The Choice (Arranged Book 3)

by Stella Gray

  I could feel his heart beating hard against mine. We were both completely spent.

  “I love you,” I sighed, my own orgasm still humming through me.

  “I love you,” he said, rolling over and pulling me close to spoon his body around mine.

  Relaxing against him, satisfied beyond words, it wasn’t long before we were both drifting off into a peaceful, dreamless sleep.

  Stefan

  Chapter 25

  Striding down the hall of the KZM building toward my father’s lavish corner office, I straightened my jacket and tried to keep my breathing calm and even. What I really wanted was to kick the door open and drag him out of his chair by his tie, but I knew losing control around my father was the last thing I should be doing right now. There was too much at risk. I couldn’t afford to give him any indication that an investigation was happening or that I was a true threat.

  Not that I expected this to go pleasantly, regardless of my attitude.

  Amidst all of the overwhelming circumstances of the past week and the logistical and emotional intensity of the before, during, and after of Senator Lindsey’s memorial service yesterday, I’d barely had a chance to think about my own father. There was no way I could let his actions slide, though. And now that I was back at work at KZM, I was finally ready to confront him about the fact that he’d gone behind my back and tried to break up my and Tori’s marriage. Call him out for the way he’d manipulated Anja and used her and Max as his pawns.

  My adrenaline was pumping. Far from being nervous about speaking with my father, I was eager. Spoiling for a fight. It was time to let him know once and for all that he didn’t get to control my life—that nothing he said or did would keep me from the path I had chosen. Just as I had done at the family dinner at our condo, when I’d reaffirmed my commitment to Tori.

  Despite everything that was happening with my father, and everything that had happened with hers, I was beyond grateful that the two of us were finally on solid ground. We were a team. I was confident that after we survived whatever was coming next with the investigation into KZ Modeling, we would be unbreakable.

  I was ready to put this dark chapter of my life behind me.

  When I reached my father’s suite of offices, I didn’t even bother to check in with his assistant. Why give him the opportunity to turn me away, knowing he viewed every interaction with me as a dick-measuring contest? Instead I breezed right past her, despite her protests, and flung open the door to my father’s inner sanctum.

  He looked up from the pile of paperwork on his desk, projecting an air of annoyance.

  “I’m busy,” he barked, the very picture of self-importance.

  “Good to see you as well, Father,” I said formally, shutting the door behind me and walking toward him. “I think we need to have ourselves a chat.”

  Unsurprisingly, he made a big show of ignoring me until he’d finished looking through the file in his hand. I’d bet he wasn’t even reading it—just wanted to make me wait, and drive the conversation himself. Finally, he set it aside and looked up at me, his expression bored.

  “Well? Are you going to lurk over me all day? Sit down and speak up!”

  “I’ll stand, thanks,” I said flatly. “I’m here to let you know that your attempts to break up my marriage are going to stop now.”

  The bastard actually laughed. “Is that what you think?”

  “It’s what I know,” I said.

  He folded his hands across his wide stomach and looked up at me, a smirk spreading across his face. I was glad I had been forced to stay away for a week, because if he had smiled at me like that right after I’d discovered that Max wasn’t my son, I doubt I could have been held accountable for my response.

  “You’ve expended a lot of time and effort trying to cause tension between me and Tori,” I told him, “and I know you brought Anja and the kid back thinking you had an ace in the hole. But I gotta tell you…you didn’t just fail. If anything, my marriage is stronger than ever now.”

  “Bullshit,” he shot back, his cool demeanor cracking.

  “I should be thanking you, actually,” I said, unable to resist needling him. “Without Max showing up, I’m not sure Tori and I would have started talking about starting a family of our own so soon.”

  “How about that,” my father said nonchalantly, rising from his chair to stroll over to the window. Looking out at the million dollar view of the cityscape, he went on, “You think I regret any of it? I don’t. And I don’t know why I should. I’d do it again a thousand times over.”

  “And you’d fail a thousand times,” I said, moving closer. “Again.”

  He shrugged. “Now that Senator Lindsey’s dead, the poor bastard, my only regret is that I ever introduced you to Tori to begin with.”

  My fists clenched at my sides, but I refused to take the bait. “The way I see it, I lucked out.”

  “Don’t be cute,” he snapped, looking me full in the face. “This whole situation’s turned into a damn shit show.” He shook his head, calming back down. “No matter. The fact is, without the senator in our court, Tori is useless to us. Worse than that, with everything she knows, she’s a liability now. I know your heart’s in the right place—god knows you’ve never been smart when it comes to women, Stefan—but it’s time to let her go.”

  It was my turn to smirk. “Not likely.”

  Lumbering over to the phone on his desk, he hit the intercom button. “I need an espresso in here, Darlene.”

  “Just one, sir?”

  He looked up at me but I shook my head.

  “That’ll be it, sweetheart,” he said. “And shake a tail feather, I’ve got a conference call with OmniVia in five.”

  Some days I wondered how Darlene kept herself from waltzing into my father’s office and dumping the entire pot of coffee into his lap.

