My dear little broccolis💚💚💚
~ So remember that Jace is five years older than Clary in this Fic, and the story is rated M. (I am not removing this warning ever, because some people forgot on other fanfics, and got shocked 60 chapters into the story)
~ Anyway, enjoy the chapter
Love, Mina💚💚💚
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Chapter 42: Complications (4,0K)
‼️IF YOU'RE A GUEST REVIEWER
CHECK AT THE END‼️
💚So, you know I was supposed to get a tattoo. Well, the tattoo artist cancelled on me last minute (literally, while I was in the shop, ready to be butchered). It was so unprofessional, and I was so annoyed! Who does that?!
💚But, this is not the reason I was a day late. I fell back into an old favourite book of mine, and I had some troubles putting it down (I didn't, I finished the whole two first books of the series, and I am restraining to read the third one to actually write a little). And I just finished writing at …5am, waking up will be hard, haha
💚Also, lately I am fuelling on Bollywood songs. I've always loved them, but lately, I only listen to that kind of songs. So here's a big up to all of you who know the awesomeness behind Bollywood movies. And if you do, which is your favourite movie? Mine is Devdas. (if you don't know Bollywood, but are curious, WATCH IT NOW!)
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Jace's PoV
Two days after Valentine's annual couple of days off, Jace and he were in his office, talking about some activities in Italy that were becoming troublesome. The activity in itself wasn't that bothering Idris, after all, Valentine had contemplated doing some wind energy himself, before abandoning the idea for a lack of trusty people abroad. But the Mazarati were starting to gain too much money for Valentine's taste, and therefore they started to get cocky and try to mix with businesses where Idris already had full control over.
Valentine wanted to settle this thing in a diplomatic fashion, while Jace was rather leaning toward a brutal and frontal blow. Something curt and decisive that would make Luca Mazarati think twice before trying to steal business from them. still, by the end of their conversation, Jace had agreed to bite his bone and to try Valentine's way who preached that direct violence wasn't always the way.
A part of Jace thought it was rich coming from a man who killed his own son without even trying to get him help, but he could also see that if he wanted to entertain a somewhat business relationship with the Italian family, he would need to indeed, sometimes go for the diplomatic option. Moreover, he was due to go to Japan within the next week to settle some business with the head of the Yakuza, and he couldn't possibly be in Italy and in Japan at the same time. Japan being the more pressing matter, he would have to forgo his first instincts and simply let this one go.
As the conversation slowly drifted to their investments in South American most notorious products, Valentine received a text that he was clearly not expected. Jace saw disappointment on his boss's face before he was proposed,
"How about you join me for dinner? I've been ditched for the third night in a row, and Tessa probably already cooked for two."
Though he did not show a single emotion, Jace was still surprised by this piece of news. Clary had not come to see him since he left her to the cemetery five days ago, and he knew that she was reluctant to interrupt her best friend's post-wedding bliss.
He was tempted to refuse Valentine's offer, a part of him hoping that Clary would surprise him back home, but decided against it. He still had some things to see with his boos concerning his upcoming trip to Japan, as well as some things he wanted to change about the way their Columbian products were imported, and Jace had never been one to procrastinate.
So with a simple nod, he followed Valentine to his kitchen, still discreetly checking his phone when the older man wasn't looking. Once seated, Tessa served them some stuffed squash, with a little bit of lettuce on the side. She opened a bottle of white wine and disappeared before Jace could even say a word.
He watched the door through which the young maid had vanished, his brain slightly analysing how the brunette had been acting around him ever since he came back from Macau, and with a small smile, he told his boss, "I think your maid isn't really fond of me."
"To be honest, no one is really fond of you, Jace. You scare people," Valentine said the most naturally in the world, serving himself a generous glass of wine before typing something on his phone and digging in his food.
"Because you don't?" Jace snorted. Valentine spared him a compliant smile.
"Well, it is in the job description, isn't it? What kind of businesses would I be running if I didn't scare people a bit? But I lost all my credibility with Tessa when she saw me with her kids."
