Fighting Fate

by Scarlett Finn

  Dax nodded once because he wasn’t going to lie. He came here to tell Mauri the truth, which meant everyone in their circle would know it by the end of the day.

  Ivy’s declaration that his intention was to apologise to Mauri for falling in love with her stung him deep. She wasn’t the type to be easily hurt or to wilt for the purposes of drama, so the idea that she could think he was ashamed of loving her… Except he could understand exactly how she got that idea, she got it from him. From the way that he had acted toward her and his feelings for her. It wasn’t a bombshell that she believed he was ashamed of her… of them.

  ‘Yeah, I did,’ Dax said, giving voice to the truth while looking Brad in the eye.

  If there was one thing he was going to make sure of it was that no one ever believed he was ashamed of his bride, he would never make her feel undervalued again. While aware that he didn’t have the skills to be the best of husbands and acknowledging that he hadn’t thought through what the future held and figured out all the details yet, he had faith that Ivy would be there with him through every kink.

  He’d learn how to be better for her, because she had held up a mirror to him in a way no one else had ever dared to and he’d be eternally grateful to her for that.

  ‘Why the fuck did you do that?’ Brad asked, taking a snapping step in his direction. Brad rarely lost his cool, so his strong reaction intrigued Dax, but there was no time to address it because Mauri came in and they all shut up to look at the patriarch.

  ‘All of you get out of here,’ Mauri said, fixated on Dax. ‘My boy and I have to have talk.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  No one questioned Mauri when he gave an order. So as much as it probably irked him, Brad slunk out of the room with Bruno at his heels. Mauri didn’t sit at the desk as he usually would when conducting business, he gestured to the vast leather couch in the corner and Dax took his invitation to sit on it.

  ‘It’s a shame, we haven’t had one of our talks in a while. We should get back into the habit of it, don’t you think?’

  ‘Uh, yeah,’ Dax said, growing up he’d been brought to Mauri regularly and they’d talk. The private audience that he was granted with the patriarch was envied by others and Dax didn’t realise how important that relationship was until they’d lost the routine.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ Mauri asked, opening a palm toward the Waterford, but Dax shook his head and rubbed his curled fingers around the back of his neck.

  ‘No.’ It was still a bit early in the day to be mixing martinis or sipping scotch.

  ‘Coffee?’ Mauri asked. ‘You look tired.’

  ‘I’ve been on the go for a while,’ Dax said, noting that Brad got his impenetrable emotion disguise from his father’s side.

  ‘I can tell,’ Mauri said, coming over to seat himself in the arm chair perpendicular to Dax’s spot on the couch. ‘Something is troubling you.’

  ‘Gee, I wonder what would make you think that?’ Dax said, leaning forward with his elbows propped on his knees and his hands clasped between them. His back talk frustrated him because it wasn’t something he’d have used when Mauri was around in the past, not until Ivy came into his life.

  ‘You’ve been in the ring.’

  As his bruises would have portrayed. ‘As I often am.’

  ‘You let your opponent disrespect you.’

  Mauri spoke calmly and his lack of reaction to the events with Ivy riled Dax more. He was learning fast what it was like to be on the receiving end of Mauri’s displeasure. The old man was toying with him, like a cat with a mouse. Dax didn’t play nicely when he was the prey.

  ‘Yeah, he got a few hits in, he was bigger than me.’ He tried to play along, but set his jaw and tightened his fingers around the other fist, feeling the overwhelming urge to pummel something.

  ‘That’s never mattered to you before,’ Mauri said. ‘Somehow you use their size against them—‘

  ‘Am I here to talk tactics?’ Dax exclaimed. ‘Because if that’s the only thing that’s on the table I’d rather come back later.’

  Dax got up, but Mauri ordered him back to his seat. ‘Sit down, Dax.’ He did. ‘I don’t know why you’re here at all, boy.’

  ‘Benny told me that you were looking for me and I always come when called.’

  Saying it aloud made his blood congeal. He was reminded of how Ivy had referred to him in the early days as a lapdog; more and more he could see that she was right. Whether she had meant it then or it was designed to anger him, it didn’t matter.

