Christmas with My Stalker (Christmas in Hope Peak #12)

Chapter 1

Dom

THE CUFFLINKS WERE still there, glinting under the morning light as he adjusted them. I’d forgotten about them until now. But walking into Rutherford & Blake, into his office, they were all I could look at.

Jack & Margaret - Forever

A lie etched into a metal that outlived her. My throat felt like someone had poured concrete down it.

The office looked exactly the same, smelled the same. It had been many years since I’d set foot in this place, and yet the moment I crossed the threshold, I was dragged back to that day. Raw. Angry. Bleeding from wounds, all compliments to this man.

Even now, Jack Rutherford didn’t disappoint.

He leaned back in his chair, every inch the king holding court. Perfectly composed. Perfectly cold. He’d been lecturing me for the last five minutes about God knows what, and I’d let him talk because I was curious how long it’d take him to get to the point.

I hoped he was dying. That would be news worth listening to. Still, it didn’t warrant a face-to-face.

His hand moved to his other wrist, adjusting the matching cufflink. That fucking piece of gold Mom gave him on their anniversary. I remembered because she’d been so excited about it. The fact that he still wore it wasn’t about love or memory. It was performance art. Guilt dressed up as devotion.

“You think you can coast through life forever?” His voice cut through my thoughts. “You want to keep acting like a child, do it on your own money. I’m done enabling you.”

There it was. The point.

My chest tightened, but not from disappointment.

From the sheer predictability. Jack Rutherford’s solution to everything uncomfortable: throw money at it or take money away from it.

Never mind that I hadn’t touched his money in years.

Never mind that cutting me off financially was about as threatening as cutting off my access to his golf club.

What I heard was noise. Empty air from a man who’d stopped being a father the day he decided my grief was an inconvenience to his life.

Refusing to waste another breath on him, I flashed him a smile. It wasn’t a real smile, more like baring teeth. “You cut me off because you like control. Let’s not dress it up as fatherly concern.”

He paused, and if I hadn’t been watching his face, I would have missed the way a muscle ticked in his jaw. It was the only sign that he was holding back violence.

“Tell me, Dominic.” His voice dropped, taking on a lawyer tone that could cut steel. “What are you doing with your life?”

I let the question sit. It was the same one that kept me awake most nights, wondering if my broken pieces would ever fit back. But I’d be damned if I gave him the satisfaction of seeing that wound.

So I stared at him instead, at this stranger wearing my father’s face, before delivering the blow I’d been saving.

“Better than someone who’s fucking his secretary even before his wife’s cold.”

I watched the words land. His face went white, then red. His hand moved to those goddamn cufflinks again, gripping them like they could anchor him to shore.

Damn, that felt good. I could almost taste the salt of an old wound splitting open. The satisfaction of making him bleed the way he’d made me bleed.

But then his mask slammed back into place. Back to the impenetrable lawyer who knew nothing about pain or loss or what it meant to watch your father replace your mother’s memory with some random woman—his secretary.

He cleared his throat, the sound sharp in the sudden quiet. “This conversation is over.” His voice was flat. “You know where to find me when you’re ready to grow up.”

I shrugged like I hadn’t heard a thing and lifted my middle finger, holding it in the air long enough for him to get a good look, enough for the insult to sink in.

Then I walked out.

The door slammed behind me with a sound that ricocheted down the hallway. At thirty-five, flipping off my father and slamming doors were perhaps childish. But the look on his face was worth every bit of his disappointment.

My legs moved faster with each step, eating up the burgundy carpet with its gold patterns. Even this fucking carpet was the same. Everything here was frozen in time, and it irritated me that Mom’s memory still lived here. It just felt like another lie in this building that bore my name.

The walls felt like they were closing in. My chest was getting heavy, like someone had wrapped a wire around my ribs and kept twisting it tighter. The air in this place was too thick, too full of ghosts and lies and betrayal.

I needed to get the hell out of here before I did something that would land me in a cell.

My finger hit the elevator button over and over until the doors slid open. When I finally reached the lobby, I pushed through the doors before they were halfway apart.

The cold December air hit me like a slap the second I stepped outside.

I sucked in one breath, then another, letting the chill burn its way into my lungs and chase away the suffocating feeling.

The street was busy with morning traffic, normal people living normal lives, and I envied every single one of them.

“Mr. Rutherford.”

I turned. One of the maintenance guys was standing beside a lamppost with a cigarette between his fingers. He looked older than I remembered—more gray in his hair, deeper lines around his eyes. But then again, I probably looked like hell, too.

“The Rutherford part is a joke right now,” I said.

His face softened. He’d worked around our house when I was a kid. He knew the story. Everyone who’d been around long enough knew what Jack Rutherford had done to his family.

“Long time no see, Dom.” He offered me his pack of cigarettes. “What brings you here?”

I took one without thinking. It had been years since I’d smoked, but today felt like the right day to pick up bad habits again.

“Family reunion,” I said, the words bitter with smoke.

He nodded like that explained everything. Maybe it did.

The smoke curled upward when I exhaled, gone before it reached the streetlights. My mouth went crooked watching it disappear, and I wondered if that’s all my father saw when he looked at me... something fleeting that he wouldn’t have to deal with. Something that would vanish on its own.

Fuck it. Who gives a shit what he thinks?

I took another drag, the burn in my throat feeling so good.

Movement from across the road caught my eye. A group from the firm was gathered near the white van, loading luggage and looking like they were heading somewhere important. But what stopped me mid-drag was the woman in the pink puffy jacket.

She was following a man in a suit, talking to him, or at least trying to.

She leaned forward slightly, attempting to pull his attention, to close their distance.

He had his phone out, scrolling through something, his focus on something more important than her.

And yet her smile wasn’t fading, like she believed if she just held it long enough, eventually he’d look up.

I knew this. The smile, the effort to engage, the way she kept pace beside him even though he was treating her like air. I’d done that myself before, reaching for someone who never looked back.

The difference was I’d learned to stop reaching. She hadn’t.

My chest compressed like something had grabbed hold and squeezed it. When I glanced down, I’d crumpled the cigarette without realizing.

Suddenly, my legs wanted to move. I wanted to cross that damn street and rip that phone out of his hands, to grind it into the asphalt with my boot. Then I’d step between them, block out the world until it was just her and me, and she’d never have to work that hard for someone’s attention again.

The thought came out of nowhere, so clear and so final it felt like a law of nature. It jarred me.

“Who’s that?”

“Derek—”

“No, the one in pink.”

“That’s Eunice. Front desk.”

Eunice. I couldn’t take my eyes off her, the way she was still trying even while he completely ignored her.

“Where are they going?”

“Hope Peak. Some big inheritance case.”

I watched as the man finally acknowledged her with a dismissive nod, then climbed into the van without offering to help her with her bag.

My world, which had been gray and white noise a second before, suddenly had a purpose, a center.

Her.