“Confidentiality.” Bronson took a lengthy sip of brandy. “You’ve always been loyal to me, Tori. Loyal to a fault. I need you to see to something for me. Get Bates in here—without anyone else knowing, particularly her.”
Tori tilted her head. “Seth? Sir, I’m sorry…I don’t understand.”
“What is there not to understand? Get him in here, Tori. On the goddamn double.”
“Okay.” Tori looked terribly puzzled. “I will. I can do that, but…”
“But what?”
Tori looked away, adjusting her glasses. “I’m sorry, it’s just that…it’s an…unusual request.”
“Unusual or not, it’s a request nonetheless,” Doug harped. “Keep stalling and it’ll become a directive.”
Tori nodded hesitantly. “Mr. Bronson, are you not feeling well today?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Bronson snapped. He was nearing his breaking point with all women today. They were useless. “Why are you testing me, Tori? Of course I am! Now go—get out of here! And do as I ask!”
Tori shuddered. “Okay, sir. I’m sorry—I will…but so you know, it might be a while.”
“It’d better not be, for his sake.” Bronson switched to a mutter. “Not to mention yours.”
Tori took her time unlocking and reopening the door.
“What exactly are you waiting for?”
“I’m sorry…I’ll call on him, I will. I’m just a little confused.”
Bronson expelled a sigh. “And why is that, Tori? What makes the order confusing? Do tell.”
“Well, sir, Seth isn’t…I mean…he hasn’t been around in a while, not here, anyway. You tasked him with other…things since his demotion, unless that’s changed and you haven’t formally announced it.”
A fire went alight inside Bronson’s chest. He couldn’t tell if it was rage building or indigestion. He readied to lash out at the timid woman, the same as he had so many times before, but relinquished the impulse upon coming to a sudden realization, something he’d overlooked until this very second.
Could he be losing his mind? Tori was right, he’d ousted that inept dipshit Seth Bates from the realms of his upper echelon months ago, and since that point, Beatrice had unofficially taken Seth’s place on invitation. It hadn’t been an official promotion. It’d remained an informal one, for rationales upon which they’d previously agreed. But today, Bronson felt less in command and more like her subordinate. And he’d foolishly allowed it to happen.
His title and position made him the commander of this region, him and only him. Doug Bronson was the leader, the head motherfucker in charge of this mission—an executive mandated DHS nationwide objective-turned-contemptuous holocaust. No matter what it had been or had become, it was his, and since the launch, not one person had ever dared cross him. Beatrice was doing just that—defying him sneeringly to his face seemingly without any fear of consequence. And it should damn well be bothering him far more than what it was.
Maybe she had been right. Maybe her closing argument had been valid. She was a critical asset to both him and the mission. Beatrice was wired that way, altogether ready, willing, and able to carry out the repugnant tasks of which he and so many others had grown exhausted.
Doug rubbed his forehead, shooed Tori away, and began rifling through his top desk drawer for a remedy—a pill, something to relieve this sudden insecurity, this lapse of self-confidence. Bottles rattled beneath his palm until his tired eyes gazed upon an orange cylinder of prescription Xanax…and the name etched on the label, the name of his former spouse. He’d relieved her of it on the day she’d left him, along with a few other personal items that Bronson had deemed as having sentimental value. She’d begun seeing a psychiatrist a year before the split. He’d prescribed Xanax to help manage her anxiety, the majority of which had been blamed on an abusive relationship.
Doug recalled their final night under the same roof and the final argument that had forever severed their codependency on each other. He’d said awful things to her—horrendous things. Furniture the couple had purchased together as newlyweds had been torn and overturned. Inherited antique fine porcelain had been thrown, smashed and treated like garbage. As he continued to recollect, a mental picture faded in: one of his wife’s limp body on the hardwood floor, her head cut open after he’d knocked her unconscious with a vicious blow. For a few seconds, Bronson almost felt remorseful, until he considered what she’d told him. She’d been seeing another man, her fucking shrink, for hell’s sake. The cheating whore of a bitch had earned every ounce of pain inflicted upon her and then some.
Was this why he was being so passive with Beatrice? Was it because he knew that if he were to try the same with her, she could and would not only defend herself, but retaliate in the same uncaring, violent manner? Maybe it was. Doug knew her past and her occupational history. He’d read her dossier, and what he hadn’t read, he’d inferred. He knew with clear certainty that she was an alpha, same as he was, but did her level of dominance transcend his own?
“Formidable adversary indeed,” Bronson said, now reclining into his chair. He dumped two oval pills into his sweaty palm and tossed them through his lips, acquired his drink, sipped from it, and contemplated.
He had consciously permitted this to take place. It’d gone this far for the simple fact that he’d sought for it to. Problem was, now it seemed Beatrice was in the process of a hostile takeover all the while falsifying her efforts as benign. “I’ll give you just a few more inches, Mrs. Carter, a handful above what I’ve allowed already, and we’ll see where this goes. Take more than that, force my hand, and you’re going to see directly who really has supremacy. I won’t like it, but I will do it.”
Bronson stared around his office. No one was there to hear him, but he wished there were. He was
