by L.J. Shen
Then he lifted his eyes and sent me another relaxed smile. “By the way, I took it upon myself to tell your little friend Rachelle that you won’t be returning to the bar for any more shifts. I trust you girls can live off your current salary. You’re all mine now, LeBlanc. And you’re welcome.”
IT HAPPENED. I FELL UNDER.
After staying awake for eighty-four hours straight, my body finally gave in and completely shut down. It happened in my old bedroom, and I barely made it into bed, but I did. I was still shirtless—mainly because I liked how she looked at me when I was working and she was reading. But it was morning, and I knew that I was going to sleep for a long time and that sooner or later, she’d realize that something was wrong. That people don’t just disappear for so many hours in the middle of the day.
I woke up thirteen hours later and it was evening again. There was noise coming from the broad hallway outside my room, and I hoped it was Help, even though I knew it wasn’t. I was right, of course. It was my father’s nurses, Josh and Slade. They were arguing among themselves about the Raiders and the Patriots, and I was not impressed. The two fuckers had woken me up.
I passed by the beefy men and walked straight into my father’s bedroom. He must’ve been discharged from the hospital and returned while I was asleep. And surprise, surprise, Jo was still nowhere to be found. Guess Cabo was more important than standing by your man in his final weeks. Or days.
The gravity of the situation weighed heavy on my shoulders, but this was what I’d waited for, for so long. Ever since I was twelve.
Now, it was time.
Daryl was dead.
Dad was dying.
And soon, Josephine’s life would be over too.
I kept the door open. The nurses glanced my way but continued bickering in the hall, flinging their arms around as they talked football.
“Hey, Dad.” I smiled, leaning a shoulder against his wall with my hands tucked inside my pockets. I rested my head beside a Charles-Edouard Dubois painting—it was good, but I liked Emilia’s shit better—and enjoyed the view.
The man who’d ruined my life looked like a cheap carbon copy of the man he used to be. Completely bald, pallid in color, with a neck like a lizard’s, his veins sticking out from his saggy, thin skin. I looked nothing like him and exactly like my mother, which I guessed was part of the reason why Jo hated my guts.
“Don’t lie, son. Jo and Daryl would never do such a thing,” he told me when I showed him my scars. My wounds. My pain.
“She locks me in there with him,” I argued for the millionth time.
“Jo says you do it to yourself. Is this about attention, Baron? Is that what you want?”
I didn’t need attention. I’d needed a different fucking father.
“You hanging in there?” I smirked at Baron Senior now, painfully aware of the men behind me.
He blinked his eyes but said nothing, because he couldn’t. I, on the other hand, had plenty to say. I knew my words could possibly kill him. I didn’t care.
“Sorry I dropped in unannounced. I needed to see Eli Cole about your will.”
As far as Dad knew, he and I were on good terms. Last time I’d seen him, I still even feigned interest in his business and his health, but it was show time. Revenge time. I ambled into his room and took a seat at the edge of his bed. The bastard wasn’t going to spill a word about it.
Was I the primary beneficiary?
Was Jo?
There were a lot of fucking millions on the line here. Dad’s power was in his money. That’s how he’d controlled his wives and that’s how he thought he’d gained my respect. He was wrong. As usual.
“You know, it’s going to be interesting to see how much you left Jo. You always kept your cards close to your chest. Used your wealth for power. I bet you made her agree to that draconian prenup before you even sucked her tits, huh?” I winked playfully, my lips curving into a slight smirk.
He didn’t respond, but breathed hard. Yeah, the Spencer men were lawyers by training, and they liked women…but they fucking loved money.
“Na. I bet you did the right thing by her. From your point of view, at least. Not from mine. The fact that you killed Mom kind of changes everything.” I jutted my lower lip out, gauging him for a reaction.
Until then, he didn’t know I knew. Didn’t know that I’d overheard him and Jo talking in the library before it happened.
Dad’s eyes grew big and perplexed, then darted to the hallway helplessly, but it was futile. From where the nurses were positioned, the situation looked innocent. A son softly speaking to his ailing father.
“Are you sure your brother will keep his mouth shut? I can’t risk anyone knowing. Even a whiff of suspicion could destroy my business dealings.”
“Baby, it won’t. I promise you.”
“I’m not a bad man, Josephine. But I don’t want this burden for the rest of my life.”
It was a year after my mother got seriously injured in a car accident that left her a quadriplegic. I was nine. Way too young to understand what it meant.
I didn’t know what to make of it then, so I’d collected every word said behind the library door where I’d eavesdropped, until the puzzle was complete. By the age of ten, I knew that conversation by heart.
By the age of twelve, I also knew exactly what it meant.
