Broken Rules Read online

  Sterling sneered as nauseating self-hate wormed under his breastbone. “Do you honestly think we shared ‘a moment’ or something? We had sex, pal. Nothing more. You’re not my boyfriend. The next time I want it, I’ll pay you for it.”

  Sanyam flinched, and Sterling knew, with a kind of spiteful, sick triumph, that he’d found his target.

  “Something’s happened,” Sanyam said. “You—you weren’t like this last night. You were—what changed?”

  “What changed is that I came to my senses,” Sterling said. “I was bored, okay? You were available; I wanted to experiment. I’m not a sub, so there’s no reason for you to be here.”

  “Just like that.” Sanyam’s voice was flat. “We—after what we shared, you think it was still just sex?”

  “I know it was.” Sterling flung the words like knives and watched as they sliced into Sanyam’s skin and burrowed deep. “You really thought someone like me would end up with someone like you? That’s adorable. It truly is.”

  Sanyam’s eyes were tight. “You’re right,” he said, his voice even more clipped than usual. “I was mistaken.” He took a step away and ran his hands through his hair. “Don’t come back to the club, please. You’re not welcome there any longer.”

  Sterling lifted his chin. “As if I was planning to. Get out of my house.”

  Sanyam nodded sharply and turned. He closed the door quietly behind him, and Sterling sat down hard on the couch. He folded forward and clutched his knees as he struggled to breathe, his eyes stinging. Don’t you dare cry, you pathetic piece of—

  His phone buzzed, and Sterling groped for it, something like hope stirring in his chest.

  But it was just his father. One hour. Don’t be late.

  Sterling scrambled to his feet and ran for the bedroom.

  Chapter Thirteen

  SANYAM LEFT Sterling’s apartment and went straight to the club. He stalked inside, yanking his scarf off and balling it in his fist as he strode through the empty room.

  Trinity was onstage, working on a new set as her music echoed, and Kimi was behind the bar.

  Kimi’s eyes widened and she closed her laptop and ran to catch up. “Hey, hey, San, wait up. What’s going on? You look pissed.”

  Sanyam swung toward her, and Kimi took a step back.

  “Whoa, okay. What happened?”

  “A spoiled, selfish brat happened,” Sanyam said through his teeth. “I’m just here to do inventory and the weekly clean of the room.”

  “Was it that guy you’ve been not-seeing?” Kimi persisted, following as Sanyam turned away again. “The one from last night?”

  “I’m not seeing him,” Sanyam snapped.

  Kimi held her hands up. “Okay, sure, definitely not seeing him. Let me know if I can help with anything.”

  Sanyam didn’t reply, heading for the back with his jaw set, as Trinity let go of the pole and knelt at the end of the stage to talk to Kimi.

  He spent an hour cleaning his room from top to bottom, scrubbing at the floor on his hands and knees as he fumed. Stupid, stupid—Ava told you not to see him and you went and slept with him the same night. And look what happened. You idiot.

  Sitting back on his heels, he surveyed the room. It gleamed, spotless from his attentions, and most of his anger had dissolved. That was good, because an angry Dom was a dangerous Dom.

  There had been something in Fox’s eyes, a deep hurt under the fury, and Sanyam didn’t know what had caused it. He wanted to know. He wanted to take Fox apart, dismantle him to his component parts, see what made him tick, and then put him back together. He wanted to know who had hurt him so badly and make sure that person never got close to him for the rest of Fox’s life.

  He shook himself. You’re never seeing him again, he told himself. He’s not your concern any longer. He never really was, outside this room.

  His phone buzzed. It was Ava.

  My office, please.

  Sanyam rocked to his feet and brushed the knees of his pants off. He had a feeling he knew why she wanted to see him.

  SURE ENOUGH, Ava was vibrating with fury. “Trinity told me what happened,” she said flatly when Sanyam walked in. “I’m writing you up. Be glad I’m not suspending you.”

  Sanyam said nothing as he sat down and crossed his legs.

