Deal with the Devil
The travel from public coffee spot to office desk consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The office had always felt like a cage. Sebastian had decorated it himself—charcoal walls, a mahogany desk that had belonged to his grandfather, a single painting of the Scottish highlands where the Winslow pack had once roamed free. He’d chosen every piece to remind himself of what he was fighting for.
Now, standing at the window with his back to the door, he realized he’d built his own prison.
The text from Cole had come in six minutes ago. He’d read it twice, memorized the cadence of the warning, then set the phone face-down on the polished wood. *Sterling drones just pinged your last location. Flynn knows you’re here.*
Of course he did. Flynn Sterling always knew.
Sebastian listened to the clock on the mantelpiece—a vintage brass piece that ticked with the precision of a heart monitor. It was 8:47 PM. The building was quiet. Security had logged out at eight. The cleaning crew wouldn’t arrive until ten.
He turned when he heard the elevator doors open down the hall. Three sets of footsteps. Two heavy, one deliberate. The heavy ones stopped at the reception desk. The deliberate one kept coming.
Beckett Sterling didn’t knock.
The door swung open, and Beckett stepped through with the ease of a man who’d never been denied entry to anything. He was thirty-four, three years younger than Sebastian, with the kind of polished cruelty that came from generations of money and zero consequences. His suit was midnight blue, Italian cut, worth more than most people’s cars. His smile was worse.
“Sebastian.” Beckett closed the door behind him without looking. “You’re harder to find than I expected. I respect that.”
“Your father sent you.” Sebastian didn’t move from the window. “He usually sends someone with a warrant when he wants to intimidate me. You’re a demotion.”
Beckett laughed. It was a practiced sound, hollow at the edges. He crossed to the desk and ran a finger along the edge of the mahogany, testing the grain.
“My father doesn’t send me anywhere, Sebastian. I came because I wanted to see the man who’s been hiding a pack worth two hundred million in liquid assets, pretending it doesn’t exist.” He picked up a pen from the desk—a Montblanc, gold trim—and examined it. “You’ve been clever. I’ll give you that. Offshore trusts, shell corporations, a holding company registered in Luxembourg that traces back to a defunct shipping firm in Singapore. It took my analysts three months to untangle it.”
“Then your analysts are slow.”
Beckett’s smile sharpened. He set the pen down with a click. “They’re thorough. Which is why they also found the apartment in Camden. The one registered to a woman named Aurora Waverly.”
Sebastian’s pulse didn’t change. His breathing stayed even. But his hand, resting against his thigh, curled into a fist. He kept his face neutral, his body still, and counted the seconds it would take to cross the room and put his hands around Beckett’s throat.
Eight seconds. Maybe seven.
“I don’t know that name,” Sebastian said.
“You’re a terrible liar.” Beckett pulled out the visitor chair and sat, crossing one leg over the other. He reached into his jacket and produced a manila folder, which he tossed onto the desk. It slid across the polished surface and stopped at the edge. “I have photos. School records. A birth certificate for a Milo Waverly, age eight. Father listed as unknown.”
Sebastian’s fist tightened. His knuckles went white.
“Here’s what I don’t understand.” Beckett leaned back, studying him with the detached curiosity of a scientist examining a specimen. “You’re intelligent. You’ve built a network that spans three continents. You’ve kept the Winslow pack alive through economic warfare, legal maneuvering, and a level of operational security that I genuinely admire. And yet you left a trail that leads directly to a woman and a child in a rent-controlled apartment in north London.”
“You don’t know anything.”
“I know you visit her every Tuesday night,” Beckett said. “I know you bring the boy a book—always a book, never a toy. I know you stay until 10:47 PM, and you leave through the fire exit. I know you’ve never once stayed the night.”
Sebastian’s throat closed. He forced it open.
“What do you want, Beckett?”
“I want you to stop pretending you have a choice.” Beckett stood and walked around the desk to face the window. He looked out at the London skyline, the lights of the city bleeding into the haze. “My father is old. He’s paranoid. He sees your pack as a threat, a loose end that needs to be tied off before he steps down. I see it as an opportunity.”
He turned to face Sebastian, and for a moment, the mask of charm slipped. Beneath it was something colder—something that had been honed in boardrooms and backroom deals, where the currency was leverage and the only rule was winning.
“I have a merger agreement,” Beckett said. “It’s simple. You dissolve the Winslow pack’s territorial claims. You sign control of your assets to Sterling Holdings. In exchange, I ensure that no information about Aurora Waverly or her son ever reaches the press. The boy grows up anonymous. The woman lives her life in peace. And you walk away with a severance package that would make a tech CEO weep.”
Sebastian stared at him. The clock ticked. 8:51 PM.
“And if I refuse?”
