Bloodbound: The Alliance
Chapter 109 - 111

Chapter 109: Chapter 111

Avara POV

I walk into my bedroom to see Vance settled on the foot of my bed like he had been waiting for hours.

"How did your date with my dad go?" He inclines slightly, bitterness fermenting his fine features. "How many has it been now? Because I’ve lost count."

I push out a sparkle of laughter as if amused by the absurdity. "Yeah, just because we’re on lockdown at your place. Doesn’t mean the work stops, and mine has piled up greatly over the period of my recovery."

"That’s the lie I’ve been force feeding myself," he says, nodding absently as he stands to his feet to confront me with an air of hostility. "But something changed since that morning—it was all about that morning. I tried to pass it off, but he had been different ever since then. Especially around you. Landen spotted it instantly because we know our father. The shift was obvious to us both as well as brain-jarring. So I went back to the night before. I went to our security to locate footage from the night before that morning."

Panic bursts in my chest, then freezing to not manifest on my flesh. I school my expression as I’ve done, as I always do as I wait, poised for the guillotine to fall on my neck.

"You and Kelsey sneaking into my father’s room. And staying for an entire excruciating hour," he emphasizes, anger hurling out each word, as if wishing they were sharp enough to pierce me. "You fucked my father?"

"No!" I scream as I whip around to shut the door.

"No?" he barks back. "You came out of that room with spaghetti legs—you’re going to tell me that he wasn’t between yours?"

No, because he liked to hit it from the back. But I wasn’t about to divulge that bit of unsavoury information.

"But I kept watching." His voice drops to a haunted whisper. "And I saw you slip on a wedding ring—my father’s wedding after your little three-way."

A pang of regret clamps my eyes shut for a moment before I open to face them.

"I also saw Kelsey went back to slip it on after you infiltrated his underground study. But don’t worry, the guards were outside when I reviewed the footage." He lets out a mirthless laugh. "I underestimated you—that whole saintly act. Sucking on dick as a diversion. An effective tactic. But how do you think he will react when he learns the truth? So if you won’t tell me what you and Kelsey were doing. I will feed you to my father. And trust me, what he will devour won’t be that worn-out pussy."

No outburst, no tears, no blabbering explanations. Just a cold rage, burning like the sharpest bite of winter air. I thought in a moment like this I would collapse into tears, but his words barely dent my resolve, if anything, it undoes the last unraveling that reveals something sinister inside. Sewn from pain and cultivated by the many shades of betrayal. Even the desecration of my own self; an abstract concept to me now. Everyone thinks I’m some pawn that can be moved and that I can be outmaneuvered. I am not playing to beat the players anymore; I’m playing to end them.

"Do it," I hiss back unflinchingly. "Snitch on me to your daddy and I will go to mine. But only one of ours is directly crime-affiliated. Connected to cartels and criminal syndicates who kill any threat to themselves, including their associates. So how do you think my father will react when he learns that yours has been using him for his own agenda? Alternative to what they agreed upon—and the very reason I was in search of why."

I don’t take pleasure in watching his spiteful certainty crumble before me. But what alarms me more is not his expression of devastating shock. It tells me that he knows exactly what I’m talking about—about both of them. He’s just confounded that I know and almost hurt that I would use it against him. Well, like he is seemingly prepared to sacrifice me for his father. I’m simply prepared to do the same.

"You know the truth about my father," I say, mimicking his mirthless laugh. "At least now you know I’m not making empty threats."

He shakes his head with painstaking disbelief. "No, just horrified that you of all people would make them."

I look back at him sharply. "Did you not hear all the things you just said to me?" A fresh surge of anger heats my skin. "All those—" a ragged breath tears through words unsaid. "You have no idea what I have endured since the mention of your family emerged into my life. Brought me nothing but anguish, corroding at everything I once held holy."

"Brought you nothing but anguish?" he repeats as if he has any merit to be outraged right now.

