Satisfaction by Marie Rochelle Page A

commercial airline.”
    “Shit!” Jace cursed.
    He reached for the Scotch in front of him and tossed it back in one swallow, savoring the taste as it burnt his throat as it went down. There was no way in hell he was going to be here when his father showed up. His life in Atlanta had been peaceful and all about him for the last hundred years or so.
    He couldn’t stay and let his father ruin it for him. Maybe it was time for him to visit his baby brother and meet his mate. Anything was better than getting a lecture from the one parent who didn’t know how to take no as an answer.
    “Thanks for telling me,” he said, standing up. “Call and tell Victor to get the plane ready. I think it’s time for me to go on vacation for a few weeks. Can you watch the club for me while I’m gone?”
    “Sure I can. I have done it before,” Clark answered, looking at him. “Where do you want me to tell Sebastian you are when he gets here? Because you know that he isn’t going to accept ‘I don’t know’ as an answer.”
    Jace thought about Clark’s question for a few minutes. There were a lot of things he wanted to tell his father, but he wouldn’t put his best friend in the middle of his family drama. Everything going on was his problem to take care of and not Clark’s.
    “Honestly, I rather you tell him to get his ass back on his private plane and go back home. He doesn’t care about Devin’s well-being; furthermore, Sebastian sure in the hell isn’t caring about me. I was the first son to defy him. I left home centuries ago, and he never contacted me until Devin broke free of his tight grip.”
    Taking off his glasses, Clark pinched the bridge of his nose, then put them back on. “You know I can’t tell him that, but I will think of something to send him back on his way. Do you know how long you will be gone? This club doesn’t run the same when you aren’t here every night keeping everything under control. I can do a good job, but not as well as you.”
    “I’m not positive about how long I will be gone. I haven’t seen my brother in a while, so I might make it a family reunion of sorts,” Jace answered.
    He hoped Devin would welcome him with open arms instead of slamming the door in his face, but he wasn’t sure what kind of greeting he would receive once he got there.
    “Well, don’t worry about it. Family is the most important thing. You need to tell your brother what is going on with your father,” Clark told him. “I’ll call you in a few days to let you know what is going on here.”
    Jace would rather not hear anything about Sebastian, but it could be something important. He couldn’t chance not taking any kind of communication from Clark about home. His business was extremely important to him, so he would keep his cell phone close at all times.
    “All right, you can call me. Just make sure when you do that you don’t have anyone listening in on the conversation.” He didn’t think he needed to go into any more detail than he just did.
    Jace’s heightened eyesight saw Clark’s frown in the dimly lit nightclub. He already knew what his friend was going to ask him before the words left his mouth. His buddy was pretty easy to read in most situations; nothing he ever said or told him came as a surprise to him.
    “Are you sure your father would listen in on a private phone call?” he questioned, surprised.
    “Yes, he would do it, because he loves to be the one in control of everything going on around him. He thinks the world is his to do whatever he wants to do with it.” He knew this was true from firsthand experience, which was one of the reasons he left home as soon as he could save up enough money from odd jobs to do it.
    All he wanted to do was get out of town away from his father as fast as he could. Nothing good would come from him and his father being inside the same room now that he was an older vampire. He couldn’t live by Sebastian’s rules then, and he sure in the hell wasn’t