Beckett’s smile never wavered. “Then I release the photos. I release the birth certificate. I release the recordings of your phone calls—yes, I have those too—and I let the tabloids run wild. By Thursday morning, Aurora Waverly will be the most famous woman in Britain. And her son will be the bastard heir of the most powerful werewolf pack in London.”
The silence stretched. Sebastian could hear his own heartbeat, steady and slow, a metronome counting down to something irreversible.
He looked at the folder on his desk. He didn’t open it. He didn’t need to.
“You’re threatening a woman and a child,” Sebastian said quietly. “That’s not a negotiation. That’s a hostage situation.”
“Call it whatever you like.” Beckett checked his watch. “I have a dinner reservation at nine-thirty. I need an answer before I leave.”
Sebastian didn’t move. He stood at the window, his body framed by the dark glass, and he watched Beckett’s reflection in the pane. The younger man’s posture was relaxed, confident, the posture of someone who had never lost a fight.
He had no idea what he was dealing with.
“I’ll give you my answer tomorrow,” Sebastian said.
“That’s not acceptable.”
“It’s the only offer you’re getting. You want me to sign away everything my family built in a hundred and fifty years. I’m not doing it in a ten-minute conversation while you check your watch.” Sebastian stepped away from the window and walked to his desk. He placed his hands flat on the wood, palms down, and met Beckett’s eyes. “You have my word. I will give you a definitive answer by noon tomorrow. In the meantime, you will call off your father’s drones. And you will keep your people away from Camden.”
Beckett studied him for a long moment. The clock ticked. 8:54 PM.
“Noon tomorrow,” Beckett said finally. He walked to the door, then paused with his hand on the handle. “If you’re not in my office by 12:01, I release everything. And I won’t give you another warning.”
He left. The door swung shut behind him. The two heavy footsteps retreated down the hall, and the elevator doors opened, then closed.
Sebastian stood alone in the dark office.
For a full minute, he didn’t move. He counted his breaths. He watched the second hand of the clock sweep past twelve, past fifteen, past twenty. Then he picked up his phone and dialed.
Cole answered on the first ring. “I saw him leave. What’s the play?”
“He knows about Aurora. He knows about Milo. He has photos, records, call logs.” Sebastian’s voice was flat, stripped of emotion. “He’s giving me until noon tomorrow to sign over the pack. If I don’t, he goes public.”
“Fuck.” A beat of silence. “I can pull the security tapes from his building. See if I can find out how deep the surveillance goes. Maybe we can preempt the release.”
“Do it. But that’s not why I’m calling.” Sebastian picked up the folder from his desk. He still didn’t open it. “Flynn deployed a team to follow Aurora. He’s not waiting for my answer. He’s already moving.”
“I’ll intercept. I’ve got four men on standby. We can secure her building, sweep for listening devices, and set up a perimeter.”
“No.” Sebastian’s voice hardened. “You secure the building. You sweep for devices. You set up a perimeter. But you do not engage. If you see anyone from Sterling, you stay back. You observe. You report. I’m not giving them an excuse to escalate.”
“Understood.” Cole paused. “And the boy?”
Sebastian closed his eyes. He saw Milo’s face—the gap-toothed smile, the too-serious brow, the way he’d hugged Sebastian last Tuesday and said, *“You smell different than the other grown-ups. Like trees.”*
“The boy stays with his mother,” Sebastian said. “You don’t separate them. You don’t approach them. You keep them safe from a distance until I tell you otherwise.”
“Copy that. I’ll check in when the perimeter is set.”
The line went dead.
Sebastian set the phone down and opened the folder.
The first photograph was of Aurora. She was standing outside a café in Camden, holding a paper cup, laughing at something off-camera. The second was of Milo—at school, walking through the gate with his backpack slung over one shoulder, a determined look on his face.
The third was a birth certificate.
Father: Unknown.
Sebastian’s hand trembled. He forced it still.
He turned to the final page in the folder. It wasn’t a photograph or a record. It was a single sheet of paper, typed, with the Sterling Holdings letterhead at the top.
It was a ledger. A list of debts.
And at the bottom, in Beckett’s handwriting, was a note: *“One life. Signed over, sealed, and delivered. Due: 12:00 PM, tomorrow.”*
Sebastian read it twice. Then he folded the ledger and tucked it into his jacket pocket.
He had until noon.
He walked to the window and looked out at the city. Somewhere in that sprawl of lights and concrete, Aurora was putting Milo to bed. She was reading him a story. She was kissing his forehead and turning off the lamp. She had no idea that the walls of her life had already been breached.
The clock ticked. 9:03 PM.
Sebastian’s phone buzzed.
He picked it up. The screen glowed with an incoming call.
Aurora.
He answered. “Aurora.”
Her voice was low, hurried, threaded with panic. “He knows my name, Margot. He said Milo is his. And that there are men with guns outside my door.”