by Moriah Jovan
“You shit,” Knox muttered with a glare. “Thirty years and you still can’t be pissed off in English.”
Emilio laughed.
“Screw you, Knox. I said—”
“Don’t bother,” Sebastian snapped. “It’s not worth repeating. Étienne, shut the hell up and be grateful we got you out of those stupid licensing agreements. Next time? Let Knox do your deals for you like he offered. You’re a one-trick pony and it’s not contracts.”
“This is going to come back to bite you in the ass, Sebastian,” Morgan rumbled. “You and Mitch both.”
“Probably,” Sebastian returned, uneasy with the speed at which this takeover had gone down and why. He hated working blind. There would be consequences from this that he couldn’t see and wouldn’t be able to forestall—and probably years down the road. He could only hope Knox’s elaborate scheme worked, but then, Knox was a master at elaborate schemes that worked.
Every. Damn. Time.
Sebastian swallowed, his stomach roiling. “All right, gentlemen,” he muttered. “Time to put twelve hundred people out of their jobs.”
MISS COX & PROFESSOR HILLIARD
“MISS COX!”
The roar echoed around the lecture hall accompanied by the stirrings of students who alternately snickered and waited eagerly for the fireworks to begin.
Giselle’s mouth tightened as she clipped down the stairs to the dais to collect her assignment. So help her— She snatched it out of her professor’s hand with a glare and opened it only to see a big red D. Her nostrils flared and her jaw clenched as she raised her narrowed gaze to his.
“A D?” she growled and the class shifted a bit uneasily. She knew why. If Giselle could sink so low as a D in this class, everyone else could. She wasn’t a class leader by a long shot, but she did solid B work consistently. Considering she did it while working full time . . .
Furious, she stared into that smirking face she knew as well as she knew her own.
“Ah, even the great ones fall from time to time,” he said, his baritone voice filled with satisfaction that he’d gotten a decent response from her. She knew she shouldn’t give him that, but he knew what her buttons were and exactly how to push them.
“Fuck you,” she snarled. The class gasped, but she couldn’t enjoy it. She crumpled her paper in one hand and threw it in his face before she whirled and took the stairs up out of the lecture hall three at a time.
“MISS COX!” he bellowed again as she picked up her books. “Come to my office for a conference this afternoon.”
Her back stiffened and she looked over her shoulder. “If you think,” she said slowly, each syllable perfectly enunciated, “that I’m going to drive up to ass fuck Egypt to discuss this inexplicable bullshit, you’ve got another think coming.”
“Fine. After class, then. This is not optional.”
Without a word, she picked up her things and walked out, flipping him off as she went.
Forty-five minutes later, her classmates filed out, each casting her furtive glances where she sat on the floor, her back to the wall, her arms crossed. No one wanted to get between her and the professor. He’d made her toxic. Even her study group was a bit skittish about her contributions.
“MISS COX!” Damn. That roar could be heard all the way to Gladstone.
“Good luck, Giselle.”
She hid a smile as she took the hand belonging to her standing lunch date, and allowed him to haul her to her feet. “Thanks, Neal. See you at the cafeteria?”
His rather unfortunate face lit up and he said, “Sure!”
She didn’t dare put his—or any of her other classmates’—unease about her professorial issues to rest. The last thing anyone needed to know—
“You’re an asshole, you know that?” she grumbled at Knox’s back while he erased the whiteboard.
“Your bed’s closer than mine. Let’s go.”
“Dammit, you’ve had Sebastian in your ear again.”
“No,” he said and turned, his smug expression having melted into plain exhaustion and she felt an answering weariness in her soul, only exaggerated a hundredfold since Hank Rearden had kissed her last month. “I just want to get this over with, you and me. Obviously neither of us have any better options.”
That was true, but— “Why are you slapping me with this right now? You couldn’t wait until I got home from work tonight?”
Knox ran a hand down his face and sighed. “I don’t know. Stress, maybe. You’re here, now, convenient. I’m tired. The Den of Iniquity . . . ”
“Sebastian’s home today. I would never fuck you where he could point and mock.” She pursed her lips and looked away, out the arrow-slit windows. “Besides,” she finally said, “there’s a girl walking around this campus right now with stars in her eyes about you—and you reciprocate—and I don’t care to get in the middle of that for no other reason than neither of us have bed mates.”
“I’m not interested in twenty-two-year-old girls.”
“No, you’re interested in that particular twenty-two-year-old girl.”
He said nothing for a moment. “Well, Giselle, maybe we should try anyway.”
“I hate feeling like we’re each others’ last-gasp options,” she grumbled.
He grunted.
“I have a lunch date. What did you give me on that paper?”
“B-plus. You could do better.”
“I work full time. I notice you got your education paid for.”
“That dog don’t hunt. Fen offered to pay for yours, too.”
“Mmmm, true, but I’m morally opposed to dancing to someone else’s tune.”
That barb hit home and his mouth flattened.
“I’ll admit I’m getting tired of toys and I damn sure am getting tired of not having a warm body in bed with me. We aren’t kids anymore, Knox. We have too much history. We’re like an old married couple who stopped sleeping together years ago and what’s more pathetic is that we were never sleeping together to begin with.”