  “Listen,” he said to me, picking up where he had left off. “We’re in a tight spot now, and with Lindsey gone, we’re going to have to figure out another way to legitimize the business.”

  I nodded, trying to seem like I was still on his team. “Sure. That makes sense.”

  “I’m serious, kid.” He was pacing in front of the window now. “You like your condo, your car, your cushy job? You’d lose it all in a heartbeat if KZM goes down. You want to keep working for the company, you need to get your ass to a lawyer, file for divorce, and start working on securing some new political allies. Especially considering my plans for the future.”

  And on he went. I clenched my jaw, watching my father pace and bluster. I’d had it with him and his demands.

  I was so close to walking out and never looking back. Fuck the money, fuck the job, fuck the lifestyle. None of it was worth being complicit in my father’s vile empire, swallowing his disrespect day by day, being treated as nothing more than a pawn in his game. But I also knew that the feds were finally closing in, and that my role as the man on the inside was crucial.

  “What next stage?” I asked, my ears perking up at the last thing he’d said.

  He waved his hand dismissively as Darlene entered with his espresso. “You’ll know when I need you to know. But trust me, it’s gonna be big.”

  It was impossible not to sweat what he’d just said—or not said. Hearing that he had some big plan on the horizon made me worry that the DOD needed to quit dragging their feet and get in sooner rather than later. Before my father could make his next move.

  “If I’m supposed to be inheriting KZM’s operations, I need to be kept in the loop,” I pushed as soon as Darlene had left us alone again. “What exactly are you planning?”

  But my father was not about to be baited.

  “You haven’t proven yourself worthy yet,” he told me, settling back down behind his desk with his coffee in hand. “Let’s see a real show of loyalty. Maybe then we can talk about your role in this new development.”

  With that, he picked up his phone, told Darlene to patch him through to the OmniVia call, and spun his chair a
way from me, already yucking it up with the executives on the line. It was as if I wasn’t even there. As if, despite everything I’d participated in, and regardless of all the years I’d put my ass on the line for KZM, I was still small potatoes as far as he was concerned.

  I let myself out of his office, nodding curtly at Darlene’s sympathetic half-smile, seething and scheming the whole way back to my own desk.

  There was no way in hell I was going to let my father get away with whatever he was planning. I’d figure out a way to get all the details and then I’d pass that new information along to Gavin Chase’s brother and the feds. My father was going down. He’d never see it coming.

  I buried myself in work all day, waiting for my father to go home. He was conniving, manipulative, and incredibly clever, but he was also arrogant—so arrogant, in fact, that he’d never expect anyone at the company to be smart enough to hack into his computer files. But I knew that if there really was anything to find, I could do it. I just needed access.

  He left just after six. I called Bruce.

  “I’m on it, boss,” he said by way of greeting. “Red Bentley, heading west toward I-90.”

  “That’s him,” I said. “Call me if he goes anywhere besides home. If he leaves the condo at any point tonight, I want to know right away.”

  “Copy that,” Bruce said.

  The office was deserted, everyone else long gone as I snuck into my father’s office.

  It didn’t take much to get into his computer—he had left it on, and his password was easy enough to crack, being a version of Danica, my mother’s name, with a few of the letters swapped out for the @ symbol. I navigated over to his emails and began reading the messages in his Outbox, scanning for any keywords or coded phrases that might jump out at me.

  Within minutes, my guts were churning.

  Sitting in the dark, with the glow of the computer screen my only light, I read about my father’s plan to shift his operations from sex trafficking to full blown slavery. He was ready to move beyond the prostitution ring, and I found evidence that he was already in the process of arranging to buy and sell people on the international human market. As ‘property,’ I knew they could be forced into labor, domestic service, criminal acts, marriage, and of course sex work.

  I sat back, my heart pounding in my ears.

  The shock took my breath away. I couldn’t imagine that the late Senator Lindsey, for all his flaws, would have ever been on board with this. My father’s Anja plan was diabolically brilliant in that regard—if Tori had left our marriage over the existence of Max (and before she could find out about the slavery), our divorce would have looked like an embarrassing but clear-cut issue of irreconcilable personal matters. The senator couldn’t have accused my father or me of backing out of our agreement on purpose. A few large donations to the Lindsey campaign later, and the wrecked marriage would have been mere water under the bridge between the two patriarchs.

  With a few clicks of the mouse, I started printing some of the emails detailing the plan.

  As the pages started stacking up in the tray, I realized that my father really was a supervillain, like Anja had said. It was sickening how well he had planned all of this.

  I kept searching through his emails, knowing that even the ones I’d printed might not be incontrovertible enough to prove that my father planned to start selling people as slaves.

  Finally, I landed on some hard evidence. Something that the feds could use to get my father, once and for all. Because he had already booked flights for his new merchandise. Scores of future victims from impoverished countries, who had probably been told they were coming to the United States to work and be given life-changing opportunities. They had no idea what my father truly had in store for them. They wouldn’t just be prostitutes. They’d be slaves.

  I printed it all, making sure the names of the individuals were on each confirmation page.

