Cam's Fortune

by Odessa Lynne

  A miscalculation there on his part, but it was still an option he fully intended to consider if they didn’t give in soon.

  Rick would be the deciding factor. His resistance came from Cam’s insistence that Ava and the boys would not be living in the den with them, not because he didn’t want Luis and Mig and Ava around, but because he already had plans for Luis and Mig and they would need Ava.

  Pace Campbell wanted Cam to forgive him; he’d been asking for years for some sign that Cam didn’t intend to hold his mistake against him for the rest of his life. Sending Luis and Mig and Ava to him was as close as Cam could get to that right now. As soon as he was sure Mig was well, he planned to send them there, to work with his father doing the kinds of things that were already rebuilding Pace’s former empire. Mig had the talent and skill and Luis would never let him go alone. Cam wouldn’t let either of them go without Ava. So they were a package deal that his father had been quick to grab when Cam offered.

  The wolves weren’t cooperating.

  Cam would have his way in the end. He was sure of it. He’d told Rick he would go, if he had to, but that Rick could come with him. A bluff, because Cam didn’t want to go.

  He wanted Rick to stay here with his people and he was comfortable staying here with Rick.

  But sometimes you had to push, and Cam was good at pushing.

  In the meantime, though, he had, unfortunately, had to spend a day going over every sexual encounter he’d had since he’d given Matthew that blowjob.

  Matthew had stared at him across the table with wide eyes as Cam had named names. There were a lot. There were a few names Cam didn’t know. Nothing he could do about that. By then, Matthew had stopped side-eyeing him and was just concentrating on recording the information.

  Matthew had seemed a little put out by the fact that Cam had fucked more than a few other people while they’d been fucking.

  “I liked you,” Cam had said, “but you weren’t exactly a stand-up guy as far as I knew. You’d come to us to join up with the renegades. You were somebody to fuck, and it was good, but you shouldn’t look so surprised.”

  “It’s not that,” Matthew had said. “Don’t worry about it.”

  Cam studied Matthew. “You thought I trusted you, huh?”

  An awkward moment passed. Matthew shrugged. “Yeah. I guess I did.”

  “You were one of the enemy, buddy. Of course I didn’t trust you.”

  Matthew had let that go.

  Hindsight. It was a bitch sometimes.

  Salvadore stood just inside the door to Cam’s home, cataloguing the rooms he could see.

  “You coming in?” Cam asked.

  Salvadore closed the door.

  Cam waved him over to where he was sitting on a long pillow on the floor, his back propped against a pillow tucked up against the wall. He had several computers in his lap and spread out across the rich hardwood floor.

  The wolves seemed to like wood. It was everywhere. Not a fake piece of it anywhere, that Cam could find. Many of the best pieces were not from Earth.

  “They told me about the list, about what you found, why you did it.” Salvadore’s voice had a pinch to it, almost as if he couldn’t decide whether he was still angry at Cam for kidnapping him and his family or if he had decided to forgive and forget because of the outcome.

  “It was a shit thing of me to do. I knew it at the time and I didn’t care. I’d do it again.”

  Salvadore stopped in front of Cam, his gaze glancing between Cam and the computers. He gestured toward the one Cam was holding on his lap. “That the data?”

  Cam let his eyes flicker to the screen. He smiled. Then he flicked the screen and allowed the image to form above. “Nope.”

  It was frozen at a point where you couldn’t see the more intimate details, but it was obvious Matthew and his mate were fucking.

  Salvadore coughed into his fist. “Well.”

  “It’s instructional.”

  Salvadore’s eyebrows rose. “If they catch you with that, you’re going to get your ass kicked by somebody. Probably Devon. He’s kind of crazy.”

  Cam shrugged. “I knew, on some level, that for the wolves to have developed the kind of society they’d developed that somebody had to be hardwired to want to submit. The whole thing wouldn’t make sense otherwise. That wolf—Ash—could have killed Matthew at any time. He didn’t have to submit, and yet . . . here he is.”

