As Sawyer trails kisses up my neck, I arch my back and push my ass into his crotch.
“As much as I like where this is going, we need to wake up. The board is meeting in an hour, and you need to get the guys up.”
I groan, “Why me? You wake them up and I’ll sleep longer.”
Sawyer smiles against my neck. “Because they like you better than me.”
“Fine, you go and organise coffee.”
Sawyer crawls out of the fort, and I move and position myself between the twins first. Lying on my back, I run my fingers over their abs. Onyx is the first to groan his annoyance. Slate’s hand comes down on top of mine and one of his eyes opens. I grin at him, and he rolls to his side.
“Unless we’re continuing this, you need to stop,” Onyx’s raspy voice comes from beside me.
Group sex is amazing, but time consuming, last night again proved that. Sawyer still isn’t sold on the idea, though after last night I know the idea is growing on him. I’m sure he’ll be happy when life gets back to normal, or as normal as it can be now that I’m the boss of a secret organisation.
“No time, we have to meet with the board and you need to get up.”
“There’s always time for a quickie,” Kalen quips, now awake. He stands and gets caught in the blanket fort, and Onyx snorts at his brother as he waves his arms and they also tangle in the fairy lights. We all burst out laughing as the fort comes crashing down around us. Slate, Onyx and I crawl out, while Kalen becomes fully tangled and falls to the ground flopping around like a fish out of water.
“Are you going to help him?” I ask the twins as they continue to laugh. I rush to Kalen’s side.
“Stop moving so I can help get you out,” I chastise.
“I can’t breathe! I like it kinky as much as the next guy, but asphyxiation is not my kink.”
I chuckle as I help pull the fort cover from around his body. Only Kalen could do something this complicated from a simple scenario. Knocking down a fort is easy to do, getting himself trapped between fairy lights and material is all Kalen. After a few minutes we get him free and he jumps to his feet.
“Why is everyone still standing around?” Sawyer asks, looking around the room. A brow raises, he opens his mouth but thinks better of it, shakes his head and looks back to me with a coffee in his hand. I close the distance between us and take my coffee, kissing his cheek in thanks.
“You three get dressed, we are leaving in half an hour. Amelie, you look amazing in that little silk number but I’m not sure the board will appreciate you walking in there with red lipstick smeared on your face and ‘I was fucked five ways from Sunday’ hair.” I snort, handing Sawyer back the cup of coffee after taking a sip. I find my garment bag and go straight to the bathroom. I have the world’s fastest shower but I don’t have a shower cap available, so I’m going to have to put my hair up into a tight bun to look professional. Sawyer wasn't joking about the lipstick, I looked like a hot mess. A thoroughly fucked hot mess nonetheless.
The upside to having to wear power suits is Elsie buying them for me, so I practically have one in every colour. Today I opt for a Khaki suit with white heels with a thin strap over my toes and around my ankle. I keep my makeup neutral. I don’t want to threaten these men today. They have served The Order and deserve respect, especially since we are pulling the rug out from underneath them.
Within half an hour we are all suited up and ready to go. Sawyer drives us to HQ, Frost and Cap follow behind us. We will be on edge until Harold is found but god knows how long that will take. If he has gone underground we have Buckley's chance of ever finding him.
Nerves swallow me whole; my leg bounces and I can’t stop rubbing my face. At this rate I’ll have no makeup left on my face – luckily I only used a BB cream. I got my father’s skin and it’s free of blemishes. A quick touch up will fix that. Sawyer pulls into an underground parking lot and we all get out.
“Okay, so I will take Amelie into the board meeting, you three will go to my office and bring all the new board members down and wait outside. I have all the votes we need to create a new board, so this won’t take long.”
We separate at the end of a long corridor, Sawyer scans an ID card and a set of doors slide open. My heart is erratic as the men inside stare back at me. My father, Dirk and Monty all smile at me. Baxter’s grandfather doesn’t look impressed that he has to be here and Baxter can’t be here by proxy. I swallow nervously under his stern stare.
Maggie’s grandfather looks like he may die before the end of the meeting, he has an oxygen tube attached to his face and his eyes struggle to stay open. It makes my heart hurt. Where’s the compassion? I’m starting to think the ‘blood in, blood out’ rule may need to be revisited. Forcing this guy to keep working until he meets his maker just seems cruel and unnecessary. I don’t intend on becoming like him and I know for a fact that my guys wouldn’t want to see their dad like that either.
The sneers come from The Twins’ and Sawyer’s family seats. I have never pushed for information on why they don’t associate with their families. I just figured it came down to history and that they’d tell me the entire story once they were ready. I can’t help but be curious as to how Monty came to adopt them, or the reasons why.
I have a speech prepared. Until last night I didn’t know I needed to say anything but apparently it has to come from me. Sawyer has to leave the room. He nods his head at his father and leaves to wait outside.
I take my spot at the head of the table. Everyone stands, except Maggie’s grandfather but I doubt he could even if he wanted to.
“You can all be seated.”
They all sit and I look around the table.
“I want to thank you all for being here today and start by saying that I’m grateful for all your years of dedication to The Order. That will not go unrewarded.”
Someone snorts.
“Is there a problem, here?” I snap.
“Yes. He shouldn’t be here,” Oldhams spits, pointing at my father. “He isn’t an active member and he shouldn’t be sitting at a damn board meeting!”
“I asked him to be here—”
“Because he’s your dad.”
