A Menage Made On Madison [The Federation 1] (Siren Publishing Ménage Amour) Page 25

  Sat behind the large desk, in a room that mimicked her own office, for it was filled with Earth paraphernalia, he looked like a stranger. She knew, just from looking at him, that getting back to her men was not going to be as easy as telling this man she loved Rafer and Knox.

  Sighing, she mumbled, “You’re behind all that madness at the hotel, aren’t you?”

  It made sense, and when he narrowed his eyes at her, she rolled her eyes and sank back into her seat, pulling her hand from his.

  “I had to get you out of there.”

  “You really didn’t. I’m happy, Dad. Very happy. Well, I was until that shit started happening. My staff being abducted, a bomb planted in my bar…and now, my actually being kidnapped as well. What the hell were you thinking? If you knew I was there, why didn’t you just come down to visit me? And don’t pull the ‘I’m the Captain of The Lady’ bullshit. You could have disguised your face, your appearance. If anyone knows how lax the Garda is down there, it’s you. Especially the way you’ve been smuggling crap into the planet for God knows how long.”

  Gray mimicked her posture, and sank back into his desk chair. He studied her and said, “I’ve been looking for you for decades, Parker. It’s only when we…” He coughed. “—bought a DNA reader and I had one of my men look through the registry that I found you. Two annals it’s taken me to get close to Madison. Then, to get an in into that hotel. Two annals of sucking up to the bastard who stole you. The irony is, once we found you, you started appearing in the periodicals. Talk about a twist of fate.”

  “Sucking up?” she shrieked. “You charged way over the odds for most of the crap we bought from you. We had to take a loss on some of it. And that in, I want names, Dad. I want to know who the treacherous bastards on my payroll are.”

  He blinked at that. “You know what we smuggled?”

  She gritted her teeth. “I’m Knox’s partner. We discussed the idea of using the black market to please our guests. It’s something business partners talk about—you know, breaking intergalactic law.”

  Gray glared at her. “You really mean it. You’ve cozied up to that alien son of a bitch.”

  “Hey. Less of the alien. I love that son of a bitch, Dad.”

  “How could you?” he cried, staring at her like she was an alien herself.

  “He’s an easy man to love. One of the best you’ll ever meet.”

  “Man. Some fucking man. He’s not for you, Parker. He’s not one of your kind.”

  “Maybe not, but I’ve made my home with him. He’s who I want to be with. Him and Rafer. Nobody else.”

  “I can’t believe my daughter’s telling me this. After all the work this ship has gone to undermine the Fleet, and you’re cozying up to one of them.”

  “You know Rafer is in the Fleet?” she asked, scowling at him, then shook her head as she recalled the man in the Rec’ room. Christ, it seemed like a lifetime had passed since she’d last seen the bastard. “Hell, of course you do. That guy, the one dressed like a Narcian…you’ve been spying on us all through him.”

  “I know everything about the Baxx family. I know their fathers are in debt, and I know one of their brothers likes to visit Beocrish brothels when he’s on neutral land.”

  “Please tell me you had nothing to do with Rafer’s injuries. Please, let it just be that guy was spying on him.” When Gray looked down at his desk and picked up a comm unit, she had her answer. “He almost died, Dad. You almost killed my mate.” She felt her jaw slacken, then she bit down. “I listened in on some of his conversations. He thinks he had a mole in his unit, and he was right. He thinks someone’s trying to kill him—turns out it’s his father-in-law. How great is that?” She pressed a hand to her aching head and willed the pain away. Not surprisingly, it didn’t work.

  When he didn’t reply, just typed something into his comm unit, she stared at him. Aghast. He eventually murmured, “I did it for you. I needed to get you out of there. Instead, I made it harder myself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I thought if that bastard died, your owner would go back to Shuzon for the funeral. I thought he’d leave you in the hotel, like you were some such baggage.” He pulled in a breath. “Instead, the bastard kept on surviving and dragged his own fucking Fleet ship with him.