  My father didn’t think I was ready to take over the business—and he was right.

  I was ready to take it down.

  Stefan

  Chapter 26

  The moment I walked in the door last night, I had told Tori everything.

  “We have to stop him,” she’d said, flipping through the stack of printed emails with shaking hands, her jaw clenched.

  “We will,” I had promised her.

  Getting those documents to Gavin Chase’s brother at the DOD would go a long way toward making that happen. It was lucky I’d been able to get all the pertinent information before ducking out of my father’s office—names and flight numbers, dollar amounts and rendezvous points. Even with the coded language, it was clear that he was involved with illegal trafficking.

  Within an hour of Tori leaving the condo for her morning classes today to pass off the information to Gavin at school, I got a call from the feds.

  “This is everything we need to make an arrest,” Frank told me, sounding more confident than he ever had. “I’ve been waiting on the higher-ups for the green light, but this blows all that bureaucracy and red tape to shit. We’re gonna move fast. No more tiptoeing around.”

  “Thank fucking god,” I said, relief washing over me like a tidal wave. The nightmare was almost over. “How soon?”

  “You don’t have the security clearance to know the details,” he said, dropping his voice to a lower register, “but off the record, this might be the last night KZ spends outside a cell.”

  When Tori came home, I gave her the good news.

  “So you’re thinking tomorrow morning?” she asked.

  “That’s what it sounds like,” I said. “I’ll head into work early just in case.”

  Her jaw dropped. “Are you serious? You can’t go to the office tomorrow.”

  “I have to,” I told her, pulling her into my lap. “I need to see this through.”

  “Stay home with me,” she begged. “I don’t want you anywhere near your father when the shit hits the fan. Who’s to say he won’t do something drastic when he’s cornered?”

  “Like what? Go out shooting?” I said. “He doesn’t keep a gun at work.”

  “Maybe not, but those agents will be armed. What if he tries to take you down with him? You’re not bulletproof.”

  Her chin started to tremble, and I cupped her cheek and kissed her long and slow.

  Once she’d relaxed in my arms, I leaned back and said, “I understand that you’re worried—you have every right to be. My father is a dangerous man with a volatile temper. But I’ve waited years to see him brought to justice. I need this closure. I promise I’ll be safe.”

  “You can’t promise that.” She was blinking back tears. “You’re making a mistake.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said gently, “but it’s not fair for me to leave everyone at KZM to deal with a raid without me there. Plus, my father might think something is up if I don’t go in. I don’t want to give him any reason to suspect tomorrow is anything but another normal day at the office.”

  She let out a sigh and wrapped her arms even tighter around me, resting her head against my chest. I held her close, stroking her hair.

  “You’re a good man, Stefan,” she said. “Please be careful.”

  The next day—as planned—I woke up early, made love to my wife, showered and dressed and drank my coffee, and went into work. I’d given Tori an extra long kiss goodbye, promising to call her as soon as I had news.

  It was impossible to concentrate on anything once I was in the office, though. Sitting at my desk responding to emails, I tensed every time I heard footsteps coming down the hall. My knuckles were white as I clutched a pen, staring blankly at a stack of papers, trying to give the illusion that I was vetting a pile of modeling contracts.

  In reality, all I was doing was waiting.

  The minutes dragged. The ticking of the clock seemed to echo in my brain as I struggled through a few calls that were scheduled on my calendar. Beneath my desk, my foot tapped impatiently. Nervously.

  Then, at practicall
y 10:00 am on the dot, just as I was turning the corner to enter the employee lounge, the doors to the agency burst open and swarms of black suited men poured in.

  It was immediate chaos.

  Through the glass walls of the lounge, I watched them infiltrate KZM. I could hear shouts of confusion, a few screams, the sounds of filing cabinets being opened, the clang of them vibrating throughout the building. Word of the raid spread like wildfire, going from office to office, and a few people began freaking out and scattering, running for exits with phones pressed to ears and keys in hands. Most of them were unaware of what was really going on, having only worked for the legitimate side of the agency’s business, but there were a few more senior employees darting back and forth through the hallways, shifty-eyed and clearly in a panic.

  Meanwhile, KZM’s main receptionist stood at her desk, her dark skin gone ashy, clutching her purse to her chest and looking around in confusion.

  “Mr. Zoric? What’s happening?” she asked, spotting me through the glass.

  “It’s okay,” I reassured her, finally coming out of the lounge to stand near her desk as agents began storming in our direction. “Just give them whatever they ask for.”

  They wouldn’t find anything in her desk or my office, and I didn’t think they’d look that hard. What they wanted was my father—the person in charge. The rest of this was a charade. Everything they needed was already in their hands.

  I headed back to my office, figuring it would be best to stay out of the way. As I walked down the corridor I could see, through office doors flung wide open, executives who were rifling through the contents of their filing cabinets or screaming into their phones.

  “If you don’t keep your mouth shut, I’ll make you wish you’d never been born,” I heard one agent hiss into his cellphone as he shoveled papers into his shredder.