“True, but I’d rather end up with you than no one.”
She’d have been more insulted if she didn’t return the sentiment. She sighed. “Let me think about it.”
CINDERELLA
“Tell me where she went.”
“Absolutely not, Kenard,” Sebastian drawled. “You just stood down a woman who was packing, and if she can’t handle you, I’m not going to give you another crack at her.”
“I want her,” Kenard growled.
“No shit.”
“Where.did.she.go.”
“My house,” he said, just to see what would happen. He figured he probably oughtn’t have said that when his head exploded with the power of one well-aimed fist in his face.
He would’ve laughed if he could’ve.
“Shall I call you a taxi, Nephew?” Fen drawled from above him, smug, Trudy smirking, and a whole host of people collecting behind him with varying degrees of horrified glee on their faces. Kenard was gone.
Suddenly, he did start laughing despite the pain. “Yes, Unk, that would be much appreciated.” He gripped his chin and waggled it a little to make sure nothing was broken.
Fen flipped his cell open and called, while Sebastian sat on the cold marble floor, his back against the cold marble wall. “Damn, he packs a helluva punch. Aunt Trudy, would you get my mom’s coat from the check for me, please? The white mink bolero.”
She snorted and walked off to do as he’d asked. Family, after all, war of murder and politics notwithstanding.
Fen still chuckled and the crowd dispersed, disappointed, as it was obvious no battle between Taight and Hilliard would commence. Fen held out his hand to Sebastian and he took it.
“Damn,” Sebastian muttered as he brushed off his suit.
“Was it worth it?”
“To see the look on your face? Oh, absolutely.”
“She’s in over her head with him.”
Sebastian grinned at Fen. “Yeah. Now you can’t tell me that wasn�
��t hella entertaining.”
Fen smirked, then heaved a great sigh. “You are right about that. It definitely was. Are you sure he’s not going to hurt her?”
“Fen, what the hell do you care? You’ve tried to kill her twice.”
“Oh, you know how it is with family. I can say anything I want but an outsider says something and I’ll pummel him.”
“I see. Only you have the right to kill her because you’re family.”
“Precisely. And you know, I do have a soft spot for her in my heart.”
Sebastian chuckled. “You are so fucked up. And in answer to your question, yes. He will. The minute she lets him know just how rough she likes it.”
“She’s a virgin. She doesn’t know shit from shinola.”
“Two words: Hank Rearden.”
Fen’s eyes widened and then he threw back his head and laughed. Trudy came back with the coat and Sebastian thanked her, then went to wait outside for the taxi.
That was the funnest evening he’d had in a long time.
THE LONG GOODBYE
I knew it was doomed the minute I saw the look on her face.
So young, so innocent.
Deliberately so.
I knew what she’d done, ignoring the rumors, more fact than fiction; she had to have, to show up here, now, hoping to work for me, hoping to have a chance to catch my attention.
Too bad I had no way of letting her know she’d done that three years ago—
—and to what extent.
The stench of gunpowder and blood filled the air and again I was a killer, though this time not without legal justification.
It didn’t matter.
What are you studying, Knox?
I’m in law school.
Oh. Really? How old are you?
Twenty-one.
Oh. Huh. That’s— Did you graduate early or something?
No, just in May.
So . . . you didn’t go on a mission?
Um, no . . .
Oh. I see.
The future looked as suddenly bleak as it never had before, me with nothing to offer a woman, any woman, particularly the one I was looking at, the one I wanted more than I’d wanted any woman in my life.
Or anything else, for that matter.
I had a nice time tonight, Knox. Thanks.
Call you?
I think we should just be friends.
Uh, okay. Yeah. Um, sure.
I won’t say I was never tempted to pull out OKH as a bargaining chip to get what I wanted.
Um, you know, in twenty years, I’m gonna inherit this . . . company. Um, it’s lots of money. I really like you; could you give me a chance?
I could never do it.
Make love. Have children. Make a life.
Marry in the temple, covenant and bind myself for eternity to a woman who would bide her time, waiting for payment for services rendered the day after my fortieth birthday.
I’d rather have married Giselle, which prospect hadn’t thrilled me, either, but I could count on her to watch my back, the loyalty of my best friend in the world. I couldn’t imagine sex with Giselle; I never had been able to, but it didn’t matter. I didn’t even have that option now, since she’d married my other best friend, who could and would give her what I would never have given her.
I couldn’t stop staring at the girl in front of me, the one I’d wanted to surprise in another year and a half, on December 28. I’d had it all planned in my head, down to the last detail of every variable of every conceivable scenario.
Except this one.
“Who the hell are you?”
She jumped out of her skin, horrified. Terrified. A little green around the gills. Would she puke or wouldn’t she? She blinked and clutched her messenger bag to her chest, trying not to look past me at the carnage.
“Um—”
“Justice McKinley,” Eric said, in that calm Are you out of your fucking mind? tone I knew all too well. And he was right.
As usual.
“So? Who is she? Why is she here?”
“She’s the girl you told me to interview, remember?”
