Rule Changer

by Deena Patel

  “I never denied that.”

  “Bullshit. You kept their existence a secret from me. I had to find out through a tabloid article. Do you have any idea what it was like to find out that the woman I love gave birth to my children and didn’t bother to let me know?”

  He loves me?

  I couldn’t believe it. Too many times, I’d made the mistake of trusting words of love, only to learn I was wrong. First Andrew, then Thomas. I couldn’t keep making the same mistakes.

  My tempter flared. “Do you think I wanted to do this alone? Don’t you think I wanted you there? You shredded my belief in what we had. Do you remember telling me that my father’s crime would always follow me and you couldn’t see a future for us? Especially if it meant hurting your family? What Dad did to your aunt wasn’t my fault.”

  “I know what I said. I was wrong.”

  “Wrong. Are you kidding me right now?” I shouted at him. “One weekend you’re telling me you wanted to build a home with me, and the next, after a visit to your family, you tell me I’m disposable. If what we shared freaked you out so much, then why did you pursue me? We could have left it as a fling and moved on.”

  I ran a hand across my face and pinched the bridge of my nose.

  “If I recall, you handled it pretty well. You didn’t even show an ounce of emotion. I couldn’t believe how cold your response was.”

  “What did you expect me to do? Fall apart? Would it have made you feel better if I’d cried?” I clenched my jaw. “You tore my heart out that day.”

  I was disposable, just like I was to Andrew, to Dad, to Thomas.

  “You still kept my boys from me.”

  “There was no proof that you’d stick around if I’d told you about my pregnancy.”

  “What do you want me to do to get you to see I’m here for good?”

  “Nothing. I’ve seen too much to believe it’s true,” I whispered as the hurt from the past year washed away any fight I had left in me. “I’m used to being alone. It’s better that way.”

  I turned away and walked toward the bedroom. If I expected anything from him, I’d open myself up to hurt again. Why had I let last night happen? I knew better.

  God, my emotions are so fucked up. Carmen, you have to get it together.

  “Where are you going?” Thomas asked from behind me.

  I glanced over my shoulder and tried to speak without any affliction in my voice. “To shower. I’d appreciate if you’d watch them until Stacey arrives. Then you can leave. I think we’ve said all we need to say.”

  Thomas stepped toward me but stopped when he saw me raise my hand.

  “Don’t do this, Carm. Not with me. Don’t freeze me out when it gets hard. I’m not giving up on us.”

  I ignored him and walked into my bedroom.

  Shutting the door, I stripped off my clothes in a numb haze and walked into my shower. Turning the dial to the hottest setting I could handle, I stepped under the spray. I closed my eyes as the water beat down on my face, and the heat seeped into my body.

  What was happening to me? I thought those feeling were long buried.

  A Domme isn’t supposed to fall apart at the slightest trouble. She has to maintain control no matter what life throws her way.

  I hiccupped as a sob erupted, and slid to the floor, letting my pain and heartache consume me.

  * * *

  Twenty minutes later, after I finally had my emotions back under control, I stepped out of the shower. Thomas wasn’t at fault for my choice of keeping the boys from him. He was right. It was easier to freeze him out than to let him know his words or actions affected me.

  Maybe it was all the lessons Natalie gave about controlling my reactions when people talked about Dad after Mama died.

  Even before the embezzlement scandal, people referred to me as the snobby Dane. Max was the golden boy of the family. He was athletic, supersmart, and could charm anyone around him. On the other hand, I was a supershy and socially awkward twelve-year-old, and became even more so after Mama’s death.

  At that time, Natalie was my family’s estate manager, and she ran every aspect of the house. When Dad abandoned us, she took it upon herself to raise us. One of the first lessons she taught me was that I couldn’t control the opinions of others, but I could control my reaction to them.

  Over the next years, her lessons helped me deal with the gossip and recriminations of the various scandals Dad put us through, from affairs with the wives of his colleagues and clients to ultimately the scandal that nearly cost Max and me everything.

  Those lessons became an ingrained part of who I was, and now I used them as a way to maintain control in all things.

  No, that wasn’t true. For the six months Thomas and I were together, I’d given him command over so many aspects of our relationship, something I’d never felt comfortable doing with anyone else.

  I walked toward my closet.

  I had to figure out what was going to happen between us. Becoming lovers again was probably a big mistake, but I wasn’t naïve enough to think it was going to end. No matter how hard I tried, Thomas pulled at a side of me no other man had ever reached. The part of me that would allow another person to take over. Maybe it was the Dom in him that called to the…submissive in me.

  I sighed and closed my eyes for a second.

  Was I wrong about who I was?

  I pushed those thoughts back and quickly dressed. I couldn’t go there right now.

  I walked into an empty living room five minutes later. All evidence of Thomas was gone except his tie on the side table. My heart clenched. I shouldn’t have walked away like that. I shouldn’t have dismissed him.

  I picked up the silk and held it to my chest.

  After my conference call, I’ll call him and apologize.

  At that moment, the boys’ bedroom door clicked.

  “Stacey, were they difficult to get down?” I asked without looking toward the hallway.

