Dark Vow (Blackwoods College)

“Things change. You’re selling him weapons, not toilet paper.”

He gave me a flat look. “To a man like Brnovich, it might as well be. He doesn’t give a shit about what these guns will be used for, so long as he can use them to his personal advantage.”

“So what are you saying then? He wants to back out?”

“I can’t decide.” He gripped one of the bed’s corner posts. “I don’t know why he’d go through the trouble of setting up this whole thing only to walk at the last possible moment. He wouldn’t want to insult my family like that. Unless…” Calvin began to pace again, hands clasped behind his back.

Silence followed, broken only by the sound of his feet on the floor. He stared ahead of him like he forgot all about me.

“Unless what?” I prompted finally, unable to take the cliffhanger.

“He might know that I’m not here on behalf of my family.”

I let that sink in. “Your family doesn’t realize you’re selling millions of dollars’ worth of weapons to a Baltic state? Are you doing this illegally? Are we going to some sort of international jail for arms dealers?”

He waved a hand in the air. “The Solar company is massive. We’re a multinational conglomerate with more subsidiaries than you could possibly imagine. It’s not difficult to run this deal below the awareness of my father and my brothers.” He gave me a flat look. “And there are no jails for arms dealers. They tend to end up rich or dead.”

“Why didn’t you tell your family about this?”

He stopped pacing and faced me. “Because if I’m going to take over for my father when he passes, I need to prove myself.”

“I thought that’s what you needed me for.”

“You’re one step in the process.” He walked closer, hands tensing and relaxing, like he was imagining his fingers wrapped in my hair. “I was raised in my family’s corporation. I lived and breathed the business from a young age, and I’ve never known anything else. But I’ve had other interests in the last few years.” He let that linger, staring at me ravenously.

“Like football? And school?”

“Among other things, yes. My father believes I’ve grown lazy and soft. He would prefer it if I stayed home and did nothing but work, while I’ve always felt that I need experience outside of the boardroom if I’m going to be an effective leader.” He sat down next to me and kicked his feet up on the coffee table. “This deal is my way of showing him that I’ve come into my own.”

I watched him carefully. Calvin never struck me as the kind of person that cared what other people thought of him, but when he spoke of his father, it was with a strange earnestness, like he truly cared that his father saw him as an equal and a peer. That struck me as strange, but it made him more human.

Ever since we first met, I thought he was like an alien. Distant, unknowable. Like normal emotions didn’t matter.

There was lust, there was rage. There was need. But things beyond that? I couldn’t imagine him feeling anything.

He had depths I never guessed at before.

“What happens if he still doesn’t think you’re ready?” I asked carefully. “Even if this works out and the deal goes down, what then?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I have contingency plans. Some involve violence.”

“You wouldn’t kill your own dad.”

“You don’t know my father.” He laughed bitterly.

“You sound like you care about him though, or at least what he thinks.”

Calvin touched his chin for a moment, considering. “I hate my father,” he said, speaking slowly. “But I respect him for what he’s built. He inherited the Solar company, but he made it into something truly incredible. He pursued his goals with an admirable single-minded determination, and he was ruthless in everything. He was also an awful parent.”

I studied his face. I remembered the letters—he mentioned some of the terrible things he went through as a child. Awful, abusive, manipulative things, the sort of twisted games that would permanently scar any child. It explained so much about him, but I found it difficult to reconcile.

“Do you want to be like him?”

He let out a soft snort and glanced down at me. His lips pulled into a smile. “I don’t need a psychoanalysis session right now.”

“I’m only trying to get to know you.”

He shifted, leaning closer. “Then know this. I hate my father, but I inherited some of the things that made him great.”

“Like what?” I leaned away, very aware of his proximity, of the motions of his chest as he breathed, of the smell of his skin and shampoo.

“I’m single-minded. I’m strong. I’m ruthless. I take what I want and I don’t apologize for it. I let the weak whine and complain. I simply change the world to fit my vision.”