Thirty minutes later, they arrived, looking like what they were: dangerous men dragged from sleep, running on loyalty and caffeine. Jace was the last to walk in, immaculate, even at this hour, in a black button-down with the sleeves rolled up, his tie loosened but still perfectly knotted. While everyone else looked like they’d been dragged from bed, Jace looked like he’d been calculating profit margins.
When asked, Jace kept the source of his injury vague enough that they didn’t suspect where it’d come from. Luckily, theywere distracted with wondering why I’d called this emergency meeting.
“I need your help.” My tone made them straighten. “What I’m about to propose is unethical. Illegal. You can walk away. But I’m hoping you won’t.”
The temperature in the room dropped ten degrees.
“What happened?” Ryker’s voice had that edge he saved for destroying witnesses.
“I want to ruin someone. Systematically. Completely.”
Ryker’s jaw locked. “He did something else to her, didn’t he?”
My silence answered for me.
Ryker’s fist found the wall. The lawyer who never lost control lost it spectacularly.
“Who?” Jace’s voice was arctic as he reached for his phone, as if preparing to mobilize his financial empire at a moment’s notice.
“The man who assaulted my sister,” Ryker answered.
The room crystallized into something deadly. The guys who’d crawled through hell together slowly processed what was just said—someone hurt someone we loved—and now, their faces hardened, ready to drag someone else down.
“Tell us what you need.” Jace’s fingers were already hovering over his screen, his weapon. There was something lethal in his stillness, a darkness I recognized. The same kind that had lived in him since the day his father was murdered.
I’d tracked Voss down in terms of knowing his address and other intel, but without the ability to sit outside his place 24/7, I had yet to spot him, yet to physically get my hands on him.
“The guy owns a talent agency. Small but growing. His entire ego’s wrapped up in it.” I fixed on Jace. “Buy him out. Hostile takeover. Whatever it takes. I want him watching his life’s work turn to ash.”
A cold smile curved Jace’s lips. “I know exactly how to destroy him. We’ll start with his investors. I’ll buy their silence, their shares, so fast that he won’t know until he’s bleeding out.” His voice dropped lower. “I’ll protect his employees though. Move them to subsidiary companies before the kill shot.”
“Good. This is about him.”
“I can have preliminary documents drawn up by morning,” Jace continued. “By noon, I’ll know every weak point in his financial structure. By tomorrow night, I can have rumors floating that will make his investors panic. Once they start selling …” He looked up. “He won’t be able to do anything to stop it.”
“Good.” I turned to Axel. “Your PR department still highly compensated?”
A predatory smile spread across his face. “Want me to dig up his skeletons?”
“I want you to find every secret he’s buried and blast it across the internet. Make him radioactive.”
“If you’d told me we were doing something this fun, I’d have shown up faster,” Axel added.
“I’ve got contacts at every major news outlet,” Jace added, his fingers already moving across his phone. “By the time we’re done, his name will be poison in every boardroom from here to Tokyo. No one will touch him with a ten-foot pole.” He looked up, and for a moment, I saw the wounded boy who’d lost everything, now a man with the power to make others feel that same loss.
In this moment, I think I appreciated Jace more than I ever had before. And trust me, I’d respected the hell out of him already.
You’d think a guy whose father was murdered would give up on life. Especially when it happened right in front of his brother’s eyes. You’d think a guy who inherited hundreds ofmillions at eighteen would choose to coast. Globe-trot on private jets, sip drinks on beaches, collect supermodels like trading cards. And you’d think with all that money, he’d have just bought his way into business, but he took the time and energy to go to college.
“You can’t run a company if you haven’t paid your dues,” he’d said once.
And that was Jace in a nutshell: a billionaire who still believed in earning his place. While other CEOs collected corporations like trophies, he spent his career saving struggling businesses from going under.
“Ryker, any evidence Axel finds with legal legs, build a file. Worst case, we take it to authorities. Get him shipped to prison. Preferably Knox’s block.”
“And best case?” Axel asked.
“Best case, I get my hands on him first,” I said.