  “No,” Thomas answered. “They were half-asleep by the time she arrived.”

  I whirled around as my breath hitched. “What are you still doing here?”

  “We haven’t finished our discussion.” He moved in front of me, stepping forward as I retreated.

  “There’s something you should know about me.” He advanced until my back hit the wall. “No matter how much you try, you can’t dismiss me.”

  He caged me with his arms, trapping my body. I tried to push him away, but he grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. My heartbeat accelerated, and a tingle shot to my core.

  “Thomas,” I gasped. “Stacey is here. Let me go.”

  He grazed his stubble against the side of my face. “She told me the boys would sleep for the next three hours, so I sent her home.”

  “Are you sure you can handle them?”

  “I’m not worried. Does my presence make you uncomfortable?” he purred.

  I shifted my head to the side as my pulse rang into my ears, and stared him in the eyes. “You don’t frighten me, Thomas. Don’t think for a second you intimidate me.”

  “Oh, but I know I do. Your breath is shallow, and your cheeks are flushed.” His eyes dilated, and his lips turned up on the corners. “I’m not going to let you hide from me or push me away. The trick may have worked with everyone else, but I know, deep inside, what you want. What you need.”

  I lifted my chin. “And what is that?”

  “You need someone who’ll stick with you, no matter what happens. Someone who’ll love you through anything. Someone who’ll believe in you and fight for you.”

  I clenched my jaw. “I’ve never had that. I still don’t.”

  I wanted to shove him out of the way, but my body betrayed me and wouldn’t move.

  Cupping the side of my face, he rested his forehead against mine. “Yes, you do. I won’t make the same mistake again. I know what you need. I won’t let you down.”

  I closed my eyes, letting his words sink in. I had to give him a chance to sh
ow me I wasn’t second to his family, or I’d never be able to trust him.

  As if sensing my thoughts, he rubbed a finger against my lips and spoke. “Let go of the past, Carm. Let me show you all we can have.”

  “I won’t let you do this to me again.” I tugged my hand out of his and shoved past him, moving to the balcony window. “Once, I was stupid enough to have hoped for…” I shook my head, stopping the words I was about to say. “Not anymore, Thomas. I won’t risk it again.”

  “What we have will never be just sex, no matter what you say. The second I touch you”—his fingers grazed my arms, causing me to gasp—“your body knows its Master.”

  “Stop. I have no Master.” I tried to push his hands away, but he grasped mine.

  His grip tightened. “Do you think admitting I have a hold over you makes you weak?”

  I am weak. You crushed my heart once before.

  “Don’t you get it? Depending on you means you can hurt me again.” I scrunched my eyes tight.

  Fuck, I shouldn’t have admitted that.

  “What about me? I’m just as vulnerable as you.” His lips trailed down the side of my neck, and without thought, I tilted it to the side, giving him better access.

  One of his hands slid up my shoulder and cupped my throat with a small squeeze, which caused a moan to escape my lips.

  My phone beeped, breaking the spell he had over me and letting me know my conference was going to start.

  “Thomas, let me go. I have a conference call.”

  He sighed, released his hold on me, and turned me toward him. “Go. I’ll be here when you’re done. This conversation is far from over.”

  I opened my mouth to tell him to get lost and leave, but he sealed it with his. He kissed me with such need that my mind lost all thought except giving him every warring emotion in my body. My fingers slipped into his hair, and he dug into the curves of my ass, drawing me against his erection. We nipped, tasted, and savored each other until Thomas slowly pulled back.

  “You have a meeting.”

  I refocused on him through desire-glazed eyes and tried to steady my ragged breaths. We both stared at each other for a few moments before I turned and rushed to my office.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  I entered my office in a haze, slipping into the seat at my desk. How did we go from anger and emotional turmoil to sucking face? I cupped the sides of my temples and squeezed my head.

  This man had me turned upside down. My computer pinged, alerting me to the start of the video conference.

  I logged onto the video chat, slid into my seat, and spoke. “Hello. This is Carmen Dane. We’ll get started in a few minutes.”

  “Hey, Carm.” Arya came into view from the office of her company headquarters. “It’s only Mil and me here. We canceled the meeting. And before you lose your shit about messing up your plans, let Boss Lady give you an update.”

  Milla appeared on the screen, and the expression on her face told me I wasn’t going to like what she was about to say.

  “Give it to me, Mil. I’m a big girl.”

  “So after Arya told me about your happy e-mail from the asshole and his not-so-subtle references to the past, I did a little more digging. I found something that I don’t think the feds even realized.” She paused. “I don’t know how to say this. Merda. This sucks.”

  “Milla, just tell her,” Arya reprimanded.

  “You aren’t going to believe this, but I think Christof is after the money that disappeared right before your father’s death. I think linking you to the same type of embezzlement was just his way of getting your attention and making you more willing to do as he says.”

