Splintered by Dean Murray Read Free Book Online

the way to go here, Adri.
I mean she's bound to see me drop you off. That's going to tip her
off, and then I'll look less than honorable."
    "Alec. Please trust me. I need some time to
prep her before something like this is even remotely
possible."
    He had that look in his eye. He was going to
fight me on this. I gave him my best puppy-dog eyes. A few seconds
later he sighed. "I still think it's a bad idea."
    "Thank you."
    Flush with success at having brought Alec
around to my thinking, I watched him pull down the lane until he
disappeared around the corner.
    Mom was
standing at the window waiting for me, and she didn't look
amused.

Chapter 6
    Alec - 5 hours
previously
    It was always a nightmare getting Sam off by
himself. On the one hand I understood where the three of them were
coming from. Sam, Jack, Alison, they'd all been through hell. In
Brandon's pack you could never be sure that a dominant getting you
off by yourself wasn't a prelude to getting the stuffing kicked out
of you or worse.
    In that kind of environment the submissives
pretty much had to band together into miniature power blocs that
had half a chance of avoiding the worst of the excesses. Still,
they'd been with us for long enough now to know I wouldn't put up
with that kind of stuff even had the rest of the pack been so
inclined.
    Based on that and the fact Sam knew exactly
what it was I wanted to get him off to talk about, I had to assume
he was trying to avoid the discussion. By the time lunch rolled
around I'd decided to force the issue.
    A quiet word with Isaac pretty much
guaranteed that Jack wouldn't be offering to come along when I told
Sam we were leaving the campus for lunch. I'd done everything I
could to guarantee Isaac wouldn't kill Jack in his sleep or
anything, but since the animosity wasn't going anywhere, I might as
well get some use out of it. It was certainly making my life extra
hard to compensate.
    Alison was a lesser concern. She wasn't very
good at reading the subtext in most conversations. If it wasn't for
Jack and Sam she probably wouldn't have survived a year in
Brandon's group. As long as I waited for Rachel or somebody to get
her talking about shopping I had known I could slip away with Sam
and she would hardly notice.
    I led Sam over to my Porsche and then drove us
over to Kostas' so we could get a sandwich while we talked. Luckily
the place was pretty much deserted.
    "What do you want, Alec?"
    "You know exactly what I want. I want you to
give up the Georgia contact."
    Sam jumped a little. It was starting to look
like he was either completely stupid or the most accomplished liar
I'd ever met. Living with shape shifters generally conditioned you
to tell the truth. Not many of us could lie with both our scent and
pulse.
    "I don't think that's fair. I've
been more than helpful when it's come to helping you snatch up the
rest of Brandon's assets. Heck, without me you would have been in
the dark."
    I shook my head. "We already knew
about every holding and operation you've told us about. We would
have had a harder time in a hostile takeover situation, but we
still could have picked them all up and turned a hefty profit over
the next couple of years."
    "Fine, you and Donovan are omniscient. Why do
you need me?"
    "Let's cut the crap. You've been
trying to let on that you were only peripherally involved with
Brandon's holdings. I haven't believed it for a moment. Brandon was
never out of contact long enough to be taking a really active role
in managing the pack's tithe. You, on the other hand, have entirely
too much lip for someone who supposedly spent his entire life at
the bottom of the food chain. You've been running the financial
side of things for at least the last three years."
    "Okay. It was me. Can you blame me for keeping
my head down? You and Donovan were always right on our tails and
you had ten or fifteen times the working capital we had to play
with. I fought tooth and nail to keep you from absorbing us
financially because my