  “Then, the first attempt at grabbing you went wrong. The bastards I hired mistook you for the woman they snatched. I told them they had to get you inside the hotel, but did they fucking listen? No, of course not. And then, when I bribed someone to set the bomb in the hotel where you were scheduled to be that notte, you weren’t there, and the next set of useless fucks on my payroll couldn’t find you in the mess.

  “The next deya, what do I see? You! I see you on the front page of the fucking periodicals. It’s been a complete and utter disaster. But it’s all come right now. You’re here. Where you should be.”

  Was she supposed to be touched at all the trouble he’d gone to to save her? To rescue her? She reckoned she would be if she’d needed saving. “Dad, I don’t want to seem ungrateful. It’s so wonderful to see you, I just wish you hadn’t had to kidnap me to visit me for the first time in decades….”

  “I didn’t kidnap you. A man can’t kidnap his own daughter,” he bit out, interrupting her.

  “Yeah, well, we can agree to disagree on that point.”

  “I had to get you out of there. Don’t you see that? You need to be here, with people like you. You belong with us.”

  “No. I belong with my mates. And they belong with me. I-I…thank you, for everything you’ve done. If I’d been in the situation you envisaged, then I’d be so grateful for your coming to find me. But I’m happy, Dad. I wouldn’t say that if I weren’t. They haven’t twisted my mind to make me think I’m happy, either.”

  Gray shook his head. “I think you need some space, some time to get used to the idea that you’re no longer in captivity. That you’re free.” So saying, the doors behind her opened and as she turned her head to look at the new arrivals, she frowned at the sight of two men who had appeared.

  When the medication gun went to her neck, she froze. “Don’t do this, Dad,” she whispered.

  “I’m doing this for your benefit, Parker.”

  And that was that.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  “I’m doing this for your benefit, Parker.”

  If she heard that statement any more times, she knew she’d go insane. It was worse than Rafer’s, “It’s the Shuzon way.”

  She’d tried screaming, hitting, biting, spitting, but nothing seemed to work. Nothing seemed to open her dad’s eyes to the truth. She understood that this was out of love. That he truly feared for her mental health, and that he wanted her to be free from—in his words—that two-cocked, sick son of a bitch.

  When she wasn’t frothing at the mouth with rage, she could be almost touched at his need to protect her, but then she’d remember she’d been gone for four deyas and she knew Knox and Rafer would be terrified.

  The only bright side in this fucking farce was she’d determined who the thieves were in the hotel. They’d apparently come to her father with a shopping list of contraband they’d wanted to purchase, and once Gray had known the dollars used to purchase said items had been stolen from Madison Hotel, he’d been all for it. As well as handing the bastards some extra dough for setting up that bomb in the bar. A bar where she’d been scheduled to work, had Knox’s impromptu dinner with the ministers of Madison government not been sprung on her.

  She had names, and when she got back to Madison, she’d enjoy firing those bastards. As well as handing them over to the Garda. The contraband they’d wanted to buy had been of the technological variety. Apparently they wanted to wage a technical war on Madison, to take the planet out of alien hands.

  Another cause her father agreed with.

  The only thing she hadn’t been able to make sense of as she whiled away the heurs in her cell—make that state room—was the issue with the surveyor who had t
racked the plots of land they’d need to enable the larger dome to be constructed. That was the only thing her father hadn’t admitted to—he hadn’t had a clue what she’d been talking about, in fact.

  And somehow, now all the cards were on the table, she had the feeling that that part was the key to something that went way over all of their heads.

  It was a hunch, and not a very nice one.

  It reminded her of her ancient history lessons. Classes that had skimmed everything from the Ancient Egyptians and gone all the way forward to the First World War. A war that had been triggered by the assassination of one diplomat, a man who hadn’t been all that important in world politics.

  The thought, which had occurred to her three deyas ago, after the second unsuccessful conversation with her father, still had the power to make her queasy. Maybe she was looking for trouble where there wasn’t any, but she really didn’t think so. Only talking to Knox and Rafer about it would make her feel better. Unfortunately, they weren’t here, and didn’t look set to be for a while longer.

