Page 47 of A Cobbled Conspiracy
“You don’t know that! You don’t know anything about those individual people. For all you know, some of them were just clerks and accountants trying to pay their bills.”
My hand moved protectively to my stomach again, the gesture unconscious but fierce. Those people had families too. Children who depended on them.
How could I raise a child with someone who saw human suffering as acceptable collateral damage?
“It doesn’t matter,” Dominic said, his alpha authority bleeding into his voice. “I will always choose to protect you over strangers. That’s not a moral failing, the way I see it.”
“That’s exactly the problem!” I was shouting now, weeks of stress and pregnancy hormones and moral outrage finally boiling over. “You see the world in terms of us versus them, and anyone who isn’t us is expendable!”
“Yes,” Dominic said without hesitation. “That’s exactly how I see it. And it’s how I’ll always see it.”
His complete lack of remorse was somehow more infuriating than if he’d tried to justify his actions. But there was something else, something that had been nagging at me since Sarah’s call. The way they’d looked at each other, the careful evasiveness, the sense that I was missing something crucial.
“This was always the plan, wasn’t it?” I said quietly, the words coming from somewhere deep and certain. “You weren’t saving my community. You were claiming it.”
The silence stretched too long. Blake’s carefully neutral expression flickered, and Dominic’s jaw tightened.
“That’s not—” Dominic started.
“Blake,” I turned to face him directly, my voice sharp. “You were part of this from the beginning. What was the original plan? Before everything changed?”
"Well…" Blake's mouth opened, then closed again. His blue eyes darted toward his cousin.
“When did the plan change, Dominic?” My voice was quiet now. “When did you decide to be the hero instead of the villain? Was it before or after you got me into bed?”
“You don’t understand?—”
“Oh god.” I stepped back, pieces clicking into place with horrible clarity. “The seduction was part of it, wasn't it?"
“It wasn’t like that?—”
“When did it stop being like that? When did I stop being a mark and become your mate?” I asked. “Or did it ever stop?”
“You’re twisting this,” Dominic said, but his scent carried guilt and old shame.
“Am I? Because your methods haven’t changed, have they? You’re still destroying people to get what you want. The only difference is now you’re doing itforme instead oftome.”
Blake looked deeply uncomfortable under my direct scrutiny. “Leo, the circumstances have changed completely?—”
“Answer the question, Blake.” My voice carried a steel I didn’t know I possessed. “You’re the architect of corporate strategies. This was your plan originally, wasn’t it? Before Dominic developed feelings for me. What were you two actually planning to do to my community?”
Blake glanced at Dominic, who nodded grimly.
“Complete acquisition,” Blake said quietly. “We were going to systematically acquire every property in the historical district,modernize the buildings, and lease them to high-end retailers. Turn it into a luxury shopping destination.”
“And my shop?”
“Would have been demolished,”Dominic said, his words clipped and distant. “Along with most of the original structures. We were going to keep the facades for historical authenticity, but gut the interiors.”
The words hit me like a physical blow. Everything I’d inherited from my grandfather, everything I’d worked to preserve and protect—they would have destroyed it all.
“And me?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. “What was I in this plan?”
“You were supposed to be temporary,” Dominic said, the words seeming to tear themselves from his throat. “A way to understand the community's potential for resistance, to find pressure points. I intended to seduce you, gain your trust, maybe get you to influence others to sell willingly.”
“Instead of?”
“Instead of forcing them out through harassment and financial pressure the way Vertex was doing,” he finished. “It would have been cleaner, less public scrutiny. Less painful.”