Chapter 89

Chapter 89
Zander set the papers down, sitting on the edge of her desk and lacing his fingers nonchalantly. So Matheo had planned it all along. The old cow killed his parents. His meeting Elvie, his falling in love with her, giving up on the Davis family—every single thing And he’d walked right into his trap. Well, almost.

He would pay! Dearly. Zander thought to himself.

He didn’t make the mistake of asking Elvie if she’d known about it. Of course she hadn’t. Instead, he focused on how to deal with this shit.

“We’ve both been set up,” he said. “And he—the bastard—killed my parents!” His voice shuddered with enough hatred to melt the antarctic. And though he had his doubts before, he disregarded his instinct and thought that Matheo wasn't capable of doing such nineious things. “He—will pay! I will make sure he—”

"Zander." She put a hand on his shoulder, and he resisted the urge to pull her into him and bury his face in her hair. “I'm sorry." Elvie had this touch that made sht go away. Bad shit. She must have known he thought it—maybe he even said it out loud—because she took a few steps back and swallowed. It was the kind of swallow that said that there was something more, and he wasn’t necessarily going to like it.

“I read the Post-it notes,” she mumbled with small smile on her lips.

“I thought you did a long time ago.” It felt good knowing she hadn’t. Knowing she hadn’t chosen to ignore him.

Elvie shook her head. “It hurt too much.”

“And now?”

“It still does, but a little less. Also, I’m more concerned with your well-being than my own right now. Patrick wants to talk to you.”

Zander immediately wanted to say he wasn’t interested, but he knew better than to screw it all up. She was talking to him, after all. He needed to play nice if he wanted a nice wife.

Fuck. Yes. That’s what it was. He wanted Elvie to be my wife more than ever—not a fake one and not a temporary one.

“I’m pressed for time,” he said instead, wondering if it were still true now that she and he were on speaking terms again. “But I guess I could squeeze him in tonight if you come with me.”

“This is your family and personal business. I don’t think I belong.”

“I don’t think I give a fuck. Wait, this is just in." He pretended to listen to something on an invisible headphone. “I don’t give a fuck. Grab your sht, wife. You are family. My family. Mine.”

“This doesn’t mean anything,” she said as he tugged on her hand.

Like hell, it didn’t. She wanted to help him, and she’d come all the way to work on a Sunday afternoon to give him something she thought would be useful. It meant everything and more, and he was going to milk the hell out of it.

Zander made a stop in his office and took the laptop out of the trash can, putting it neatly back on the desk. Elvie never asked what it had been doing there in the first place.

She knew.

She always knew.



Zander had never been to Patrick’s new place, and he’d been content to think he never would. He lived in another penthouse, in another Scottish’s scraper, and it was amazing how one of the most dazzling architectural cities in the world had managed to be home to so many identical, clinical, and impersonal penthouses. Boring but lovely at the same time.

Patrick opened the door in a robe (douchebag) and said he was glad to see him. Whatever! When he spotted Elvie next to Zander, he made a face like he’d pissed in his drink and then winked at her.

Fuck!

“Deal with it Patrick! She is coming with me inside, she is my wife, remember?” he replied to his nonverbal fake annoyance, walking into his living room. But Zander knew Patrick was glad Elvie came, he smirked.

"Want something?" Patrick went to the kitchen to get them some drinks. He elbowed Elvie lightly as they sat down on the same sofa the busty morning show host had vacated a second ago.

“Do you wear shoes indoors?”

Elvie’s eyes darted towards him, and she frowned immediately. “Why on earth? I don’t even wear underwear and a bra at home. You’re lucky if my clothes cover my private parts. I’m a free spirit. Jesus!”

“I fucking love you,” Zander blurted, and he nearly choked on the air inside his lungs.

Not that she didn’t know by now, but still.

She raised her brow and grinned.

“Huh! I think I’m beginning to believe you.”

“Let the record show that I gave up SBC just so you could keep your job,” he told her before his throat closed. “Being away from you would feel like living without limbs. And I very much enjoy my limbs.”

"Yeah, yeah!" she smiled. The look on her face was priceless. It was every fantastic fucking gift a second after you unwrapped it. He was about to dive down and go for the kiss, sealing this shit for good, when Patrick sauntered back in with a tray and something alcoholic on it.

Asshole!

Of course, Zander couldn’t pretend he didn’t see him, so he straightened up on the couch and tried to think about sad things, like global warming, durian candy and war, to take care of his inappropriately engorged shaft. Patrick dragged over a couch and sat directly in front of him, leaning forward. The silver tray with the drinks sat between them on the coffee table, but nobody touched it.

“Are you sure you’d like the little wife to be here? What I’m about to tell you is very personal.”

“Stop calling her little, she is my wife, and yes, she can be here. My life is her life.”

Patrick rolled his eyes. "Eww!"

They both stilled in their seats, but he didn’t miss a heartbeat. Zander had a flight out of the airport in six hours, and he wasn’t going to be on it. That made him feel extremely calm and happy. Elvie was here. Everything was okay. He was happy. Who cares! He was happy as a bull.

"Well..." Patrick shook his head, running his hand through his hair, and winked at Elvie.

“Can you stop winking at my wife?” Zander groaned.

She rolled her eyes. “Excuse him, Patrick, I know he is an ass.”

“He is winking at you and—”

Again, Patrick winked at Elvie and ran his hand through his hair.

