Jacob’s car hasn’t even fully stopped when I open the doors and jump out, running to the front door of the house. It’s opened before I reach it, by one of Alejandro’s security detail.
“Where is he?” I ask.
“In his office,” he says with a curt nod.
“And my wife?”
“In the pool with her mom and the boys. He’s asked that you don’t speak to them and go directly to his office.”
“Fuck that,” I snarl as I push past him.
“Jax,” the guard hisses. “I have my orders. You are not to go back there. Please don’t make me take you down.”
“You think you could?”
He glares at me. “There are a dozen more men who would stop you before you get back there.”
“A dozen?”
He nods solemnly and I swallow hard. He never has that many men at his house. What the fuck is this? “Fine. I’ll go see him.”
“Thank you,” he replies and then he steps aside before he escorts me to his boss’s office.
I mean Alejandro is technically my boss too, but I never really think of him as that. While he might give me my orders, he also treats me as his equal. The guard opens the door for me and I walk inside. Alejandro is staring out of the window, but at the sound of the door closing he spins around. His eyes lock on mine and I swear I haven’t seen him this pissed since I told him I was in a relationship with his daughter.
“What the hell is going on?” I ask.
He grips the back of his office chair, his knuckles turning white with the effort of controlling the rage that is clearly coursing through his body.
“I fucking trusted you, Jax,” he snarls. “She’s my fucking daughter and you… you…” he puts a hand over his face and sucks the air through his teeth, as though he can’t even bear to say the words.
Meanwhile, I stand here wondering what the fuck I could have possibly done that would make him think he couldn’t trust me with his daughter’s safety. Like her and Matthias aren’t always my number one priority.
“I what?” I snap.
He nods to a brown envelope on the desk. “That came this morning,” he hisses.
I frown as I pick it up and pull out the contents. And as soon as I do, I realize why he’s so pissed at me. In fact, I’m surprised he hasn’t punched me in the mouth yet. No father should ever see his daughter like that. But I think he could shoot me right now and I wouldn’t feel a thing because I’m filled with a burning rage and anger, the likes I’ve only ever felt once before and that was when she was taken from me by some psychopath who was obsessed with her.
Bile burns my throat as I think about the sick piece of shit who must have taken these videos of her. There are five photographs in the envelope but they are clearly stills from two separate video clips.
Two of them are from when I fucked her on the porch of our barn. She’s wearing her tank top and the fact that her jeans are pulled down, as well as what I’m doing with my hand is obscured by the wooden rails, but it’s clear we’re having sex.
In fact that particular still image they used, is obviously the point when she was coming. The realization that anyone but me has seen that makes me want to go on a murderous rampage of epic proportions. My blood boils in my veins as I look at each one. Each violation of our privacy, not that I care much about mine, but I do about hers. That someone has seen her like this is like a knife in my heart. But losing my shit and raging at the world is not going to help us right now. It’s not going to find out who took these videos and pictures, or why.
But I suspect, that the images of me and her alone are not the images Alejandro is pissed at me about.
I slide the photographs back inside the envelope. I don’t need to see them again to have them burned into my brain. I mean I was there. I know exactly what happened.
“What do they want?” I ask as the anger burns through my veins.
He picks up a piece of paper lying on his desk and tosses it at me. “Five million dollars by noon tomorrow.”
I scan the single piece of paper. There is nothing distinguishable about it. Plain white copy paper with four lines of printed text. But the words sear into my heart like a hot poker. If he doesn’t pay, they upload the videos to every free porn site and send stills to any gossip website that doesn’t care about a law suit or two.
“I am going to find out who took these and peel their fucking skin from their flesh,” I hiss out the words through clenched teeth. My teeth grinding and jaw aching with the effort.
“Who is the woman?” he snarls.
Fuck! He’s not going to like the answer. But then I wonder if anything can piss him off more than the image of his daughter being eaten out by a woman while I hold her wide open for her. “Toni Moretti.”