  “What? That doesn’t make sense. Every financial wizard and tech geek searched every bank in the world for that money. Are you trying to say that there is an account out there with my name on it that has forty billion in embezzled funds?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m saying. There are over two hundred accounts with money allocated for you and Max. Well, not you two directly but some of the smaller MCD subsidiaries left to you when your father died.” The tone of Milla’s voice said she was dead serious. At the same moment, a document popped up on my laptop screen.

  I opened the spreadsheet, and a list of accounts appeared with the ghost companies managing them. From what I could see, there was nothing in the names or the structure of the accounts that had any link to Dad, Max, or me. Maybe I was missing something.

  “I didn’t want to believe it,” Arya added. “But it was always there, sitting in plain sight, just no one knew how to find it. Whoever helped your dad hide the money spent an exorbitant amount of time and money manipulating banking software. Eric Dane was smart, but only a group of people could pull off this type of heist without setting off alarm bells sooner than they did.”

  “How does someone or a group have the ability to manipulate the programming of every major bank in the world? If you can answer that, Ari, then maybe I’ll accept this as a possibility.”

  “Well, Arcane can coordinate, manipulate, and copycat data so government agents in the field can appear to be in one place when they are actually in another. It’s pretty easy to change any similar software’s parameters for financial purposes, like cloning accounts to look like they have little or no money when they’re filled with millions.”

  “Arya, only someone like you could manipulate software to do this. When the embezzlement went down, computer technology wasn’t anywhere near the caliber it is now. Moreover, even today, there are…what, maybe a handful of people in the world who have this capability? Most of us idiots out there can barely manage to turn on our computer and open a few programs.”

  “Yes, you’re a big dummy with an MIT education and three master’s degrees, one being in computer science. Anyway.” Milla grew serious. “Can you admit, at least, that there’s a possibility your father wasn’t the sole embezzler?”

  There was no way I could deny the merits of what they said. I’d always wondered how Dad had pulled the whole thing off, but I never focused on the possibilities too long, fearing what I’d learn.

  All of a sudden, a lump formed in my stomach as the thought crossed my mind. “Girls, what if Christof kidnapped the both of you for Arcane? What if his ultimate goal was to use the program for the exact purpose Arya said? What if he was part of the embezzlement from the beginning?”

  “That’s a lot of what-ifs,” Milla interjected while ignoring my frown.

  “My God. You could be right. I remember Christof telling me how useful I’d be to him.” Arya ran a hand over her face. “He even said he could offer me more than I could imagine if I came over to his side and help him with a software project he had his eye on. At the time, I thought all he wanted was to use Arcane to sell government secrets.”

  Pinching the bridge of her nose, Milla lost the humor in her voice from a few moments ago and spoke. “My gut says Christof or whoever wasn’t expecting your father’s murder. He left too many things up in the air, especially where the money was concerned.”

  “There is something else we need to consider.” I tucked a piece of my hair behind my ear.

  “What?”

  “Unless this magic software reappears, Christof is still after Arcane. You said it yourself, Ari. The software can be manipulated for financial purposes. He can’t access the original program, so he was looking for an alternative. Forty billion is a lot of motivation.”

  “That’s true, but I feel like there is more to this. Why is Christof so fixated on you? I’m the one with access to the software. We need to keep digging. There has to be something we’re missing.” Arya typed away at her computer.

  When she got into her research mode, she’d tune out anyone and everyone around her. I glanced back at the list Milla compiled.

  Oh shit. One of the accounts matched the name of one of the biggest donors to my foundation. This was bad.

  “Ari, hold on a minute before you disappear into your world of zeros and ones.” I
accessed a series of files and directed them to the girls. “Take a look at what I just sent to you.”

  Both girls scanned the documents and then looked up.

  “This is bad.” Milla echoed my thoughts. “The biggest donations came to the foundation from three of the accounts on my list.”

  She wrote down a sequence of numbers, then flipped her pad to the camera on her computer.

  I swallowed, trying to push down the bile rising in my throat. “According to the list, I’ve been operating the foundation with embezzled funds for over ten years. I’ve used over five hundred million dollars for endowment projects all over the world. If anyone gets word of this, it could ruin all of our reputations.”

  My lips trembled.

  Arya shook her head, and all the color drained from her face. “How am I going to break this to Max?”

  “If this gets out, no one’s going to believe Max or I didn’t have any knowledge of what Dad was up to. They’ll think we were in on it from the beginning.”

  We’d been on the cusp of adulthood when the investigation and indictment took place. By our ages, most corporate families had been grooming their children for years in preparation to take over their organizations.

  It wasn’t the same in our case. From the beginning, Max and I wanted to take different paths. My dream was to work in architecture and structural design, and Max’s was to practice law.

  Our father’s actions left us no choice but to take over MCD. We put our plans and dreams aside in an effort to save a company that spanned four continents and employed over a hundred thousand people. Through hard work and serious on-the-job training, we managed to fix the mess Dad left the company in.

  “That’s where you’re wrong. I pulled the IRS and FBI documents on the case. All the data they collected on every organization you, Max, or your father was involved in. They only stopped monitoring you this past year. And that was because they couldn’t justify the expense when they’d found nothing to link either of you to the embezzlement.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not sure I want to know how you got your hands on the files, but thanks.”