  “What were you thinking?” Ava demanded. “He came to the club to see you, and you went home with him? Did you have sex, Sanyam? Did you actually fuck a client the same night I told you specifically not to?”

  “Safe to say I wasn’t thinking clearly,” Sanyam said quietly. “It won’t happen again, Ava.”

  “Better fucking not,” Ava said. “You had glowing recommendations, a reputation as one of the best Doms in Mumbai, if not all of India. Don’t make me regret hiring you.”

  “Are we done?”

  Ava flicked a finger. “Out.”

  Sanyam obeyed, closing her door softly behind him and taking a deep breath.

  Chapter Fourteen

  WHEN STERLING presented himself at his father’s brokerage, he was shaved, perfectly turned out, and hating the world.

  Yates inspected him with a sharp eye as Sterling flung himself into a chair and draped a leg over the armrest.

  “Sit up straight, Sterling, honestly.”

  Sterling slouched harder, doing his best to become one with the chair.

  Yates made an annoyed noise and pretended not to notice. “You’ll be shadowing Donna today. She’ll show you your office—you know, the one you’ve never even set foot in? If you have any questions, she’ll answer them.”

  “Why can’t I shadow you?” Sterling asked.

  Yates pursed his mouth. “Because I’m busy.”

  “And Donna’s not?”

  Yates glared at him. “Do not make this harder on yourself than it has to be. And let me make myself perfectly clear—if you do not apply yourself to this opportunity that is being handed to you on a silver platter, you will find yourself without an inheritance and with as much of your trust fund cut off as I can possibly get away with.”

  Sterling stiffened. He’d hoped—“You wouldn’t.”

  “Try me,” Yates said, voice hard. “Get out of my office and prove to me I didn’t waste an Ivy League education on you.”

  Sterling stood as Yates turned away. Sterling twitched his suit coat straight and stalked out into the atrium, where Donna was holding court on her usual throne.

  She was a tall woman, almost Sterling’s height, and some fifteen years older, crow’s-feet bracketing her deceptively mild brown eyes and smile lines around her mouth.

  Sterling throttled back his fury and draped himself across her tall desk. “Donna, my love, queen of my blackened heart, when are you going to give all this up and run away with me?”

  Donna tossed her head, flicking dark red hair out of her face. “When you make more than your father does and can support me in the lifestyle I deserve.”

  Sterling clutched his chest. “Wounded to the core yet again. So where do you want me?”

  “As far away from me as possible,” Donna said tartly. She stood and smoothed her plum-colored gabardine dress. “Come on.”

  Sterling trailed behind her as she led him through the building to the opposite corner. Also as far from Dad as possible, he noted.

  Donna pushed the door open and stood aside. Sterling wandered in, hands in his pockets, and turned in a circle, pretending to admire the stainless steel and glass.

  “We’ll give you the day to get settled in,” Donna told him. “Explore the building, meet people, familiarize yourself with the phone system. Tomorrow, you’ll start working in earnest.”

  Sterling shuddered.

  “What did you do, anyway?” Donna asked, honest curiosity in her voice. “We had a pool going that your father would never be able to drag you through the doors of this place.”

  “I—” Sterling snapped his mouth shut and shrugged. “Decided it was time to grow up.”

  Something in Donna’s
expression softened. “I’ll keep your father off your back while you find your feet.” She patted his shoulder. “I’ve loaded client spreadsheets on your computer. Yates wants you to look them over, get a feel for the database and how he runs things.” She hesitated. “I know you like puzzles. Maybe think of them as giant jigsaws. See how the pieces fit.”

  STERLING SHOWED up to the office every morning, jaw set. Donna dropped in to check on him several times throughout each day, and Sterling fought the impulse to cling to her Louboutins and beg her to rescue him.

  Instead he airily told her he was fine every time she asked, making an effort to look busy when he heard her distinctive footsteps coming down the hall.