  Now he saw that running Mauri’s errands had been such a way of life for him since he was a young child that he never thought to stop and question what he was doing or even if he wanted to be a part of this at all.

  Worse was the sickness that churned in his abdomen, it was there because disappointing Mauri made him feel inferior. The control that his surrogate parent wielded probably wasn’t healthy. Gaining the acceptance or pride of a parental figure had never figured in Dax’s conscious psyche. Yet, he knew now that his actions had shamed and disappointed Mauri and that somehow made Dax feel like less of a man. So his self-worth really was tied to the opinion of this one man.

  ‘The girl was alone with the seamstresses yesterday and they left her to retrieve something from the car, when they got back, she was gone… We couldn’t find you and you were the last one seen leaving this property… Do you want to tell me where she is?’

  ‘She’s at my place,’ Dax said, because to conceal the truth would mean putting Ivy into hiding forever and she wouldn’t go quietly. Her obvious objections would mean he’d have to restrain her or imprison her again, and she wouldn’t see that it was for her own safety.

  As difficult as he found it, Dax had to tell the truth because if he didn’t Ivy would believe he was ashamed of her, and he wasn’t. So he’d take the difficult path so that they could all get used to the way things were going to be. Now that he had Ivy he had every intention of letting the world, meaning every other guy on the face of the earth, know that she was taken, she was his, and no other man was to get near her again.

  ‘That’s good,’ Mauri said. ‘Trystan will be back tonight and that will give us plenty of—‘

  ‘I married her.’ Just saying it out loud was freedom and the weight that floated up off of his shoulders made him sit straighter and even the crackle of anger in Mauri’s eyes didn’t make Dax shrink now.

  The ire floated away and Mauri smiled, he actually smiled and then he laughed, leaving Dax very much at sea as to the cause of such elation.

  ‘Ah, you’re very clever,’ Mauri laughed. ‘Very funny too. I had forgotten how sharp your humour was.’

  ‘It’s not a joke,’ Dax said, slowly shaking his head and with each passing second Mauri’s amusement faded.

  ‘You can’t be serious,’ Mauri demanded. ‘You can’t be. You know her purpose was—‘

  ‘I asked her, she said yes, we did it,’ Dax said, glossing over a few details. ‘I’m sorry, Mauri, I know that you had a deal with Trystan but—‘

  ‘There is no but,’ Mauri said, pouncing out of his seat. ‘You went to Las Vegas, he found you in Las Vegas.’

  ‘Yes,’ Dax said, knowing that Mauri was referring to Benny.

  ‘Then you can get it annulled. I’ll delay Trystan and once the paperwork is—‘

  ‘I’m not getting it annulled,’ Dax said, standing up and realising for the first time just how much taller than Mauri he was. ‘I love her.’

  The ringing in his ears grew louder with each passing second but Mauri said nothing, he just stared, then his attention dropped. ‘She doesn’t belong to you. You cannot have her. The family—‘

  ‘She’s part of the family now,’ Dax said. ‘Just not in the role you wanted her in. Tryst can go fuck himself. I’d slit her throat and mine before I’d see her go anywhere near his bed.’

  ‘Jealousy,’ Mauri said, angling his head and peering up at Dax. ‘Is that what this is about, boy? You think that he’s go
ing to be playing with your toy?’

  ‘She’s not a toy. She’s my wife.’

  ‘And why is that? Why did she say yes to you? Do you think that she wants to be married to you? That she actually loves you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  With a whisper of a laugh, Mauri softened and patted Dax’s arm then seated himself again, gesturing for Dax to do the same. ‘You have been played. You’re not the first man to fall for a great rack and a sob story. I’m surprised that she managed to manipulate you, very surprised at that. I knew that you didn’t embrace the cruelty that might be necessary to bend her will, but you’ve always been such a cold thing. Even as a child. You never cried,’ he said, drawing in a breath and settling back in his chair. ‘You never asked why or whimpered, you did the job, you were given a task and you completed it. I suppose your father conditioned you from a young age to do just that, he taught you how to fight and put you into that ring to make him money and you did.’