"Since we’re laying it all out—let’s," I say as I begin pacing manically in the open space. "It seems you know about the sins of my father. I only found out when your father inserted himself into our lives, hailing himself as an ally. Prepared to pay the debt to salvage us from the Yakuza. Half truth. The full one is fathomless." My eyes stray to my bedside table with two of Simon’s souvenirs strewn up top. " What gnawed at me was what did your father have to gain? I suspected he was dirty. I just never wanted to believe that you were, too."

I snap around to head for the door, but he blocks my way as expected. So I dive for the aisle between the flank of the bed and ensuite. I slip off the device just as Vance grabs me to force me around, his hands planted on my hips with my own behind my back—fiddling with the listening device to switch it on just as Simon showed me. Fortunately, I hid his gifts in a pouch that I placed where a man would never think to look. Inside an open pad packet—which came along with my things when we first relocated here after the shooting.

"Let me go, Vance."

He doesn’t so I start squirming, not to break free but to cause a commotion for one last distraction. He tries to wrest me under his control and I stagger back until I plop down on the edge of the bed, but not before I slip the device into his back pocket. I’m seated on the verge of the bed with him standing between my knees.

"What is the difference between you and I?" he asks with an accusatory tone.

I look up at him with my doe eyes shaped in mock plea. "I didn’t know nor supported any criminal affairs. It seems like you knew all about your father, Colton’s illicit dealings. Not only did you say nothing but you were eager to rise in the ranks. I mean, that’s why you agreed to the alliance in the first place."

He glares down at me, detached, with this devoid look like everything between us has meant nothing. And like he’s willing to do anything to prove it, so ultimately he can prove himself to his father. I guess.

"You think you have it all figured out..."

"Then correct me," I spit out. "At this point, nothing shocks me."

His brows quirk like he’s about to discredit my own belief. "I didn’t want to join my father. I wanted in, so that I can escape him."

My brows clash. He nods his head as if to ground my disbelief to the perception of his own truth.

"It’s true," he presses. "People assume I have millions at my disposal, but I have only what my father provides to live comfortably."

"What hardship," I say flatly.

"What I mean is that I don’t have enough to escape. As CEO, I’ll have access to all the accounts. Which I was going to use to siphon money to an offshore LLC. So that I could go into hiding—a remote cabin in the words perhaps."

The memory jabs by mind.

"To this day, Landen believes I was emitted into a mental facility—a few years back because I had a breakdown," he confesses quietly, a hairline crack of vulnerability splintering his stoic mask. "I did. But not because of my father, but of what he showed me. Human trafficking is a billionaire dollar industry that Vacheron enterprises is steeped deeply in. Slave labour. Sex work. Human cargo."

Horror digs its talons in my gut. "I don’t believe you. What proof—"

"I’ve seen the shipping manifest of the cargo ships transporting people in crates. Received by harbour masters paid to turn the other way. Do you know why we have an unmatched distribution system with all our subsidiaries? Globally. It’s simple—ghost labour. Undocumented people slaving away in sweatshops, factories, farms, warehouses, whore houses."

I struggle to keep my thoughts in alignment—forcing awareness into focus like a sniper scope. "Instead of reporting him, your response is to escape—with blood money?"

"Don’t!"

I flinch back, bracing for a blow that never comes.

He adjusts his volume despite anger still simmering in his voice. "Don’t get on that high-high with me. You’ve known for all this time that your father is an ultra-corrupt politician. And instead of reporting him. You helped him. Enabled him by marrying me."

"To protect my family—my brothers!" I scream back.

"I have a brother to protect, too!" His voice rises to match my fervor. "He knows nothing of the danger he’s in that comes from his own father. My reaction exposed my weakness to my father when he tried to groom me. I might inherit his legal fronts. But he will try to ready Landen to inherit his shadow kingdom. What scares me most is not that he’s chosen—by default, but that he will accept."