  He barely saw his father, who came in early and stayed late. Sterling kept his head down and struggled to remember what he’d learned in college as he pored over spreadsheets and memorized client names, learning about slush and hedge funds, all the ins and outs of investment banking that he’d done his best to forget the second he’d received his degree.

  About halfway through the second week, a thread stood out in the web he was struggling through, and Sterling reached for it, but it slicked and fuzzed away into nothing as he tried to follow it back to its source.

  Intrigued, Sterling dug deeper.

  Sometimes he thought he was getting somewhere, the pieces poised to click into place, and then it would all slide out of focus again, the numbers blurring in front of his eyes and other images taking shape—himself, kneeling in front of Sanyam, his hands tied behind his back, or Sanyam prowling around him on silent feet as Sterling trembled with anticipation.

  He always pushed those thoughts away with a snarl, forcing himself to concentrate on the data again.

  He was hunched over his desk, fighting with the numbers one day when someone knocked.

  Sterling looked up, blinking.

  Cricket was smiling at him. “Feel like taking lunch?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  “Seeing how the other half lives,” Cricket said wryly. “Daddy wanted me to learn from your example, I think.”

  “Of a shitty son?” Sterling snapped. He shoved his hands through his hair. “Or of what a terrible worker bee I am?”

  Cricket’s brows rose, and she stepped inside, swinging the door shut behind her. “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “No. I want to figure out what the fuck I’m doing.”

  “How so?”

  Sterling shook his head. “It’s like… you know those 3-D pictures that were so popular a while ago? Where if you didn’t look at the individual pieces, if you let your focus sort of… blur, another image would take shape within the pixels?”

  “Oh yeah,” Cricket said, propping her hip on the edge of the desk. “Like a Seurat painting. Are you studying 3-D art, Fox?”

  Sterling pushed away from the computer with a growl, sending his chair flying. “It’s right there,” he said, flinging a hand in the direction of the monitor. “I can almost see it, and then I lose it again, I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong!”

  “For one thing, you’re not eating enough,” Cricket said. “Your skin is doing that waxy pale thing again and you’ve lost weight.”

  “Eating is boring,” Sterling said absently, rolling his chair back to the desk and resettling himself. “Go away, Cricky, I’m busy.”

  Cricket took a startled breath. “You haven’t called me that in years.”

  “Hmm?” Sterling said, looking up. “Called you what?”

  “Nothing,” Cricket said. She bent and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “I’ll see you this Friday on the hill for dinner.”

  Sterling barely noticed as she left, already sucked back into the puzzle. He was so close.

  WHEN HE finally figured it out, three days later, the tabs slotted into place so neatly that Sterling was left with his mouth hanging open, wondering why he hadn’t seen it before.

  “You fucking idiot,” he said aloud, the sound of his voice startling in the empty office.

  Sterling put his head out the door and glanced up and down the hall. The sun had set and almost everyone had left for the day. It was nearly 7:00 p.m., which meant—Sterling ducked back into the office, grabbed the thumb drive out of the port, and bolted down the hall.

  Donna was at her desk, putting things to rights before leaving, and she jerked in surprise when Sterling burst in.

  “What on earth—I thought you’d gone home ages ago!”

  “Is he still here?” Sterling panted.

  Donna nodded, her eyes wide and startled, and Sterling brushed by and pushed his father’s door open.

  Yates was in front of the windows, suit coat off, sleeves rolled up and hands on his hips. He was speaking what sounded like Japanese to Sterling’s untrained ear, a steady stream of rolling syllables, a tinny voice answering him from the phone on the desk.

  Sterling hesitated and Yates turned toward him, expression of surprise melting into faint irritation and annoyance.

  He said something else and cut off the speakerphone, looking at Sterling.

  “Well? What’s so important you had to interrupt a board meeting with Tokyo?”

  Sterling squared his shoulders and held up the thumb drive. “Why?”

  “Why what?” Yates snapped. “Why do we use thumb drives? Because they’re efficient, Sterling.”

  “Why did you do it?” Sterling persisted. “We had enough money, didn’t we?”

