouldn't have worried about
preparing me if there wasn't something to prepare me for. This is
more serious than you want to let on. I have half a mind to ground
you just to keep the two of you apart."

I collapsed so fast I didn't even realize I was
falling. When I came to again, my mom was pacing back and forth
with her phone in her hand. It was such a familiar sight. It'd been
so long since I'd really had panic attacks I'd nearly forgotten our
highly-practiced responses.

"Adri…ana. Are you okay? I should
have been more careful. I guess I've gotten out of the habit of
calling you by your full name. Too much time away at photo
shoots."

I groggily pushed my way back onto
my hands and knees. "It's okay, Mom. Please believe me though.
There's nothing going on with Alec and me that you need to worry
about. He'll come over so you can meet him and you'll see what I
mean. Until then, can you please not freak out?"

I could see the decision making itself in her
eyes. She couldn't keep me away from Alec. Not all the way, not as
long as we went to the same school. She could forbid it, but unless
she was ready to move again there wasn't much she could do to
enforce her decree.

"Okay, sweetie. I'll trust you for
now. I just don't like the way that you don't have any other
friends. It's not healthy to get too attached to one boy at your
age."