“Because a representative from each of the founding families needs to be present today,” I reply calmly. “As you all know, The Order has been under the reign of the founding families and men for a long time, and I know that has worked for a lot of you in the room but now is the time for change. With that, today we will vote for a new board: one to start off this new journey alongside me, people who will help bring this organisation into the twenty-first century. I mean no disrespect to any of you in this room. I feel like this is a fresh start and I want to achieve great things.”
Some of the men grumble under their breaths. “Raise your hand if you are in favour of the change.”
I watch as my father, Dirk, Monty, Baxter’s grandfather – because he knows Baxter will get his seat anyway – and even Maggie’s grandfather raise their hands. He would have been out by default with his illness anyway, but it’s nice that he appears to be on my side.
I nod my head. “With a majority vote, we will now implement the new board. Gentleman, we thank you for your service.”
The doors slide open and Sawyer walks in followed by all the new board members. Sawyer hands me a slip of paper, and I open it.
“For the Rossi seat we have Aadi. For the Kessler seat we have Bexley.” I swallow a lump in my throat, I still have to talk to her about this, but I’m doing my duties before I can even process it. “For the Davis seat we have Kalen, for the Oldham seat we have Slate, for the Montgomery seat we have Sawyer, for the Branson seat we have Baxter, and for the Knox seat we have Onyx.”
“Wait a damn minute! How is he a Knox? He isn’t even a blood relative,” the old guy from the twin’s seat snaps.
“He doesn’t need to be.” I reply calmly, eternally grateful to Sawyer for filling me in this morning. Turns out Harold changed some of the old laws years ago – around the time Monty started adopting his sons. Sawyer thinks Harold’s original plan was to stack the board in his favour using his adopted grandsons as pawns. Which would have worked if he didn’t discover that they aren’t so easily manipulated.
“You better explain!” he spits.
“Monty adopted him when he was a child and so did Maggie. So Onyx and Slate have every right to take any seat from within their family lines, be that Oldham, Davis or Knox. I don’t need a board vote to change that bylaw; it was changed years ago by Harold.”
“That’s bullshit, you can’t change laws to suit your own agenda. Stacking a board to fall at your feet.”
“I’m doing no such thing. It’s in the records, which you may check for yourself if you are questioning my leadership.” I raise a brow, and he slides further down his seat, suddenly sheepish. “We’ve created a board that I trust to help make decisions based on what’s best for The Order, not what’s best for Harold.”
Thank god for Monty. After that, he helps usher everyone out of the room, though my dad comes up to me and pulls me into his arms. “Proud of you, kiddo. I’ll see you later today.”
He pulls away, and I’m left facing my new board.
“Welcome everyone to your first official board meeting. Some of you know how this works – probably better than I do - but for my brother and…I guess my sister…who are new, I’m sure you’ll be able to follow along easily enough. I will not be able to take on the new workload by myself, so Sawyer hand picked everyone to aid me in making decisions. Our first agenda is the sex trafficking ring, and every available person is now on the task of hunting down our involvement and shutting it down. Anyone found to be linked in any way has a one way ticket out of The Order and execution teams are to be notified straight away. You will need yourself and three other board members to sign off on an execution. Always make sure any decisions you make, you have a majority vote signed off, and if for any reason you’re unsure, you can come to me. Sawyer, is there anything that I’m forgetting?”
“No, I think you covered it all nicely. All I have to add is that our server was breached and we have done an overhaul of the system. You all now have access to a new email for correspondence.”
He leans down, picks up a briefcase and opens it, pulling out six packets and handing them around the table. “Inside is all of the information to access your accounts. The Order has upgraded your phones, linked all your accounts, and secured the network. Please burn all the paper inside those packets upon reading them. Only you can access your phones, you will have ten seconds to input your thumb print and, if it is not recognised it will send an alert to our servers. The phone will ring, and you have to answer it for voice recognition. After that, if the phone does not recognise you, it goes into self-destruct mode and wipes everything.”
“So unless anyone has any questions or things they would like to talk about, I think we’re done.”
“Actually, I have some leads on the trafficking.” Baxter surprises me by speaking up. So much for being a silent board member. “It’s not much, but I will forward through on email so that everyone is kept up to date. I also have a few jobs that will be required and will send that information as well. After talking with the three musketeers and them giving me everything they know, I think we’re close to finding out who has been working with Harold.”
It's going to be like finding a needle in a haystack. He has over fifty years’ experience within The Order so he knows how to hide from us.
“I would like to set up another meeting with them. This time I want to go to where they can all meet with me.”
Baxter nods.
“We’ll all meet again soon. Aadi and Bex you will need to meet with the other recruits for training, and to fast track through your initiation, though at this point, with your lineage, it’s simply a box-checking exercise,” Sawyer says.
Bex snorts, I cut a glare to her.
“I’m sorry, this is a lot to take in. And training? What could we possibly be good at? That guy looks like he’s planning a way to murder us all and make it look like a mass suicide.”
Baxter smiles at her comment. She isn’t far from the mark. I’m sure something of that nature has been running through his head since we are keeping him from his stalking activities. I dread to think what he’ll actually do if we don’t find a way to give him his pardon.
“You’re pretty good at running your mouth,” Aadi quips.
“You don’t seem to mind my mouth,” she throws back, and Kalen loses it.
“Let’s wrap this up. I’ll have all the information you need forwarded to each of you. I can’t emphasise enough how important it is that we get this sorted as soon as possible.”
They all agree and we end the session. I sigh in relief that I made it through my first official meeting. Let’s just hope that everything else runs as smoothly. But for now, I want to go and see my dad. I’ve missed him, and sometimes a girl just needs a hug from her daddy.