  Salvadore reach over and took one of the extra pillows piled on the floor and plopped it against the wall beside Cam.

  Air stirred and the pillow whumped into place.

  He took a seat, taking a moment to adjust the pillow behind him and get comfortable. “I don’t know why they won’t just admit that couches are better than all the pillows,” Salvadore said.

  “Too much trouble reupholstering furniture when they can just sew up a pillow or make a new one.”

  Salvadore turned a sharp gaze on Cam. “Really? You think?”

  “That’s what I think. You can always ask.”

  “Wolf just looks at me like he doesn’t understand the question.”

  “I’ve got better questions to ask.”

  And that seemed to bring Salvadore back to the reason for his visit. “I have questions,” he said. He turned his shoulder into the wall, crossing his arms and pulling one leg in closer to keep him from sliding off the pillows. “I want to know what kinds of projects my father was working on with your father. I have questions about how he died. A lot of questions.”

  “I don’t know what I can tell you. He took almost everything with him when he left. My father just knew about the stuff they’d agreed to work on.” He emphasized “agreed” because he had suspicions Jones had worked on plenty of stuff outside that agreed upon work. His father had had the same suspicions.

  “Do you think he knew what kind of man Robson Greer was when they partnered up?”

  Cam shrugged. He slid his finger across the screen of the computer and dropped it to the other side of him. He put his hands behind his head and stretched.

  Salvadore watched him with a thoughtful gaze, his dark eyes as hard to read as any eyes Cam had ever seen.

  “It really was a dick move to threaten my family just to get your hands on that data,” Salvadore said after a moment that seemed to drag on too long.

  “I want to know who it is that’s supplying the renegades. It should have stopped with Robson. I thought it would, but it didn’t. That means he wasn’t as integral a player as I thought he was. His connection was inside the Interstate Trade Equality Department that formed along with the American Protectorate. I’m sorry, buddy, but this is a hell of a lot more important to me than worrying about whether or not somebody out there thinks I’m a dick.”

  Salvadore kept watching him and Cam had the strangest feeling Salvadore was seeing past the façade and into the part of him that couldn’t shrug off all he’d done in pursuit of the greater good.

  “It’s funny, isn’t it,” Salvadore said, “how often we tell ourselves shit that just isn’t true? It’s easy to lie when you won’t let yourself believe the truth.”

  Cam dropped his arms and clenched his fingers together over his stomach, stretching out his legs. His feet were bare—he hadn’t been the one with questions—and his new jeans were about an inch too short so the bones of his ankles showed. He stared at them, unsettled by Salvadore’s words.

  “My father was a good man,” Salvadore continued, “I tell myself that all the time. But since you showed up, telling your stories, I can’t tell anymore if I’m telling the truth or lying to myself.”

  “We all make mistakes,” Cam said. “Some of them are easier to forgive than others. That doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.” The words were out of his mouth before he’d even thought them through. It was something his father had told him once, when a friend of Cam’s had betrayed that friendship in a particularly nasty way.

  It hit him, then, like a punch in the gut. He’d been making mista
kes too, but he’d been forgiven.

  Rick had clearly forgiven him for his part in Henry’s death.

  His father had forgiven him time and again for the shit he’d done growing up. The car accident was just one example of that.

  Mig and Luis had forgiven him for killing their father. The situation had been complicated, for sure, but they could have chosen to hate him and they hadn’t.

  Who had he forgiven?

  He didn’t want to admit that the answer was nobody, but it was staring him in the face.

  He cleared his throat and unlaced his hands.

  “I can forgive you,” Salvadore said, “because I know what you were trying to do. But it’s going to be harder to forgive my father if I find out he was deliberately hurting people just to get his hands on alien technology for his projects.”

  Cam reached out and picked up one of the computers he’d set aside when Rick had first told him Salvadore was on his way.

  “This is everything they’ve given me from your implant. It also has everything about my implants. Your father was brilliant. He saved me. More than once, before I was born. He came up with the designs for the implants that gave me sight and hearing when all the other doctors involved in my care said it would be impossible to correct some of the damage the drug had done to my nerves.”