“Toni fucking Moretti?” he shouts so loud that even though his office is soundproof, it wouldn’t surprise me if Lucia heard him out by the pool. “Are you out of your goddamn mind?”
I glare at him. Photographs of my wife in her most vulnerable state, not to mention having her pussy eaten, are potentially about to be released onto the web and he’s worried about who else was involved.
“You want to start a war with the Morettis now too?” he growls, glaring at me.
“It’s not like Toni’s one of them.”
“I think Dante would beg to differ,” he replies with a scowl, referring to the middle Moretti sibling, and the man who took over the reins from his father. “Salvatore Moretti is her father, which makes her one of them. If this gets out that she is the woman in those photographs.”
“Then what?” I snarl. “It’s not like we took them, is it? Whoever did is their enemy. Not us. Besides, Toni won’t give a damn. She does what she does in spite of her brothers. She’s never been one of them.”
“I hope you’re right, amigo, because if you bring a war with the Italians to my door…”
I scowl at him “You think I want anyone seeing my wife like that? You think I would willingly let this happen? Some sick fuck has filmed us on our goddamn honeymoon, doing things that husbands and wives do. If we go to war with the Italians over this, you will have my fucking back the way I’ve had yours for the past twenty-four years.”
He scowls back but he doesn’t answer.
“Besides, I don’t give a fuck about a war with the Morettis. I will take every single one of them on myself if that’s what it takes. I can’t believe you’re thinking of anything right now other than finding out who is behind this and making sure that these images never see the light of day.”
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you let someone…” he swallows. He can’t say the words and I don’t blame him. “And out in the open. On the fucking porch? Where anyone could see?” He’s shouting again now.
“No-one should have been there. The ranch is private property. Our barn is set way back from the house.”
“Well somebody was there, Jax!” he yells. “Someone watched you fucking my daughter and then when you allowed someone else to violate her.”
I slam my hands on the desk. “She was not being fucking violated,” I snarl. “At least, not by Toni. Whoever took those was the only person who’s done that.”
“You’re telling me that was her idea? Don’t forget I know who you really are, Jax.”
“Yeah, because you were with me for half the shit I did when I was younger. It’s exactly the kind of man you used to be before you married Alana,” I remind him. “You think I forced her to do that? If you’d actually looked at the pictures you’d see that she was having a pretty good time.”
That’s the final straw and I know it was a step too far, but I’m just as pissed as he is and I need to let some of it out before I see her. He launches himself over the desk at me. His right fist comes straight at my face, but I duck it and he stumbles before turning and barreling into my chest, knocking me on my ass until we’re brawling on the floor of his office.
I have him in a headlock and he elbows me in the ribs. It winds me but I don’t let him go because the rage is making me feel invincible. But then he says the words that hit me harder than any blow he could have landed. “You don’t fucking deserve her,” he hisses.
My arms go lax and I release him. He pushes himself up, ready to attack, but when he sees me sitting on the floor, my shoulders slumped in defeat, he stops. He’s not about to hit me when he knows I won’t defend myself.
“I know I don’t, amigo,” I whisper as I put my head in my hands. I let her down. Forgetting my rage for a second, I think about how she’s going to feel when she finds out and my heart breaks for her. How could I have allowed this to happen? “We need to tell her now.”
“No. We can fix this before she finds out.”
I look up at him. “I know she’s your daughter, but she’s a grown woman, Alejandro. She can handle this. You at least need to give her the opportunity to.”
“I can’t bear to see her face when she sees them,” he says with a shake of his head.
“I know. Nor can I, but she deserves to know. She needs to be part of this conversation, Alejandro. As hard as that’s going to be for you, but this is her life.”
He nods his head in agreement.
“Does Alana know?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“What did she say?”
“After she picked her jaw up from the floor, she said the same as you, that I need to tell Lucia. But she agreed to let me wait until I’d spoken to you.”
“That woman always did speak sense,” I say, standing up and straightening my shirt.
“Let’s go tell her you’re back then,” he says, gesturing to the door.