He was so vain that Zander wondered if he shaved his balls completely or bleached them to match his fake hair colour.

“There’s no right way of saying this. Let me tell you, for the record, that I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now, but Kristal always stopped me. Never Matheo, though. I’m not scared of him. I don't care if he is my biological father. I don't care!”

“So—” Zander started, but he cut him off.

“So,” Patrick said, clearing his throat and blinking rapidly. “You’re my friend, Zander, and there’s nothing and no one can change that."

No.

No.

Just, no.

Zander couldn’t listen to this crap; he definitely couldn’t bear hearing him. Yes, they were once inseparable, but time changed. He shook his head without even meaning to, and he felt himself standing up, legs on autopilot, but he refused to believe he’d been a fool for many years. A small, hot hand—a little sweaty, but in a good way—tugged him back down.

“Please,” Elvie whispered. “I know it’s hard. We need to listen to him.”

Zander found himself sitting again, even though every bone in his body screamed for him to do something different. This wasn’t for this asshole. It was for Elvie.

“Continue,” he hissed.

Patrick looked at him with eyes full of pity and regret, two feelings Zander despised—especially from a man he’d known as his friend for the past few years, no matter how much power he had in his newsroom.

“I saw Matheo’s diary. Days after your parents wedding. Three drinks later, your mother and Matheo were in bed. He didn’t know she was a newlywed. Matheo went in the next day at SBC and got the job. He couldn’t believe his luck. He found out not long after that your mother was married, and she acted like he didn’t even exist anymore, which, in retrospect, he doesn't exactly fault her for. She was in a very vulnerable state.”

Fuck. My. Life. Zander thought.

No!

And yet he couldn’t help but pray to God that the outcome of his mother and Matheo’s relationships would be very different. Because, as far as his knowledge went, his mother and Matheo were on good terms; they were friends. Though they rarely spoke to each other once a year during the annual network Christmas party and nothing more, Elvie’s hand reached for mine—not tentatively, no, this time she owned it—giving it a squeeze.

“Matheo is your father! Your real father. Our father.”

Zander shook his head.

Patrick and he were half-brothers?

Elvie gasped.

Zander wanted to throw up. His wife rubbed his thigh now, trying to soothe him. Patrick hurried to pour them all a drink—he thought just to do something with his hands. The air wrapped around them in an awkward way, and maybe that was what having a heart attack felt like.

Elvie bit on her lower lip, and his dick jerked to attention again. Really? Right now?

Patrick looked between the two of them. 

I wasn’t my father’s son! Zander sighed and internally shook his head.  But for him, he was his father, alway, and never Matheo.

“I just found out. I thought you deserved to know.” Patrick reached for his drink and gulped it in one go, shaking his head and slamming the glass against the silver tray. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe.

“So father knows about Matheo?” Zander nearly laughed, though there was nothing funny about his situation. He was sitting in front of his biological brother, a man he’d known all his life, as he’d worked side by side with him for most of his adult years.

Patrick bowed his head. “He knows. Your mother and Matheo were honest with him from the beginning. He was livid, of course, and tried to get the old cow fired. But by then, he had gained some momentum, and SBC was still working its way up. They needed Matheo, and he needed them. But yes, Matheo knew about you. That’s why he could never stomach your presence.”

“Such an asshole... he hates you and now hates me? Who does that? We are his son, but he hated us so much that he couldn't stomach us."I know,” Patrick shook his head. Zander smiled bitterly, though there was something liberating in knowing it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t specifically something he’d done. He’d grown up thinking he was so rotten, he’d become rotten. Yeah, he was Matheo’s son, after all.

But this did not change everything. Mostly, it changed how he looked at himself in the mirror. He was never like him.

Elvie snuggled beside him, rubbing his arm.

Zander blinked at him, checking his watch. "It's safe to say it’s too late for him to tuck me into bed. You realise I’m going straight to him with this, correct?”

His loyalty was to no one but Elvie and himself at this point. And it didn’t escape him that he’d just put Elvie’s name before his own.

Patrick rubbed his face. “I know. Send him my regards! You might want to kick the hell out of his balls.”

Tou-fucking-ché.

Zander jerked his chin towards him. “You hired Danny. Tell me everything about how this came to be.”

Patrick didn’t spare a detail.

He said he’d had a feeling Matheo was beginning to shit on their quality in a bid to damage the network a second before he disappeared off the radar. He needed to tend to his health, and he seemed to know he didn’t have much longer on the SBC throne. Hoping to counteract this, Patrick had had the same feeling Zander did—that Danny was motivated by money and could be a good free agent. Patrick also confessed that with him back in town and Zander’s involvement with Kristal crumbling, Patrick wanted to make sure he was protected against Matheo.

“Precisely,” Zander said. “But all the shit Danny discovered still doesn’t cover my ass against Matheo. You gave me nothing but hearsay.”

Patrick’s eyes darkened, and he suddenly looked much older than his days. “We can let others do the job for us. Just send it to the different networks,” he suggested. “Let the problem fix itself. He’ll have to step down.”

Zander appreciated it and tried to help him out. But there was no need.

He shook his head. “SBC would take an even greater hit if we did that.”

“But we can’t just let Matheo get away with it.” Elvie squeezed his hand. A sweet gesture from his greatest sin.

He turned towards her, a smirk manoeuvring its way across his face. “We won’t.”