Chapter 412
The moment her warmth penetrated my sleeve, a blinding, white-hot agony tore through my chest — a stark reminder of how fragile she was, how easily my beast could break her. Ragnar roared in absolute torment.
I yanked my arm back violently, pressing myself flush against the cold leather of the door.
“Don’t touch me,” I snarled, my voice dripping with venomous ice.
She flinched as if I had struck her, pulling her hand tightly against her chest. The devastation in her hazel eyes was unbearable, so I looked away. I had to build a fortress of cruelty between us — or my beast would tear through my logic and pull her down into the dark with me.
When the elevator doors finally slid open to the penthouse foyer, the cold, minimalist white marble was violently disrupted.
Three massive, blindingly pink Louis Vuitton suitcases sat in the center of the room.
Azalea stood beside them, arms crossed defiantly over a fluffy sweater.
“Absolutely not,” I growled, the throbbing in my shattered tibia flaring with my rising blood pressure. “Go back to Gigi’s estate, Azalea.”
“Gigi is suffocating me with flower-arranging lessons, and you look like actual death,” she shot back, refusing to cower under my scowl. Realizing I was an immovable object, she turned her pleading eyes to Adella.
Adella stepped forward. Despite the chasm I had just carved between us, her voice carried a quiet, unyielding authority. “Let her stay, Dallas. Please.”
Trapped between the daughter I had raised and the woman I was currently torturing, the last reserves of my energy evaporated. I rubbed my temples, a wave of exhausted defeat washing over me. “Fine. But keep those pink monstrosities away from my study, or I’m throwing them off the balcony.”
I didn’t wait for a response. I dragged my ruined body toward my sanctuary and locked the heavy mahogany door behind me.
The study was dim, smelling of old leather and my own despair. I collapsed into the chair behind my desk, poured a generous glass of Macallan, and fired up my encrypted laptop to connect a video call with my COO, Isabelle Thorne. I needed corporate warfare to numb the bleeding in my soul.
“Report,” I demanded, taking a burning swallow.
Isabelle adjusted her glasses on the screen. “Only one anomaly, Alpha. Elder Malcolm called in an old debt and forced a new hire into the finance department. A young woman named Cassia. Zero relevant experience.”
“Where did you put her?”
“The basement archives. Organizing decades-old physical ledgers. She has absolutely no access to the core servers or Pack secrets.”
“Fine. Let her rot down there,” I muttered, waving a dismissive hand. The agonizing throb in my leg commanded all my attention. A useless nepotism hire was a gnat I didn’t have the patience to swat. “Keep me updated.”
I ended the call. As the screen faded to black, a silent security alert flashed in the bottom corner of my terminal: Minor encrypted data upload detected — Basement Archive Server.
I stared at the notification. My mind, clouded by pain and the heavy fog of whiskey, brushed it aside. A system diagnostic glitch. Nothing more.