  Salvadore let Cam hand him the computer, but he didn’t look down at it. “He had a habit of becoming obsessed with his projects. It was exciting to watch him work.”

  “I was an experiment when Pace Campbell started his work with the organization that was studying how to counteract the effects of the drug my birth mother had used. The drug was killing more babies than anything in history had done and my father had the money to support the research. He wasn’t one to just hand off a card and let everyone else do the work. He liked to get involved. Your father worked on that project, and that’s where they met. In the end, they’re the reason I’m alive and whole.

  “But you don’t adopt a son because he’s an experiment. He told me that once. He said he spent too much time and money on the project, and that the gains turned out to be too small for too many people for too much money for the cure to be worth the cost. But he said your father convinced him he couldn’t give up because I wasn’t just an experiment by then. I was three days away from being born. My father looked at the images and he saw me for the first time, who he imagined I could be, and he knew. He couldn’t give up, not on me, and before I was born, he had the paperwork amended, and I became his son. Maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t think your father was a bad man, and I don’t think someone who could worry about an unborn experiment is the kind of man who would knowingly participate in something that killed innocent people.”

  Salvadore gave Cam a jerky nod, his throat bobbing with what looked like a difficult swallow. “Thanks.” He rubbed the underside of his chin with the backs of his fingers. “Thanks for that.”

  Cam quirked the corner of his mouth. “Don’t thank me. Hell if I know if any of what I think will turn out to be the truth.”

  “It’s enough for now.” Salvadore looked down at the computer and rubbed his fingers along the edges of it.

  Cam expected Salvadore to leave after that, but he didn’t. He set the computer aside and stared out the window across the room with Cam for a few minutes, then pointed to the screen that had earlier had the image of Matthew and his mate on it.

  “Is it going to be weird if we watch that together?”

  Cam snorted. “Yeah, it is.” He picked up the screen and slid his fingers across it, restarting the video from the beginning. “Anyone asks, we’re doing research into the wolves’ mating rituals. They’ll buy it, even if no one else does.”

  Salvadore laughed.

  Chapter 34

  “I had no idea,” Salvadore said, just before throwing back the shot of whiskey Cam had just poured him.

  Rick had given Cam several bottles as a gift a few days previous, apparently after having a conversation with Ava about Cam’s food preferences.

  “Wolf hasn’t mentioned any kids,” Salvadore continued. “I hope to God he hasn’t got any.” He gave Cam a bleary-eyed look. “Did you know Ian had sek . . . shex . . .ah shit. The fuck what he did.” He plunked the fat-bottomed glass down onto the table and gestured for Cam to pour him another.

  Cam laughed. Salvadore was undeniably drunk.

  It wouldn’t last long. He’d had about six shots in the last twenty minutes, to Cam’s three. Cam had already discovered that when he slowed down, the sweet little buzz he had faded fast.

  “Henry told me he had so many brothers and sisters that he would have to look at the records to be sure he’d accounted for all of them. All of them can’t be Rick’s though, so I’m figuring I’ve got the equivalent of thirty maybe forty step-kids out there somewhere, all brothers and sisters of my former mate.”

  “Goddamn,” Salvadore said. “That’s a lot of kids.” He dropped his head back and emptied his glass again.

  Cam followed his lead. The whiskey burned all the way into his stomach.

  Fifteen minutes later, they sat and stared at the empty bottle. It was the last one.

  “At least it still works for a while,” Salvadore said. “It’s been so long since I had the money for a drink, I hadn’t even noticed.”

  Cam thumbed the bottle’s neck and rolled the bottom along the table a few times. “I try not to get drunk that often. Too risky.”

  “Fucked up is what it is.”

  “What? Getting drunk?”

  “No. Not being able to get drunk.” Salvadore eased himself back against his chair, leaving one arm propped on the edge of the table.

  “Oh we can get drunk,” Cam said. “That’s how I ended up mated. Drunk just doesn’t last long is all.”