  Often children and weaker fighters would occupy the ring to put on a show before the big fight of the night. It was entertainment and to give the bookies a chance to make more money. But Dax had been something of an anomaly then, far younger and scrawnier than the other kids, who were all a good few years older, Dax learned to be fast and to disguise every weakness.

  ‘What happened back then is nothing to do with now,’ Dax said.

  ‘No?’ Mauri asked, arching a brow. ‘Growing up here in this house, in the back kitchen with the other staff children, you never complained, you always knew your place.’

  He was the only one of the children who got alone time with Mauri, even Mauri’s children spent more time with their mother. Dax was special, he was the chosen one, though he’d never asked why.

  Despite being an obvious favourite of Mauri’s, Dax had never asked for more. Mainly through fear that asking for it would cause him to be cast out for being greedy. No, he knew he had done well for himself. Dax always believed that serendipity had found him the day that Mauri offered him the chance to repent for his misdeed.

  ‘And now I’ve stepped out of it, is that what you’re saying?’ Dax asked.

  ‘She has given you something that none of the rest of us could.’ Devotion, loyalty, respect, Dax could speculate all day. ‘Status. No matter how we valued your work, you were never going to be the most powerful man in the room, not with Brad, Trystan, Bruno and I on your fringes. No, she saw exactly what you wanted and she gave it to you in order to save herself.’

  ‘Ivy fell in love with me before she knew anything about what was going on.’

  ‘She knew that she was being held captive and that you may have held the key. She manipulated you, my son.’

  ‘No,’ Dax said, shaking his head. ‘Why would she have married me if—?’

  ‘Marriages are easily undone these days,’ Maurice said. ‘She most likely planned to stick around while you smoothed over things with the family and then planned to leave you, divorce you, after Trystan had been appeased and moved onto other things.’

  Dax didn’t want to hear that. He didn’t want to think that it could be true. But as Ivy had pointed out herself, she had been the one to initiate so much between them and had even taken the lead in seducing him on their first night together. He’d considered the possibility that she was manipulating him, but the idea fled in the same moment that her body slid onto his. Everything about her soothed his ego and he had let her do it.

  Bringing his hands up, he let his face fall into them and tried to decipher what was truth and what was not. Ivy had been in dire straits, and she was a smart girl who could do what needed to be done in order to survive. The Starks had been his family for twenty years; they had always stood by him just as he had stood by them. He’d been ready to give up his family for a woman who, Mauri was right, might choose to leave him in three months.

  Mauri had always guided him and had never let him down. He had let him carry on with the fighting even though it didn’t fit too well with the Stark image. Mauri had never been ashamed of him, had never questioned his loyalty, and Ivy had made Dax do both to the man who had nurtured him.

  ‘What do I do?’ Dax asked, rubbing his face up his fingers until Mauri came into view again.

  ‘You can bring her back to us,’ Mauri said. ‘Though it’s unlikely that Trystan will marry her now. Clearly, she isn’t as obedient as we thought she was and if she tries to manipulate him or gives him trouble… well…’

  Trystan had no restraint and was so erratic that there was no telling what he would do. If Ivy spoke to Trystan the way that she spoke to him, well, the chances were that she’d get a beating. Having another person wielding that kind of power over her, she would push back hard, which would rile Trystan more and he equated sex with power. Trystan would beat her and rape her and keep her until he got bored, until she was truly broken, if he didn’t kill her first.

  ‘You don’t want him drawing attention to the family,’ Dax muttered.

  ‘I don’t.’ That was enough to divulge Mauri’s thinking. If Trystan killed Ivy, whether on purpose or by accident, the family would have a body to get rid of and a lot of unanswered questions. ‘Keep her for today,’ Mauri said. ‘Give me a chance to talk to Trystan and bring her over here, say midnight.’

  ‘And then what?’ Dax asked, glad that he would have the time to talk to Ivy and get the truth out of her. All he’d thought about was his own love and how it would affect him to see her with another man, he hadn’t considered the notion that he was being played for a fool, not really, he hadn’t given it serious thought and he should have.