  Yates froze in the act of putting on his jacket and very slowly straightened. “What.”

  “You’ve been embezzling,” Sterling said. “Stealing. I know, Dad. I found the evidence. It’s all right there in plain sight if you know how to look for it. The decimal points transposed, the fractions of fractions of pennies shifted into another account, one under Mom’s name. You lied and you cheated and you stole, Dad. Millions of dollars. How could you?”

  Yates’s eyes were dangerous. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Don’t I?” Sterling challenged, taking a step forward. “Tell that to the board of directors at their next meeting, when I show them the data I’ve collected.” He barked a laugh, the sound harsh and brittle. “I guess that degree you paid for did come in handy after all.”

  “Give me that drive,” Yates said, one hand outstretched.

  Sterling recoiled. “Oh no. No fucking way. It stays with me. Why? We were fine. We had more than enough money, and you had to go and steal? What is wrong with you?”

  “That’s precious, coming from you,” Yates snarled. “You have no idea what it’s like, running a business such as this, staying at the helm all these years when the board tries to force you into early retirement. I’ve been good to this company. I’ve made profits. Do you have any idea how much you and the twins cost me? All you’ve done is be an embarrassment to me, to my family name. The money I’ve spent keeping your stunts out of the press.” His voice rose. “I deserve something for myself, too!”

  Sterling took another step back as Yates rounded the desk and advanced on him.

  “What are you going to do, Dad?” Sterling demanded as Yates drew near. “Are you going to hit me?”

  “I’m going to kill you if you don’t give me that fucking—” Yates lunged, and Sterling dodged sideways, eeling out of Yates’s grip lightning fast.

  He held up the thumb drive, betrayal and horror coating his throat, and dropped it into his pocket. “Tomorrow,” he said. “Tomorrow, we’re going to sit down and renegotiate my employment here.”

  He ducked away from Yates’s outstretched hand again and ran, out of the office and past Donna as she stood beside her desk, phone to her ear and shock on her face. Sterling kept going, running blindly down the stairs to the ground floor as his father’s words rang in his ears.

  “You’re dead, do you hear me? Dead!”

  Sterling made it to his car in record time and gunned it out of the parking lot, heart hammering so hard he thought vaguely that it might leap right out of
his chest.

  He drove fast and careless through the streets of downtown Vancouver, weaving in and out of traffic until he was sure his father wasn’t following him. Only then did he pull over into an alley and park.

  He lifted his hands off the wheel, disgusted at the way they trembled as he held them up.

  “Stupid, stupid—” Sterling punched the dashboard, hissing at the pain that blossomed in his knuckles. Tears prickled his eyelids, and he blinked them fiercely away. You will not cry.

  Sterling rubbed his face, swallowing hard, and pulled the thumb drive from his slacks. It lay in his palm, a small oblong with the ability to ruin lives hidden within its plastic casing.

  Sterling closed his fingers over it convulsively. What had he been thinking, threatening to blackmail his father so he didn’t have to work a job he hated? In a long history of selfish acts, this one had to reign supreme.

  He couldn’t keep this information secret. The board of directors at the very least needed to know, and the police would have to be involved. His father had to answer for what he’d done.

  Sterling caught his breath on a sob. “I don’t want to,” he whispered, his voice thick, but no one answered.

  Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’d call Ainsley Rose, the head of the board of directors, and tell her what had happened. First thing in the morning, he decided, and put the car in gear.

  Chapter Fifteen

  STERLING WAS relieved to see Adam on duty in the foyer of his apartment building. Adam was the most discreet, the most trustworthy, and the one least likely to be bribed or threatened into anything. He was also, Sterling suspected, who had kept letting Sanyam up into the building.

  He was half propped against the desk, perusing a magazine, but he perked up as Sterling came inside. “Evening, Mr. Reynard! Working late tonight?”

  Sterling nodded. “Adam, listen—if I tell you something, can I rely on you to keep it to yourself?”