Page 115 of Control's Undoing

The moment he spoke the admiral of Hungary’s name, Colum knew he’d made a mistake.

Eric shook his head.“No.No,” he said with more force.

Colum’s stomach sank.“Eric, please.I don’t under?—”

“I can’t talk about this right now.I have to go.”

Before Colum could demand an answer, the call disconnected.

Annie and Xavier had been sitting next to each other on the bed, directly in front of him.While they hadn’t seen Eric, they’d heard the conversation, and the matching looks of shock and devastation on their faces nearly took Colum down.

His knees went weak, and it felt for all the world like he’d just been punched in the stomach.Hard.

This…this was why he lived his life firmly in the realm of the realist.Josephine probably would have accused him of actually straddling the line between realism and pessimism, but the joke would have been on her.

Because he’d been right to worry, to doubt.He swallowed heavily, his emotions trapped on a spinning merry-go-round, anger whirling around, replaced by devastation, whirling around, replaced by hopelessness, whirling around and around and around.

“Feck,” he breathed, dizzy from the deep-seated anguish settling in.

“He said no,” Xavier said in disbelief, as if speaking those words would make them make sense.

They didn’t.

“No,” Annie said, shaking her head violently, firmly locked in the grips of denial.“No.He can’t say no.He can’t do that.He can’t,” she insisted.

Colum’s heart shattered.Because the truth was…

“He can.And he did.”

ChapterTwenty

Franco: If you want to defect to the Trinity Masters, we’d protect you.

Franco: You and anyone else you wanted to bring.

Franco: It would mean war, but Juliette has control of the U.S.nuclear arsenal.

Franco: Not that we’d use it…

Colum: Why does she have nukes?

Franco: YOU WANT THE U.S.GOVERNMENT TO BE IN CHARGE OF IT?

Colum: Valid point.

Eric was ready for this fight.

The fight he had with Nikolett back in Dublin had been less of a fight and more of her justifiably calling him an asshole and a coward.

But this?Now they were going to fight, and not as Eric and Nikolett but as the fleet admiral and the admiral of Hungary.He rarely pulled rank on her, and there were relatively few circumstances where he reallycouldpull rank.

Forcing her into marriage had been one of those few.

He wasn’t going to think about her marriage or his own failure to find a way for Colum to have everything he wanted.Everything he deserved—a job he loved, a trinity he loved.

Hell, Eric hadn’t even really listened to Colum when he called, going on about something convoluted, somehow related to the admiralty of France and annulments.Whatever that conversation was, Eric knew it needed his full attention, and he couldn’t focus on anything else until he saw Nikolett.

Nikolett.

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