  Salvadore’s eyes flickered upward from the bottle to catch Cam’s gaze. “Really?”

  “Long story,” Cam said.

  “I got time.”

  “I’d rather hear yours. I’m tired of telling stories.”

  Salvadore huffed softly. He traced an invisible circle on the table’s top with his forefinger. “Not much to tell. I did what you told me to do. I headed into the woods and ran across wolves. They were nice. I wasn’t expecting that. Reed and Egan. Part of Rick’s pack.” He glanced up and caught Cam’s gaze again. “Rick has a way about him. Scary as hell when he’s staring you down.”

  Cam waved that away. “Can’t believe that.”

  “He didn’t scare you at first?”

  “Scare? No. He wanted to fuck and I wasn’t in the mood. We had a bit of a run in and then he saved my life.”

  “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather tell your story than listen to mine? It sounds a hell of a lot more interesting.”

  Cam dropped the bottle and let it clack against the table. “No. Go on. Rick might come back soon and I want to hear this.” He gave Salvadore a direct look. “I know I could’ve screwed up your life, Sal. I just want you to know I’m sorry I couldn’t see another way to do what I needed to do.”

  “But you’d do it again.”

  “I’d do it again.”

  “You’re an asshole, Cam.” He exhaled softly and tapped his finger on the table. “But at least you know it, and even though it’s messed up, I kind of like you for that.”

  Cam grinned. “Give it time. Now tell your story. I’ve got shit to do later.”

  Salvadore scoffed. “Right now about the only thing anyone around here is doing is fucking and mating.”

  “And telling stories.” He patted his hand against the table. “Rick gets back, he’s not going to be in the mood to wait on me and you to finish up our little reunion here.”

  “Okay, okay, you asshole.”

  Cam couldn’t help laughing.

  Salvadore grinned, but started talking again. Cam sat back and listened.

  He’d just decided to interrupt with a question when he heard someone approaching the door on the southwest side of the house.

>   “Rick’s back,” he said. “I bet your Wolf is with him.”

  Salvadore pushed back from the table. “It was good to talk to you, Cam. I mean that.”

  Cam rocked back in his seat, arm stretched out in front of him. “Wish I could’ve told you more of what you wanted to hear.”

  Salvadore gave Cam an odd little smile that sent a trickle of unease down Cam’s spine. “You told me more than you probably realize, but it’s okay. I don’t have plans to tell anyone what you said.”

  Cam watched Salvadore walk past him.

  Salvadore smacked Cam on the shoulder as he passed. “Just remember that sometimes you don’t even know you’re lying to yourself. You might want to think about that.”

  “Sure,” Cam said. “I’ll do that.”

  Salvadore reached the door just as a chime sounded. He left, and then Rick entered, giving Cam a piercing look as he shut the door behind him.

  A furrow formed between his eyebrows and his lips pulled back from his teeth. He glanced behind him, as if to see if Salvadore had indeed left, and Cam knocked the side of his hand against the table to get his attention.

  “It wasn’t him,” Cam said gruffly. “Blame Matthew and Ash. I found their video. We watched it. I’ve got to admit, I’ve seen him fuck before, but that was something else. We got hard, and then we drank it off with those nice bottles of whiskey you gave me. That’s all. I never even thought about—well, hell, I’m not going to lie. I thought about it, but I knew you wouldn’t like it so I stopped thinking about it.”

  Rick stalked across the room, his body moving with powerful grace. “The video you’re talking about was supposed to be destroyed.”

  “If that’s the case, then somebody didn’t do their job.” Cam grinned. “I’d say that somebody was Devon. He’s the one with the file. He’s going to love it when he figures out I got in to his stuff.”

  “Devon,” Rick said, a light in his eyes that made Cam glad he wasn’t Devon. But then Rick turned that look on Cam. “And you used Miguel to get the files, I assume.”

  “You think I did?”

  Rick’s eyes narrowed. He offered Cam his hand.

  Cam looked at the points of those claws barely peeking from beneath Rick’s fingernails. He placed his hand in Rick’s and pulled himself to his feet.