Chapter 2
Anthony
The boardroom is warm, too warm, and there’s too many people in here. There are seven people talking at the same time, and not one of them is saying anything I didn’t already know walking in.
Joseph Brant drones on about the next collection’s margins while Karen Bartley taps her pen with all the subtlety of a nuclear countdown.
Someone is speaking about the quarterly projections and macro trends, and I don’t have the patience to listen to any of it.
With the meeting room’s espresso machine broken, I can’t even make myself a cup of energy.
My phone vibrates once in my pocket. I ignore it.
Karen opens her mouth, and I have to steel myself in advance for the dull humming of her voice as she mentions something about social media. I want to tell her she knows absolutely nothing about online marketing and to shut her mouth, but I can’t bring myself to care enough.
I feel another vibration in my pocket and sigh quietly while I slip my phone out to glance at the subject line of the email alert.
Voss Trust: Clause Review — URGENT
From legal.
I unlock my phone, keeping my face still. My eyes scan the first few lines, then the whole thing, slower.
Inheritance terms remain contingent on direct lineage…must produce a legal heir before age fifty…failure to comply will result in dissolution of controlling interest per original trust charter…
The words turn into an annoying roar in my head. Of course. Of course, my father would’ve buried a clause like this in the fine print. A final reminder that nothing I’ve built is truly, fully mine. Ultimately, I exist to continue the bloodline. Even from his grave, he’s reminding me of that.
I’ll be fifty in less than two years.
I look up slowly. Karen is still talking, people are still nodding, and no one, thankfully, has noticed the slight tenseness of my body. I’ve made an art of controlling my demeanor in a stoic manner, and I’m more thankful for it now than ever.
“Excuse me,” I say, smoothing out my suit as I stand. “I need a moment.”
No one questions me. They never do.
I leave the boardroom and walk the length of the glass hallway and my footsteps echo off the sleek marble floor. The skyline stretches to the Hudson and Manhattan sprawls beneath me. It's glittering and oblivious, as if it were built to mirror my untouchable, cold, and strategic detachment.
Back in my office, I close the door behind me and grab the coffee waiting for me on my desk, finally letting the tension out just a little.
I loosen my tie, sit down, and pull my phone back out to reread the email.
Not because I didn’t understand it the first time, because I absolutely did. I just need to believe it.
My fingers drum once against the edge of the keyboard before curling into a fist.
A child.
I’ve built an empire. I’ve launched collections that reshaped men’s fashion. I’ve steered this company through scandal and recession, survived a wife’s betrayal, and a board full of vultures, but this? This is what could take it all away?
I lean back in my chair, my head tipping back onto the leather, staring at the slick, black ceiling.
It’s not the absurdity of the requirement that bothers me; it’s that I didn’t know about it.
My lawyers didn’t catch it until now. Life is fragile and unpredictable which can’t be outmaneuvered with strategy and spreadsheets.
A child. An heir.
Not just a name on paper, but a living, breathing person. I’ve never seriously considered having a child, not since her. I never wanted to consider it.
A soft rustle from the open doorway of our adjoining offices snags my attention. I glance over, half expecting her to be out of sight, but she’s right there.
April Swan.
She’s standing by the copier on her side of the door with arms full of folders.
She’s fighting a losing battle with gravity and flimsy paperclips that let papers slip right out onto the floor.
Her black-rimmed glasses slip down her nose, and her blonde hair is twisted up into a messy bun that she favors.
Her lips move in silent curses as a stack of pages drop to the floor and scatter across the marble.
I don’t move.
I just watch.
She bends down to retrieve the mess, her skirt stretching over curves I’ve spent far too many months trying not to look at.
Her blouse pulls from where it’s tucked in, showing just a touch more of the back of her neck and the middle of her upper back.
I drag my gaze away. It takes far more effort than I care to admit.
There’s something about her, always has been.
Witty, sharp-tongued, brilliant when she’s angry and unshakable when challenged with an important task. Most employees respect me, but April talks back with fire behind her teeth and sarcasm dripping from her tongue.
She drives me mad.
What’s worse is she sees too much of me. Not just the suit or the title or the legacy, but the real me.
She snaps at me while staring straight into my eyes, and it feels like she’s peeling back layer after layer until she finds something worthwhile. She’s probably the only one around me who manages it. That makes her both dangerous and stupidly tempting.
I push up from my chair just as she straightens with an armful of loose papers, rounding my desk to cross the space.
“You know, we do have assistants for that,” I deadpan.
She flinches, then looks at me over her shoulder, her eyes wide before they turn into a glare like I’m the one who made her drop the papers.
“Unlike you, I don’t particularly enjoy making assistants do jobs that I’m perfectly capable of,” she clips back. Taking the few steps back toward her desk, she sets the armful down in a cluttered heap. “You monitoring my every move now?”
“I’m monitoring inefficiency,” I say, leaning on the doorframe as I use my shoe to nudge a missed paper toward her, one that had slid over the threshold into my office. “Hard not to when you’re littering across my floor.”
She huffs a breath out of her nose, clearly resisting the urge to throw something at me, and crosses back toward my outstretched foot, her heels clacking on the marble.
“Right. I’ll make sure my next mistake isn’t in front of your voyeuristic eyes,” she drawls, leaning down to rip the paper out from under my shoe before standing-up straight.
As if that alone isn’t enough to get my blood pumping between my hips. Her little retorts shouldn’t amuse me, but they do. More than they should.
I hold her gaze for a second longer than I need to, watching the way her green eyes flick between mine like they’re searching for something. I swear I can see the faintest hue of pink in her cheeks, but with her makeup, it’s hard to tell.
“Try not to injure yourself bending over like that,” I say, and there it is—a little red tinge on the tips of her ears. It’s probably irritation, but I’d be a liar if I tried to tell myself I wasn’t wishing it was something else. “It would delay the press release…again.”
Her perfume is subtle, but I catch it the longer I stand there.
Clean and floral, with a touch of sweetness beneath.
My mind has memorized that scent over the last few months, and every time I smell it, even when she’s gone home for the day and I’m passing her door on my way out, I have to fight myself not to have a physical reaction.
She is infuriating.
She is intoxicating.
But most of all, she is off-limits.
She’s far too young, far too smart, and completely wrong for a man like me.
I’ve spent years perfecting restraint and mastering silence.
I have mastered the ability to pursue only women who understand I’m incapable of anything beyond a night or two.
I’ve fucked models and women who came packaged in stilettos and the wherewithal to walk away from me easily.
I never had to worry about them wanting more.
But April, she is already too much, and I have to see her every goddamn workday.
I turn and step back into my office where I sit and stare at the goddamn email glowing on my screen. I can’t stop my thoughts from going places they shouldn’t.
If I need someone to trust with a future, with legacy, with loyalty…
It wouldn’t be a stranger. It wouldn’t be a model.
It would be her.
I shake the thought loose and close the email before I can get more than two steps down that thought path.
I need to find a proper solution.
One that doesn’t involve bending April Swan over my desk and giving my father his damned heir the old-fashioned way.