What to do, what to do.
The only thing I didn’t want to do, but now had no choice. I needed her, that Rita Hayworth body, that red hair.
That curiously brilliant naïveté.
For as long as she’d let me keep her.
“Shit. Now I have to hire her.”
Then she spoke. Well, squeaked. “No! No, that’s all right. I’ll go.” She popped out of her chair, her briefcase still plastered to her chest and turned to escape.
Oh, no. She wasn’t going anywhere.
“Sit. Down.”
She did, but she wouldn’t look at me.
Couldn’t very well blame her for that. I terrified people; it was just part of being a vigilante, a crazy sumbitch murderer allowed to run loose in society.
“Well, Miss McKinley, welcome to the Chouteau County prosecutor’s office. I’m Knox Hilliard, your new boss. May I assume you know how to keep your mouth shut?”
She closed her eyes and all I wanted to do was press away the tear that tracked down her cheek with my fingers. Hold her, let her cry in my chest.
That would never happen now.
“I asked you a question.”
“Yes,” she choked.
“Good. I expect to see your ass planted in that chair over there at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. If I have to come looking for you—and I will—I will be very pissed off. Got that?”
She gulped. “Yes.”
“And heaven help you if you aren’t a decent lawyer.”
I stomped into my office and slammed the door like a teenager throwing a tantrum; I knew it. Eric knew it. I sat on the couch and slumped over, my elbows on my knees and my face in my hands.
Giselle would castrate me, but it wouldn’t matter.
For however long it took Iustitia McKinley, granddaughter of legal genius Juell Pope, to find her courage to stand me down—because she would—I’d be in hell, my elaborately simple plan splattered on the wall, all mixed up with Jones’s blood and brains.
Hi.
YOU’RE hamlet?
Surprise. Could I interest you in dinner and perhaps the ballet? I have tickets to the Nutcracker at the Kennedy Center.
Professor Hilliard—
Knox, please. I came to Washington for a reason, Iustitia.
Uh— What reason?
You.
The stars in her eyes were long gone.
With one precisely aimed bullet. Maybe I should’ve let Jones send me packing on the express train to hell. I had no hope now, and hope was the only thing I’d been running on for the last three years.
This was just the beginning of a long goodbye.
TIRED OF BEING ME
I threw the keys at her, barely able to look at her after what I’d done to her the night before.
Oh, hell, what I’d done to her from the moment I got caught in my own hubris.
Murderer.
Rapist.
Nice, Knox.
I’d convicted rapists that had shown more class and style in their crimes than I had last night.
I stood at my window, my forearm across the window frame, and looked down on the parking lot. I watched her approach the car warily, hoping that she’d understand what I wanted her to do. She would never leave on her own; I’d thoroughly succeeded in terrifying her. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought she’d know I was bluffing, that she would understand that nobody with a shred of sanity could act the way I did and mean it.
Of course, nobody—least of all me—could say with any certainty that I was sane.
She sat in the little Toyota for a long time, inspecting it, I was sure, for signs of a bomb or something. Then she started it, put it in gear, backed out, and drove away.
She was a brilliant woman. She’d understand the minute her asshole father let her know how I’d ensured his silence.
And then she
would leave.
I put my head down on my arm and watched water drops plop onto the sill, my vision blurring.
I would never see her again.
This makes you no better than Lucifer . . . The Lord might forgive you Parley, but this— No.
Lucifer.
Sebastian couldn’t have found a better invective.
It occurred to me to eat my gun and be done with it, because I just didn’t deserve to live and quite frankly, I had nothing left to live for.
Giselle had married my best friend, who made her happy in ways far beyond my comprehension.
Sebastian wouldn’t miss me, especially after I’d thoroughly humiliated him over . . . a lot less than what I was guilty of.
Vanessa would get my half of Whittaker House on my death and could do just fine on her own.
So could Eric and he was at the end of his patience with me, anyway.
My aunts Lilly and Dianne might cry, of course, but I couldn’t be sure they weren’t expecting it anyway.
Morgan, Étienne, my other cousins who had quietly supported me . . . they’d shake their heads, unable to understand but probably not surprised.
Fen wouldn’t like it, but he’d be able to relax, his future in OKH as secure as it could be with me out of the way, but Sebastian still on the warpath.
My mother would rejoice.
The rest of the Dunham tribe would ignore me the same way they’d ignored me for the past fifteen years.
And Rachel Wincott would have the last laugh.
I don’t know how long I stood there, staring down at her empty parking spot as if it would magically bring her back to me, make her love me, but it was dark by the time I went and sat at my desk.
I pulled out my Glock and studied it. Not that I could see it in the dark.
Turned it over.
Squeezed the trigger—
—just until it caught.
The doorknob turned and Eric walked in, files in his hand.
Flipped on the light.
Stopped short when he saw me.
Stared at my gun.
“Put it down,” he murmured.
I pursed my lips. “Why?”
“She’s not worth that.”
I grunted. “No, but what I did to her is.” I took a deep breath. “You can probably expect that annulment back some time tomorrow or Thursday. She won’t waste any time getting out from under a marriage to me.”