Jace nodded, not commenting that he thought that children were Valentine's weakness. A part of him had always wondered why Valentine had such a huge place when it was only his daughter and him. And the more he was hearing Clary talk about her father and how he treated her, her late-brother and his Godchildren, the more Jace was convinced that Valentine had had the hope to have a numerous family before his wife died.
And Jace had already seen glimpses of Tessa's twins every now and then. They were both well mannered and downright adorable, that he had no doubts that Valentine's scary facade completely cracked whenever he was around the two kids.
Valentine's phone buzzed, making him purse his lips slightly, which Jace had learnt over the years was a sign of his irritation.
"I truly wish that when you will have kids, you will be blessed with only boys. They are less worry and less maintenance," He said with a sigh, and though Jace knew his boss was talking about the woman they both loved in different ways, he did not bounce on the matter.
Ever since Jace had started working closely with Valentine, he had had the habit of hearing his boss complain every now and then about his daughter. Even more so when she started to grow up and wanted things such as boyfriends and sleepovers that did not involve a member of the Lightwood family.
"Does Raphael report to you about her whereabouts in the city?" Valentine nonchalantly asked.
Though he was aware of the pact Valentine made with his daughter through Clary and the man himself, Jace knew very well that Valentine would never be able to let the control he had over the security of his daughter flaunter so easily. And there was the moment he had been expecting ever since Clary let him know the promise her father made. Everything was in the fine print. Valentine promised not to ask directly to the person that would be following her, and he wasn't. He was using Jace as a buffer.
And would he have not been in a relationship with the girl, Jace wouldn't have minded. After all, this arrangement was giving peace of mind to the two Morgenstern, giving the two of them the impression that each had the control over what they felt was important. Valentine, his daughter's security, and Clary, her freedom.
Jace was no fool, and though Clary never mentioned it, he was absolutely sure that she and Raphael had a deal of some sort where he wouldn't have to actually follow her everywhere and all the time. He was sure of that because any person tracking Clary properly would have come to Jace to ask him a few questions. For instance, why would she so regularly come to his building, when sometimes she would come when her best friend was gone. That definitely implied the presence of a secret boyfriend, and Jace knew that any man working for Valentine would come to see him first, before going to their boss to tell him that his precious daughter had a secret lover. After all, Valentine was not known for his diplomacy when it came to his daughter.
So after swallowing his fork of delicious squash, Jace looked straight in his boss's brown eyes, and told him, "You had an arrangement with your daughter, and I'd rather not come between you and your daughter."
Valentine made a small sound with his nose, resuming eating his food as he nonchalantly said, "Speaking of which, Clary came to visit her mother's grave a few days ago."
Jace rose an eyebrow as if asking where was the correlation in all of that, and Valentine explained, "It was something I did not expect. For fifteen years, it has always been me. Even Hodge and Jonathan came on a different day. And Clary stopped going after Jonathan 'disappeared', no matter how much Hodge tried to make her go with him.
So imagine my surprise when I saw my daughter stumbling her way through the gravestones, and telling me that she decided to pay a visit to her Mom. She looks so much like her mother, that at first, I thought it was a ghost."
"Is there a question somewhere?" Jace asked, his tone placid. He knew that if Valentine asked upfront if he had been the one to bring Clary to the cemetery, he would honestly answer him. But what he did not care for, was playing a game of cat and mouse where Valentine would have plenty of innuendoes, hoping to make him slip up.
Valentine briefly looked at Jace who kept his poker face on, waiting for his boss to ask the ultimate question. It was in moments like that that Jace felt that Valentine had a fairly good idea of what was happening between him and his daughter. It was in moments like that that Jace remembered that Valentine was a very powerful man who had the whole city of New York in his pocket, and who loved his daughter above everything else. But there was always one thing that didn't add up.
Valentine was not a patient man, nor a forgiving man. If he would to ever find out that Jace was seeing his daughter, he wouldn't patiently say nothing and pretend he was ignorant of the situation, all the while training Jace to replace him when the time would come. He would most likely confront Jace, before feeding him to the pigs for going after his daughter, and behind his back.