“Trust me, Daryl will help you. I’m telling you, darlin’, no one will ever know. Anyway, people have no right to judge. You may as well be married to a garden vegetable.”
“I don’t know, Jo. I don’t know”
“Baby,” she purred. “Honey, you can’t divorce her at this point. We both know that ship sailed as soon as she had the accident. What’s there to think about? You’ll be doing her a favor anyway, if you ask me. She can’t even scratch her nose anymore.”
“What about Baron Junior? What about my son?”
“What about him?” she snapped. “Aren’t I good enough for him? Trust me, he’ll barely remember her when he grows up.”
I stared at what had become of my father since Jo and her brother had entered our lives. I wasn’t supposed to be there the day I first saw Daryl Ryler in our house. I came home sick from school, and our housekeeper at the time picked me up from school…
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.
I didn’t even have the chance to stare at the signatures on the screen before Jaime called me. I picked up.
“Fuck. Man, we’re rich!” He laughed.
“Richer,” I corrected dryly. “And you’re welcome.”
“Richer,” he bellowed in agreement, “and you’re a fucking douchebag, bro.”
“This isn’t news to me,” I said, joining his laugher as I heard Mel and his baby, Daria, singing in the background.
“I’m going to celebrate with my family. Speak tomorrow, asshole.” Jaime hung up.
Trent called a few seconds later. “Motherfucking God! Is it true?” he shouted, then chuckled.
I rolled with him and snorted out a laugh too. “It would appear that way.”
“Listen, I’m at my parents’. We’re all gonna head for a pre-Christmas dinner with Dean’s folks, but I’ll call you tomorrow to kiss your ass about that deal, Vic. Hope you’re doing something fun tonight. Bye.”
“Bye.” I hung up.
But I wasn’t.
My friends were going to celebrate with their families, and I was going to sit in an empty apartment that didn’t even belong to me and eat takeout or fuck a woman without a last name that I was going to forget a few hours later.
It was depressing.
It was unfair in a whole different way than the unfair way I conducted business.
And it was fucking unacceptable, considering there was something I wanted very much, and that was within reach.
Maybe that was how I ended up in front of her door. Logically, I had no business seeking her out. She was my PA, and a woman I’d wronged. I should’ve just left her alone for once.
But I didn’t want to. What I wanted was to fuck her and get rid of my weird fixation on her once and for all.
I knocked on her door, hoping to fuck Rosie wouldn’t answer.
I pounded my fist on her door again, and this time I heard footsteps. When she opened the door, my first instinct was to jerk her into my body and kiss the shit out of her until her lips bruised. But I couldn’t, so I just smiled, tugging on my tie, loosening it. She had paint all over her face, brown and yellow and green. Earth tones. Her temples were misted with sweat and her crazy lavender hair stuck to them. She wore graphic leggings and a baggy, paint-stained white shirt.
Barefoot.
Natural.
Beautiful.
“Hey,” she said. Her earbuds were still hanging from her shoulders by a thin wire. “Sorry, I was listening to
some music. I got the email about the merger. Congrats. Do you need me to do anything?”
Yes. Wrap your lips around my dick and suck. Hard.
“Come to dinner with me,” I said instead. I was breaking so many rules at once, my head spun like a motherfucker.
(1) No dating.
(2) No dating Help.
(3) No risking getting attached.
(4) No deliberately putting myself in a vulnerable position.
But I wanted to fuck her really bad, just so I could tell myself that I had after all these years, before I went back to LA.
She blinked a couple of times before blurting out, “No.” It wasn’t cold or cruel. She sounded surprised and a little confused. Still clutching the edges of the fiberglass door, covering it with paint, she elaborated. “It’s not a good idea, and you know it.”
“The fuck not?”
“Well, I have about five hundred reasons that come to mind, but let’s start with the obvious ones—you’re my boss and you refer to me as Help.”
“It’s a term of endearment,” I fired back. “Which I can drop, if you don’t like it. Go on.”
She let out a brittle laugh. “When you hired me, you promised you wanted to work together, nothing more.”
“Yeah?” I huffed, growing impatient. Did she realize she was turning down what no one else had ever before been offered? “And now I want you to come with me to grab some dinner. I plan to eat a steak, not your pussy.”
I may have overdone this one, because Help—fuck, Emilia—tried to slam the door on me at the exact same moment I slid my foot inside the gap. She smashed the door against my foot, but I didn’t care.
“Fine. We’ll order in. What’s your problem? You need to eat. Besides, Rosie’s here too, right? You don’t think I’ll try and bang you in front of your sister, do you?”
The look on her face told me that yes, in fact, she was quite certain I’d try to bang her in front of her sister.
