I’d climbed up the stairs, dropped my backpack on the floor in my room, but instead of crawling into bed, I’d wanted to see my mom. The guestroom they’d put her in was across the hall, and it was more like a hospital room than a bedroom. I wanted to read her the poem I’d written in Language Arts and tape it to her wall. She had a whole collection of them.
The stranger didn’t see me. The man was leaving her room and I was about to ask him if he was today’s nurse.
“You should be in bed, Baron,” the housekeeper had called from the bottom of the stairs. “You have fever. Make sure not to bother your mother. You don’t want to make her sick.”
I never got to read her my poem. Twenty minutes later, her nurse—a woman, not the man I’d seen—called an ambulance. Her respirator was clogged.
Coincidence? I didn’t think so.
“That’s right, Dad. I know about you sending Daryl Ryler to kill her.” I grinned and patted my father’s stiff shoulder, watching his eyes dancing. That man I saw leaving Mom’s room? It was Daryl Ryler.
My father looked panicked, but he couldn’t move a muscle. Realization washed over his face, and it was my time to strike harder.
“Yeah, about him.” I bit back my smile, smoothing the white Egyptian-cotton sheets of his bed. “I was thrilled when they found him dead. I figured no one other than your gold-digging wife was going to miss him, and truly, his death was more of a public service when you think about it. How many people has Daryl Ryler wronged? How many felonies has he committed? How many Maries has he killed?”
My dad was still lucid. He must’ve put two and two together and deduced I’d killed Daryl. As usual, he thought the worst of his son.
Dad actually managed to move his hand a little, and his whole body shook. His eyes bulged as he gurgled, but my voice was low and his nurses were too busy arguing about football down the hall.
“It’s too late now. To change the will, switch and give it all to Jo. Not when the doctors are questioning your mental competence. Who knows what’s working inside that brain and what’s not? No one gives a fuck about what you have to say anymore. I mean, your doctors are pretty amazed you’re still alive. Honestly? I’m pretty amazed too. Why did you hold on for so long? You’ve got nothing but money. Nothing at all. Your work’s your life. Got remarried to a woman who hates your guts, and you don’t know anything about your son, other than the color of his eyes.”
The nurses stopped chatting, but when I turned around and flashed them a plastic smile, they resumed their conversation. My head twisted back to my writhing father. He shook so badly, I was pretty sure he was going to die right then and there.
“Doesn’t matter who inherits everything. There’s no one to protect Jo once you’re dead. She’ll be alone, defenseless. No brother to help her plot and scheme. Daryl’s gone.” I chuckled, before remembering the expression on Help’s face when I told her how Ryler had died. Despite everything, I didn’t want her to think of me as a monster. As a killer.
“And you…I will destroy everything you worked for. Your company. Your reputation. Your assets. Your name.”
His eyes widened to a point they almost rolled out of their sockets. Tubes came out of his nose and wrists. He wanted to say something, but the only thing that came out were incoherent grunts. My father sounded like some kind of primitive animal, a zombie, which wasn’t far from the fucking truth. What human being discarded his wife and the mother of his nine-year-old child?
“I came here to say goodbye, Dad,” I said, sliding forward on his bed until my body pressed against his. I squeezed his immobile leg.
His gaze screamed horror. There was so much he wanted to say. To shout. To me. To the nurses. But he was trapped inside himself.
“I’m going back to New York. Got more important things to take care of. I want you to know I loved you when I was a kid. It wasn’t always like this. But I promise you, now…” I pressed my lips to his ear.
He shuddered, trying to move his arms, but he was paralyzed. From the outside—to Josh and Slade—it probably looked like a sweet moment.
“…I promise to shit over every single thing you’ve made part of the legacy you worked to create. I’m starting with this cold-ass mansion. I never liked it anyway. Then I’ll liquidate the company you built with both hands and invest the money elsewhere. I wish you could watch me burn everything that matters to you, but you won’t be able to. So it’s probably best that you’ll be dead.”
With that, I straightened and winked playfully at him. His face was so strained he was purple. This was how I wanted to remember him. Weak. Defeated. Ruined. I turned around and grinned to the nurses in the hallway.
“Bye, Dad.”
Help and I landed back in New York on Monday morning. I told her to go settle in at her new apartment, because I knew she was desperate to see her baby sister, and for once, I wanted to stop acting like a douchebag to the woman I actually needed by my side.
Of course, I failed to mention that the apartment I was living in upstairs was actually Dean’s—because why the fuck did it matter?—and because I didn’t want to talk to her about Dean. Ever.
I, on the other hand, had a lot of work to do on the merger. FHH was on the verge of merging two of the biggest pharmaceutical corporations in America. Yes, one of them was the one I did steal from Sergio and his company, as a matter of fact.
It wasn’t fair, but I didn’t care about fair. I cared about getting my clients what they needed. And what we needed. Besides, it wasn’t like Sergio’s non-existent kids and family were going to starve. We were just rich bastards stealing clients from other rich bastards. This was our playground, and we were all bullies.
Some of us were better at it than others.
Having this massive transaction under our name was going to be life altering, not only financially but also in terms of our reputation. We couldn’t let anything screw it up for us.
Even though he’d hung up on me, Dean kept calling me like a desperate ex-girlfriend every day, and I kept on hitting ignore like the bastard who was about to steal his ex-girlfriend. Only she was never his. She was always mine.
Part of the reason for my behavior was to teach him a lesson and part of it was because I was enjoying the New York office too much to hand it back to him. I would, of course, but not yet. Christmas was approaching, and California Christmas sucked.
Besides, I had nowhere to spend the holiday, and at least in New York, I was one of many lonely souls. Dean was going to spend the holidays with his family in Todos Santos, so really, I was doing him a favor.
I arrived at the office in good spirits for a change. I didn’t yell at anyone. I didn’t break anything. I was nice to the secretaries and receptionists and I did not lose my temper even once when a guy tried to cut in front of me when I hailed a taxi. I did step on his foot before I climbed into the car, bypassing him nonchalantly. Guess old habits die hard.
When I arrived in front of my apartment building, my phone beeped. I’d received an email with the contract, signed by both of the corporations. Successfully merged. This shit was going to be plastered on every financial website in North America within the hour.
And it was all us. I couldn’t contain my triumph.