Valentine Morgenstern wasn't a man that would simply let things be. He would take actions. Lethal actions. And nothing in his demeanour let Jace feel like he was about to die.
After a small moment during which the two men stared at one another, Valentine finally said, "No, I guess not. I was just surprised to see my daughter there. But in the end, it was worth it. Never prior to that day, I would have even imagined talking to Clary about her mother."
They kept on eating discussing their various businesses that were to take place, and Jace passing on the desert as usual. Just as Valentine was pouring himself a second cup of coffee, Jace sipping on his usual herbal tea, Clary made an apparition, accompanied to Jace's greatest surprise by Sebastian Velrac.
The young man politely nodded his head toward both Valentine and Jace while Clary went to her father to kiss his cheek, and check on his desert.
"I see that as soon as I'm not here, you're having cake," she accuses, pointing the remain of the piece of cake in front of her father.
"Carrot cake, my dear. It is still on your 'allowed-list' if I recall."
The young girl humphed, caught in her own web and not happy about it. She glanced briefly at Jace, not meeting his eyes, as usual when her father was around, and said, "Well, we'll leave you to whatever you were talking about, and I will find Tessa to tell her that Seb and I will be having coffee in the library."
Jace watched his girlfriend leave the kitchen, Sebastian Velrac short on her heels, a new and powerful feeling rising within him. If he were to listen to his guts, he would have gotten up and quickly put a stop to whatever was going on. A thousand questions wired in his mind, all with Clary and Sebastian as the main components. He wanted nothing more than to march to them and clearly state to Sebastian that he was not to mess with his girlfriend.
And this was exactly why he didn't do it. He was too surprised by this foreign feeling of possessiveness and anger that it grounded him, rending it impossible for him to move or say anything. He was not used to feeling so in lack of control of his feelings, and therefore himself.
When he finally took back control of his emotions, putting anything raw and new in a mental box to deal with it later, he sipped again on his tea, noticing just then that Valentine was still looking where his daughter had dispersed with her friend. And that's when something lit up in Jace. Why didn't Valentine say anything about his cherished daughter bringing a man home?
"I don't think it was a good idea taking Sebastian to replace his father," Valentine finally said, drinking from his coffee, his eyes still on the empty space his daughter used to occupy.
A week before going to Macau, Jace had convinced Valentine that working with Sebastian Velrac would be a good investment. And he was. He had brought the company a multi-million dollars deal that Mr Lightwood had been trying to snatch for months. And so, Jace helped the young Velrac in return, giving him all the information about his father and his double life.
As Jace expected it, Sebastian did not hesitate to rat his father out to both his wives who were now both suing him for half his fortune each. If Jace could say anything about Sebastian from the few interactions he had with him, it was that the young man was ambitious, and did not care for his father. When he learnt about his father two-timing his mother, he was more worried about how he would break the news to his mother, than about how this could destroy his father's life.
If he were honest, Jace actually was starting to like the man for he seemed to be someone interesting, even outside of business. But now that he was seeing him outside of the Clark Inc' building and businesses, he did not like what he so.
Still, that him being around Clary did not stop Sebastian to be a good businessman that would rather valuable to the company.
"He's good. He's actually better than his father," Jace said with a monotonous tone, though every fibre in him was screaming at him to agree with Valentine, and unleash the fury that was starting to show on his boss's face. He was sure that if he validated the older man's thoughts, Valentine would not hesitate on marching starlight to the library and drag Sebastian out of his house by the ear.
Valentine started drumming his fingers on the table, his eyes having never left the door. Then with a heavy sigh, he looked back at his desert, disregarding it, before planting his eyes on Jace. "Like I said, boys are less worry and less maintenance."
"But girls take better care of you in your golden days," Jace contoured, quoting an old adage that he heard Mrs Parvati say over and over again when she would brag about having only girls.
With those words, Jace got up, not wanting when Valentine's patience would wear thin and he would barge into whatever was happening in that library. Or that's what he told himself, avoiding to think that it was his patience that was wearing thin and that it would be him barging in that library.
