Caged By Them (Descent Into Darkness 1)

“Is this a proposal?” I flipped through the documents. “From Josef Weber?”

“Please, this is not something you have to trouble yourself with. Your brother told him that we weren’t interested, but he sent the proposal anyway.” She whimpered and extended her hand.

“You get offers to buy the company and just calmly take them to Mauro?” I turned and lifted my head with a scowl on my face.

“We get them—all companies do.” She finally relented and dropped her hands when she realized that I wasn’t going to hand her the paperwork.

“I want to see them all.” I threw the paperwork at her. “Everyone that you’ve gotten this year—my desk—twenty minutes.”

“Sir…” Her eyes grew wide.

“Do you want me to fire you?” I tilted my head to the side.

“No sir.” She shook her head quickly and scurried towards her desk.

I might actually see a look of anger on Mauro’s face if I fired his favorite assistant, but I didn’t give a fuck. I had been on my leave of absence for so long that people seemed to have forgotten that I was not the kind of man that liked to be challenged. I was going to have to swing my dick around a few times and make sure everyone saw that it was the biggest one in the room if that didn’t change fast. I went to my office and waited—at minute nineteen, Abigail came into my office with her heels clacking—so fast that she almost fell as she put the documents down on my desk. I dismissed her with a wave of my hand and started flipping through them. I didn’t know what I was looking for, but I knew something wasn’t right—our company wasn’t on the market. We weren’t entertaining offers—and we were far too successful for a bunch of assholes to think they could just buy us out.

Too bad Dad didn’t have time to teach me most of this shit before he kicked the fucking bucket—I guess I wasn’t exactly interested in learning—that probably had a lot to do with it.

Mauro was our father’s favorite pupil. He was born with a mind for the business. That was why he was the CEO of the company instead of Wyatt. Wyatt stressed out about things too much. The Chicago branch was much better for him since it was slower and didn’t have as much pressure as the booming center of operations in New York City. Wyatt didn’t seem to care—I don’t think he would have cared if we just gave him a desk in the basement as long as he had enough money to support his family—hell, he probably would have preferred it. As for me? I was happy as long as the company was doing well.

Truthfully, I didn’t do enough to warrant the position I had. If I was a regular officer of the company with a seat on the board, they would have voted me out the front door a long time ago—especially after Lizzy became my fucking obsession and I stopped coming to work. But Mauro was right—and the proposals confirmed it. The sharks were circling. They were nibbling—even if they couldn’t bite. That was bad for business. It gave the illusion that we were in trouble, an illusion that would make investors pause before they did business with us. I flipped through a few of the proposals and then leaned over to slam my finger into the intercom.

“Abigail—I want all of the new business accounts and all of the lost accounts. Everything from the past year.” I leaned back in my chair and kept thumbing through the proposals while Abigail tried to tell me why that would take too long.

It took Abigail a little while to get everything together, but I was no longer under a timetable—I needed to figure something out. There was something gnawing at me—a concern that was starting to grow. As soon as Abigail dropped off the account information, I told her that I wanted the exact same thing—proposals and accounts—for t

he last five years. The look on her face said that I might as well have asked her to launch herself into space, but she managed to stifle her obvious displeasure. I looked through the new accounts and lost accounts while she compiled the rest of the data. My concern got stronger as I flipped through the pages—and it was becoming more than a concern—it was becoming a sickness in my gut.

“Okay, Mr. Jackson. Here they are.” She ran into my office and handed me what I asked for.

“What’s wrong with this picture.” I pointed at my desk.

“I’m—sorry?” She tilted her head to the side.

“Explain to me why we’ve got more purchasing proposals and lost accounts in the last year than we have had in the last five—and then explain why we haven’t gotten nearly as many new accounts as any of those years.” I leaned back and glared at her.

“Sir, I—don’t know. I just make coffee, answer the phone, and make sure everything goes to Mr. Jackson—your brother.” She shrugged.

“Get out of my office,” I growled under my breath and started looking through the documents in front of me again.

Something was definitely wrong. Mauro must have known—he had to. He was the CEO. I might not be the man to shake hands or sit down with clients, but people like Josef Weber? I definitely knew how to deal with them. They needed a show of strength—the kind that I was good at. That was why Mauro was eager to get me back behind my desk because I had the internal fortitude to do things he wouldn’t—like take a girl that had wronged our family and lock her in a cage—punish her—steal her innocence.

I’ll break every one of these mother fuckers if I have to. That’s one lesson from my father that I sat up straight for when his wrath didn’t stay bottled.

Lizzy

Food. Water—actually I was more excited about the soda. A warm place to sleep. Those promises had been fulfilled. The heat was turned up in the room that had previously been so cold I shivered. I might have still been sleeping in a cramped cage, but I had a blanket. I had a pillow. Those were luxuries I took for granted, yet I felt a mild bit of excitement having them after being deprived for days. I still didn’t have any clothes yet, but I had no intentions of complaining. I woke up the next morning to a wonderful breakfast and Reynard was not so—angry—when he came to see me. I hoped it was a sign that our relationship was morphing into something that wasn’t as hateful as it had been up to that point.

Reynard told me that he would be away for part of the day, but Mauro would be there. He wasn’t sure if Mauro would actually open the door, so I prepared myself for the loneliness of the cage, but he left the light on—that was a semblance of kindness—probably buried in the contract somewhere, in the terms that I didn’t fully read before I signed my life away. I was pleasantly surprised when the door opened, and I saw Mauro standing in the doorway. Not only was he standing there, but it appeared that he had brought me lunch.

“Do you want to stretch your legs out some?” He walked over and dangled the key from his hand.

“Yes.” I nodded and moved to the front of the cage. “Thank you.”

“I’m sure this will be a little more comfortable than eating in your cage.” He motioned to the tray of food that had been brought in.

I crawled out of the cage and winced when I started to stand, the punished flesh still aching when I shifted my weight.