  Midnight was a daunting time though because there wouldn’t be many eyes around to witness what could happen. If Trystan was understanding then Ivy might get out of this alive. But Dax noticed now how worn Mauri looked. He had believed that Ivy could be the answer to his aggravation. Through the years Mauri had put up with a lot of immature antics from Trystan, but he was getting bored with it now and desperately wanted Trystan to grow up. They’d been on the cusp of maybe seeing that happening and Dax had dashed all hope.

  ‘I can send Bruno for her if you are uncomfortable—‘

  ‘No,’ Dax said, rising to his feet. ‘I got us into this mess, it’s my responsibility to get us out of it.’

  ‘Good,’ Maurice said and actually smiled as he joined Dax on his journey to the door. ‘I wish that Trystan was as responsible as you are. I’m proud of you, Dax.’

  He hadn’t expected those words to come out of Maurice’s mouth today. ‘Proud?’

  ‘Yes. You made a mistake and we all do that sometimes. But now you’ve had this experience you’re never going to let it happen again.’ All good humour left Maurice and he stopped Dax from opening the door. ‘Are you?’

  ‘No,’ Dax said, understanding the gravity of what Maurice was conveying.

  ‘Family should always come first and that’s what I’ll be explaining to Trystan. We shouldn’t let a woman come in between brothers, should we?’

  ‘I’ll deal with it,’ Dax said, experiencing an emotion drain more profound than anything he had before. He’d thought that he’d been numb before finding Ivy, now that he’d found her and the prospect of losing her was on the horizon, numb didn’t come close to describing the lead in his veins now.

  Ivy hadn’t meant to fall asleep, but when she heard the clatter of a door close, her eyes popped open and she realised that sleeping was exactly what she’d been doing. Rolling onto her back, she stretched and kept her eyes closed, anticipating that Dax would join her. Except he didn’t and there were no more sounds to indicate what he was doing so curling up to sit in the middle of the vast bed she was confused to see him in the doorway of the closet, doing nothing.

  ‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘Did you fix it? Did everything get worked out?’

  ‘I think it did.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that,’ she said awash with relief that made her sigh out a smile. ‘Do you want me to cook you something and yo
u can tell me what happened?’

  ‘No,’ he murmured.

  She wasn’t sure if she should laugh or get up and run away, because his static form wasn’t giving much away. ‘Are you ok? Was it rough? Was he pissed?’

  ‘Brad was pissed, so was Bruno.’

  ‘And Mauri?’

  ‘I knew I could count on Mauri.’

  Their relationship must be stronger than Ivy had given it credit for because she hadn’t expected Mauri to be understanding. Dax wasn’t upset or angry, at least she didn’t think that he was, he was still just standing there.

  ‘What are you thinking about, tough guy?’ she asked, resisting the urge to exhale a nervous laugh.

  Reaching for the back of his tee-shirt, he grabbed the neck of it and pulled it off then bent down to unlace his boots enough to pull them off. Ivy didn’t have to wonder what he was thinking after he shirked his jeans.

  Giving her a full frontal view of his healthy form, her own smile slipped into the understanding range. ‘Never mind,’ she said, tossing aside the sheet she’d managed to twine herself in while she was sleeping. Ready to get to her knees and close the space between them, he held up his hands and she paused.

  Dax made the journey on his own, bringing that bodacious body onto the bed where she waited, her arms open wide. As he ascended the length of her body he snagged the sheet and held it. He slid his open hands up her arms, tickling the delicate flesh and almost making her laugh. But the laugh faded when he clamped her wrists around the headboard and used the sheet to tie them both in place.

  Lying naked, stretched out on this warm bed made her shift with discomfort. She didn’t mind being naked, and was even used to being restrained by Dax, though he tended to tether her leg rather than her arms.

  ‘You randy?’ she teased trying to kiss his mouth, but he took it away from her and pressed his face into her throat instead.

  Clasping her breasts, he skimmed downward and with one punishing jerk he opened her thighs and pushed the head of his dick into her. Wincing into the unexpected intrusion, she wished that her hands were free, because this man on top of her didn’t touch her with the same respect he had last night.