During his ride home, Jace did best to ignore the gnawing feeling that was growing inside of him and showing him a side of him he was not sure to like, but when he was finally home, his mood had done anything but improve. He tried to wash away his new emotions under the shower, but his mood was even more sullen once he was dried.
And this was why he decided to call Clary. Usually, it was the other way around, but usually, Jace would be working late, and Clary wouldn't be intertwining young men in her house. She answered at the third ring, her voice cheery and oblivious of the bundle of nerves that Jace was at that moment.
"Hey! What a nice surprise to have you call me."
"How was your night?" Jace asked without preamble, realising as he said those words how cold his one had been. Clary didn't seem to pick up, because she gushed,
"It was wonderful! Seb and I went to a new production of Les Misérables and it was so good. I cried when Eponine died. No matter how many time I see that musical, Eponine always makes me cry."
And that's when Jace finally understood what was happening to him. He was jealous. It wasn't much that Clary had been with Sebastian (though he would like to have an explanation on that), but it was more that Sebastian had been able to take her out, in the open and that she thoroughly enjoyed it, when she would always get upset when he would try to bring their relationship to the open.
"So, Sebastian Velrac has the right to take you out on shows, whilst I can't?"
"Jace." He could almost picture her rolling her eyes. "You don't even like Broadway shows."
"Because you think that I wouldn't suck it up for you once in a while? Do you think so little of me?"
"No. I never said or implied that. It's just … well, you're working a lot, and I wanted to see that show, and Seb was in need to get out of his house for a while. I know he pretends he's fine with this thing going on with his Dad, but he's really affected by this whole mess. A few nights out did him some good."
"I don't mind that you're seeing him. I mind that you allow him things that you don't allow me," He snapped, realising that once assured that there was nothing going on but friendship and moral support, the only thing still eating him was what he just accused her of.
He heard her sigh. "I don't want to argue with you. Even less over the phone. But what you're saying doesn't make any sense. I allow things with you that I certainly don't allow other people to do. I'm not hearing you complain about that."
"It's not the same."
"And how so?"
"Because I don't like not being able to take my girlfriend to a fucking show when the rest of the whole wide world get to do so!" He snapped, surprising himself first.
He did not expect to burst like that, and it was the first time in a long time that he lashed at someone based simply on raw emotions. And he did not like it one bit. He liked even less that it was Clary who had to suffer the blow, and that they were having this conversation over the phone.
"Well, if you don't like it, maybe it would be best if we stopped," She retorted with the same snappy tone, and those words had the effect of a cold bucket of ice on Jace. "I mean, this had been fun but —"
"Do you want to quit on us?" He asked, his face livid while his insides had ceased to exist all of the sudden.
"No. But you're the one complaining about us, right now."
"I just want more us," He argued with a soft voice, calculating his tone and his words carefully, for he knew that one wrong word could mean the thing he dreaded the most.
"Well, that can be arranged. Us doesn't mean that we have to be out. I want us to be just us, is that wrong?"
Though Jace wasn't sure if Clary was aware of it, he knew that she had played him masterfully. She had given him the impression of giving him what he wanted, but without really doing it. This was something her father was expertly skilled at. And whether it was from experiencing it, or witnessing it, Clary had picked that skill.
"No. Of course not," Was all he said, admitting to himself that, though Valentine was weak when it came to his daughter, he himself was no better.
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Jace's PoV
Three weeks after his telephonic confrontation with Clary, Jace had to admit that one good thing came out of it, Clary came more often than once a week. In fact, he was the one missing out on their time together due to some business trips he could not postpone. But both time he came back from abroad, he found Clary waiting for him with a meal of her cooking (more or less good).
They never breached the topic of officialising their relationship again, and with the way things turned the last time, Jace had decided that as long as Clary would not decide by herself to take them out of the closet, he would not talk about it again. He would rather be her secret boyfriend, than her nothing.
