“What the fuck do you want?” I snap, noticing Wilder watching him intently.
The asshole doesn’t look at me, keeping his eyes on Emilia as he leans in toward her, planting his hands on the table right beside her plate.
He bites his bottom lip in a pathetically clichéd manner, giving her yet another onceover. We get it, you’re interested. Get to the fucking point already.
“I don’t know how I didn’t see it before.”
“See what?” Lines form on Emilia’s brow as she looks up at him in confusion.
“How fucking hot you are.”
Emilia turns beetroot, and I want to deck the guy just for making her uncomfortable.
“I’m willing to overlook the whole scholarship thing, if you’ll come to this week’s party with me.”
“You fu—” I snarl, before Emilia can formulate a response, but Wilder jumps to his feet, looking ready to tear Deke to shreds.
“Get. The. Fuck. Away. From. Her.” He bites out the words with more venom than I have ever heard from him, and I don’t miss the way Emilia gapes at him in shock.
Deke sneers at him, and I can see the comeback forming on his lips. Wilder isn’t a Prince, so he doesn’t command the same respect from Deke, but that doesn’t mean he should be any less feared. If anything, Deke should be even more afraid. My guys at least have lines they won’t cross; things they won’t do, but I wouldn’t have the same confidence that Wilder won’t chop your body into tiny pieces and feed them to the pigs if you looked sideways at him.
“You heard him,” I snap. “Get the fuck out of here.”
He glowers at me, and I return it with a cocked eyebrow and an unfazed expression—does he really think he’s that intimidating? He looks like a pissed off kitten.
Returning his gaze to Emilia, he winks at her. “I’ll catch you another time...when your guard dogs aren’t around.”
He saunters off, swaggering like the fucking dipshit he is, completely unaware that I’m mentally picking out what tools I’ll use to castrate him.
“Where the fuck does he get off?” Wilder snarls, collapsing back into his seat with a dark expression.
Emilia’s eyes bounce from Deke’s retreating form to Wilder, finally landing on me. “What the hell just happened?”
That dickwad just signed his own death warrant, that’s what.
***
That evening, all six of us are lined up in our seats in the boardroom, overlooking the city spread out before us. Instead of focusing on schoolwork and our upcoming end of year exams like normal teenagers, we’ve spent all day speculating what this meeting could be about, but every possibility was worse than the last and we eventually gave up.
The swoosh of the door opening has me looking over my shoulder as Maria strides into the room, looking perfectly presented in a professional, yet attractive looking gray dress and matching sky-high heels that I could never pull off. She doesn’t once look at any of us, keeping her head held high and a slight frown on her face as she strides into the room.
Barton is behind her, and his gaze goes straight to mine. I can see the questions in his eyes—Did you open the box? What did you think? Does it change anything? It’s too much, and I quickly look away, focusing back on Maria as she takes her seat opposite Hawk. Barton sits on one side of her, and Wilbert on the other, clearly placing Maria in the middle and silently portraying her as the one in charge.
“What’s this all about?” Hawk snaps, the second their asses all hit the seats.
Maria quirks a brow, looking irritated at Hawk’s pissy attitude, but it’s Barton who speaks first.
“I have offered Maria my shares in the company.” My eyebrows raise in surprise, and I hear Cam’s intake of breath beside me. “In exchange, she has agreed not to involve any of you in any further business with the company.”
I glance at Hawk out of the corner of my eye, finding him watching his father closely, suspicion and the subtle flash of hope in his eyes. After a long moment, he focuses back on Maria.
“That’s true? You’ll leave all of us alone, in exchange for his shares?”
Maria smiles cruelly. “While Barton’s gesture is touching”—she spits the word out like it tastes disgusting—“unfortunately his shares aren’t enough.”
“What, but you agreed,” Barton stutters. Color coats his cheeks and his eyes narrow in anger.
Maria smiles placatingly at him, and for a moment, I can almost see how she managed to manipulate him all these years, and yet, it’s not enough for me to believe he just blindly agreed to whatever plans she and the others devised.
“Yes, I know, but I’ve changed my mind. I want the majority share of the company.”
“I’ll give you mine too,” Cam pipes up. I don’t pretend to understand anything about this corporate world, or the importance of company shares, but I trust Cam and the others to know what they’re doing. “With Lawrence dead, his quarter of the company goes to me. I don’t want it, but in exchange, you have to agree not to come after any of us. I don’t know about the others, but I don’t want to hear anything about Nocturnal Mercenaries ever again. I don’t want to see your face, or come back to this office.”
We all murmur our agreements and there’s another moment of tense silence as Maria thinks it over, before her gaze moves to Mason, and he tenses beside me in the chair. She tilts her head, scrutinizing him. “I want Frank’s shares too.”
“I don’t have them. They’re still in my father’s name.”
Mason’s words spark a flash of anger in Maria’s gaze, and her nostrils flare. “Then get them for me.”
Jesus, demanding bitch. I grit my teeth, holding back my retort, and thankfully Hawk speaks up before I say something scathing that will only further piss her off.
“We’ll get them for you. Then you’ll leave us alone?”
She waves her hand dismissively. “Yes, yes. Get me the shares and you can go live your pathetic little lives. I won’t have any need for pampered children.”
It takes everything in me not to snarl at her like a rabid dog, and I feel Mason’s hand squeeze my leg gently. He can probably see me practically vibrating with anger and the clenched fists I’m hiding beneath the large boardroom table.
Maria doesn’t hang around, having delivered her orders, and like the pathetic sap he is, Wilbert follows her out of the boardroom. Barton, on the other hand, hesitates, glancing at Hawk and I with a pained expression on his face.