  When her door opened, she didn’t even bother turning from her contemplation of the ceiling to look at who had arrived. “I’m not hungry, Dad.”

  “You have to eat something.”

  “I’m not hungry. I never eat when I’m stressed. Hell, don’t you remember SAT year?”

  He grunted, and she heard the tray being slid across the surface of the table as he put it down. The room was nice. In fact, it was first-class nice. Like his office, it was filled with Earth furniture. It was like being back at home, only they were flying, not stationary. She could even remember, during SAT year, her father coming to her, as he was now, with a tray of food.

  She huffed at the memory. How could so much time have passed between then and now? How could things have changed so much?

  At eighteen, the rest of her life had been ahead of her. She’d never imagined that Earth wouldn’t exist a few years later, that her mother and father would be gone from her life. That she’d end up at an alien slave auction, only to be bought and paid for by a man who would forever change her destiny.

  It had all come ‘round full circle. Only, that circle was more skewed than she’d ever have imagined possible.

  “This hunger strike has gone on long enough.”

  “No, this entire situation has gone on long enough,” she retorted, turning on her side to stare at him. “You already know Rafer is in the Fleet. He loves me, Dad. He’s going to set whatever technology he has to onto finding me. Do you really want to be found by the Fleet?”

  It was the only argument she’d found that seemed to work with him. Every time she mentioned it, his eyes shifted, and she could tell he was nervous, even though his bluster was always the same: “I’ve made a career out of hiding from the Fleet.”

  “Maybe you have, but they’ll keep no star unturned trying to find me. Plus, I’m chipped.”

  He waved a hand. “Diego deactivated that the other deya when you were unconscious.” At that, her heart sank. He must have seen her horror at that news, because he sighed. “I can’t believe that upsets you, Parker. What the hell happened to you?”

  “I grew up, Dad. And I fell in love.”

  “With an alien.”

  “I don’t care if he’s Shuzon. I don’t care that Rafer is, too. I love them both. I have for a very long time. You taking them away from me doesn’t make me happy. Please, Daddy, take me home. I just want to be with them.”

  His jaw firmed at that. “Diego says you don’t have Stockholm Syndrome.”

  Diego was the onboard medical officer, and she rolled her eyes at his diagnosis. “I told you I didn’t.”

  “I don’t know how you can love them, Parker. They’re…monsters.”

  “They’re not. Some of them are, but not Rafer and Knox. They’re mine. They’d never hurt me. I swear it. They get me mad, and they say things sometimes that make me want to throttle them, but that’s like you and Mom were. That’s all I’ve ever wanted, and I found it. Twice over.”

  Gray sat down on a Barcalounger—she had no idea where the hell he’d found that—and stared at her. “Did you ever wonder how I got this ship?”

  She jerked a shoulder. “I’ve had a lot of time to think, and considering all the stuff you’ve told me, that’s been the last thing on my mind, because I just assumed you’d stolen it.”

  He huffed a breath at that, then unfastened the button on his shirt cuff. From all the staff she’d seen on board, her father was the only one who dressed like he was back in the twenty-first century. Everything had to be bespoke tailored, because it had been decades since she’d seen button-down shirts like they’d had back on Earth. Shuzon shirts buttoned to the left, not down the center—when they wore jackets, they didn’t like to see a row of fasteners. It was so long since she’d seen a shirt of the Earth variety, it had filled her with nostalgia.

  Over a fucking shirt.

  This ship was turning her doolally.

  She watched as he rolled up the cuff and revealed a band. A slave band. A Bribunna slave band to be specific.

  “Oh, Daddy. You were sold, too. I mean, I guessed you had to be. No Earthling wasn’t, but…to a Bribunna?” She got up off the bed, headed over to him, and knelt at the side of the chair. She reached for his hands and held them in her own. “I’m so sorry, Daddy.”

  He shook his head, lips quirking to the side at her words. “It’s okay, sweet pea. I was lucky. I was a favored pet.”