A part of him wanted to talk to Kaelie about it, to have a feminine inside on Clary's brain, but he never did. Mostly because he knew what she would say about him being so compliant over something that was bothering him. It wasn't how healthy relationships bloomed. And it wasn't even healthy, to begin with. But no matter how weak it made him, he would rather have this tiny bit of a relationship with the redhead, than none at all. And honestly, it wasn't as if he were unhappy. On the contrary, he was very happy when he spent time with her, even more, when he made her see the stars.
And there was the issue of his feelings for Clary. He was very well aware that he was in love with her. And he had told her between lines how he felt about her, though he had always been careful not to say the three words to her. At first, he had convinced himself that he was just waiting for the right moment, but the more time they spent together, the more he actually wanted her to say it first. awake, aware and looking at him in the eye.
She was holding back the officialisation of their couple, he was holding back the next milestone of their relationship. It might be childish, borderline twisted, but he would not make that step as long as she would not make it first, or take the step she knew he wanted to take.
With a shake of his head, he came back to the present time, only to see with displeasure that Agent Garroway was walking in his direction. For a brief second, Jace had to admit that he was surprised to see Luke Garroway approach him in the open, just in front of Clark Inc', but after thinking about it, he realised that it was the only safe place where the FBI agent was sure to find him.
Still, he was in no mood to entertain the agent's disillusion, "Whatever you have to tell me, I am not interested."
The man held up his hands with a friendly smile that did not fool Jace, and told the young criminal, "I realised the other day that I have been going on the wrong foot with you. I have been trying to turn you against a man that took you under his wing at a young age … almost a father figure to you."
Jace ignored the taunt of the man, still walking away from the Clark Building, without any purpose in mind. Like he said before, he was in no mood on that particular day. It was extremely hot, the Mazarati were still bugging his mind, and one of their shipment from Brazil had been 'lost' before reaching New York.
"I have been trying to diss your father when I should have asked you, what would your real parents think if they knew what their son had become? I don't think Celine and Michael would appreciate hearing me tell them all about their son working for a criminal organisation …"
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‼️PLEASE DON'T BE A SILENT READER AND LEAVE A REVIEW
IT REALLY DOES HELP‼️
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💚Your thoughts and opinions are always welcomed💚
💚 Also, guys. I am back on Destined, So go check it out 😉
~ Anyway, question time:
💚 Does Valentine know? I know this is the billion dollars question!
💚 How do you feel about this tiny conflict between Clace?
💚 How is Jace going to react to this last sentence?
💚What did you think of this chapter overall? And what do you think will happen next?
💚What was your favourite part?
Anyway, Cassandra Clare owns the names of the characters from the Mortal Instruments franchise, everything else is mine.
‼️FOR GUEST REVIEWERS‼️
Guest 1: Well, Jocelyn is not a very interesting character in this story. Her presence has a big impact, no doubt, the whole Morgenstern family revolve around her death. But there's nothing more to learn. She was a good woman into a charity who married a mobster, and who died in a fire set by enemies. The only thing about her that was still a loose end was the conflict between Valentine and Clary, and now it has been resolved, so …
TheItalianGirl: I know, Jace is a sweetheart. well, almost, haha. He is still a master who kills and tortures people, and sell drugs and embezzle money. But when it comes to Clary he is a sweetheart. And for the conversation between Valentine and Clary, well … it is not for us to know, sorry. We will have bits of that moment, but nothing more.
Guest 2: Like I said, he cancelled (idiotic guy), but I will post a picture as soon as I will get it done.
DidYouJust: Yes, Jace definitely helped them with many unresolved issues here. I mean, Valentine and Clary are really close, but that Jocelyn issue is a real thing that they never managed to work through. Thank you, Jace. And remember that Clary was five when her mother died. And she doesn't remember much. All she remembers is that her father wasn't there when the world asked her to say goodbye to her mother and that afterwards, her father refused to see her for two weeks, leaving her and her brother alone.
Valentine's 1 fan: No! Clary's point-of-view will never occur again in this story. And Valentine's will be the last, so … well, it is not the next one. But yeah, Jace is really selfless and sweet when it comes to Clary (I think if you ask anyone working with him, they wouldn't use those words to describe him, aha) And you just want Valentine to find out, don't you? Haha
Love, Mina💚💚💚