  Parker closed her eyes. Her dad was nobody’s pet.

  “Ilyana was old. Her slaves were companions more than anything, but she liked me more than most. Before she died, she believed herself in love with me. Gave me my papers, and this ship, and told me they were mine. She gave them to me on Bribunna, a few semanals before she passed.” He pulled a face. “She was an old hag, and I told her so, often, but I’d grown fond of her. Her daughters went crazy when she said she was going on a trip, because they knew how ill she was, but I couldn’t leave her to them. They were like jackals, after her fortune. I could have gone when she gave me the papers, but I….”

  Parker repeated his words, “You’d grown fond of her, too.”

  He nodded, then cleared his throat. “She died on board. I gave her a burial at space like she wanted, whereas her daughters wanted her to go on the funeral pyre, even though she was terrified of fire. I didn’t steal The Lady.”

  The Lady…Ilyana. She must have been an important Bribunna. “You can understand, to a small degree, how I feel, then.”

  “I can, Parker, but I didn’t love Ilyana. She was good to me, and I didn’t want to repay her kindnesses by leaving her to the family she hated, especially when she did love me.”

  “Then why doesn’t the way I feel make sense to you? If Ilyana could love you, someone who was an alien to her, why can’t Rafer and Knox love me?”

  He bowed his head. “I lost you once, Parker, I don’t want to lose you again. And if I let you go back, you will be lost to me. I can’t come and visit. Not when that alien is a member of the goddamn Fleet.”

  For a moment, she had to hide her excitement. This was the first time her father had even spoken like this. The past four deyas, he’d been beyond stubborn. Not even contemplating letting her go back. This was a huge breakthrough.

  “Daddy, he loves me. He won’t let the Fleet know who you are if I ask him to keep it a secret. And anyway, he’s retiring soon.”

  He shook his head. “Change is coming, love. Things aren’t going to be the same for a while longer. The Federation’s unsettled, and I’ve my ear close enough to the pulse to know war’s coming.”

  Her eyes widened, because his words mirrored her earlier thoughts. “Don’t say that, Daddy. Not another war.”

  “I can’t help it, love. It’s not up to me to control it. The Federation’s mighty big, and looking to get bigger. It’s pissed off a lot of folk. Not just the Barconians, who have enough firepower to take a stand, but people inside the Union as well. I might
not be able to get to you again if something happens.”

  “Knox and Rafer will keep me safe if war does break out. But let’s hope it won’t, eh? Nobody wants that.”

  He sighed, then reached over to pat her cheek. “You always were a dreamer.”

  She placed her hand over the one he’d used to cup her chin. “Take me home, Daddy. Please. Or, let me contact them. Let me speak to them, and we can figure out a way to get me back without you getting into trouble. I don’t want this to be the last time I see you, Dad.”

  “I don’t want to let you go, Parker.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve fought for so long, tried to find you for what feels like half my life. I don’t want it to end this way.”

  “My world is on Madison, Dad. If you can sneak your way in, then yours could be, too.”

  He grunted at that, then fell into silence. She didn’t break it, for the moment, it felt so good to be close to her daddy. A luxury she’d never thought to experience ever again. Just the thought made tears prick her eyes. God, she was so lucky to be here with him—even if the situation was causing her mates’ distress.

  “I’ll ask Rand if he can set up a line to their comm units. If you have their numbers?”

  She tried to hide her excitement as she looked up at him. “Thank you, Daddy,” she whispered. “I swear, I love them and they love me. I’m not lying, and I’m not their slaves.” She squeezed his hands, then got to her feet, headed over to the roller desk tucked in the corner, and wrote on the paper tucked inside with a real-life pen. Where he’d found either item she didn’t know. Paper was rarer than Barcaloungers.

  She scribbled down the number to Knox’s unit and returned to him. He’d moved to stand, and as she passed him the note, she pressed her lips to his cheek. “I don’t want you to become a stranger. I want to know you again.”