Chapter 16 #2
I’m such a fucking sucker for a smart woman.
Even more so for a woman who’d give half a thought about what I want beyond what I say out loud.
“Would be nice,” I reply.
One corner of her mouth hitches up. “Would be nice to start a security firm? Or would be nice if starting a security firm is enough for you?”
Another thing I like about this woman.
She sees me too.
Will my own success be enough if I know my stepfather and stepbrothers are out there in the same world, succeeding with what my mother built?
When I first joined the Marines, I did it to get some real-world experience with hard things, always planning on going back to take my rightful place in my mom’s company eventually.
I stayed as long as I did because it fit.
And I went back planning to be more mature and intelligent about my issues with Xavier than I’d been when I was eighteen.
But it didn’t work out the way it should’ve because he had no morals or ethics and never truly loved my mom at all.
I swallow hard. “That’s a complicated question.”
“I made a phone call,” she says. “Asked someone to do some digging into Technique Group. On a hunch.”
My ears get hot and my heart gives a loud, painful thump that echoes through my abdomen and makes my stomach drop.
She did that for me.
Someone who barely knows me did something for me.
Without me asking, but because, I suspect, she understands more about me than I want to admit.
“What—” I clear my throat again, suddenly feeling thick and awkward and vulnerable. “What hunch?”
“That you want something more than an endorsement for your own security firm.”
“You’re asking someone else what I want?”
“No, I’m asking someone else to find out if there’s dirt on your stepfamily. But I can also ask them to stop if you’d like me to.”
I blink quickly and shake my head.
Answering out loud is impossible.
I suddenly don’t trust my voice.
I don’t know if I can actively seek vengeance.
But I don’t want to stop her from digging up dirt on Xavier and my stepbrothers either.
“You’re right,” she adds softly. “I do have an extra agenda in being here. But I’ll bail if it’ll hurt anyone.
It’s one thing to destroy someone who deserves it.
It’s another to cause collateral damage.
My sister was collateral damage in the vision my parents have of their reputation and image in their social circles.
I won’t cause that harm to anyone else. So if there’s anyone who could become innocent collateral damage as my friend is asking questions about your former employer, please let me know. ”
Moral revenge.
She’s talking about moral and ethical revenge.
Being karma.
Being consequences.
Being justice.
Doing it for me, but without hurting people who don’t deserve it.
And fuck me, more than just turning me on, it makes me feel seen.
Recognized.
Cared for.
Honored for who I am, what I want, and where my principles lie.
Don’t do it, a voice whispers in my head. Don’t trust her. Don’t fall for this again. You know it’ll hurt.
But she’s right.
I do want Xavier and Colt and Hayden—and Felice too—to pay for what they did.
For the way they cut me out.
The way they used what my mom built—used me too—until they set me up to fail so that they could force me out.
And she’s the first person I’ve met who gets it.
Who understands.
Who can see the pain and help me get the justice.
“My mom and grandfather founded the company.” Shit, I’m hoarse, and I can’t fix that.
“I know,” she says softly.
“Grandpa died when I was twelve. Mom when I was fourteen. I think she’d just started realizing my stepfather was a narcissist in sheep’s clothing when she got sick, and since he could see what he stood to gain when she was gone, and how fast she was going downhill, he stepped up and played the part of the perfect husband.
Fooled her again. As soon as she was gone though—I was a problem to be dealt with. ”
“People aren’t problems.” She rolls her eyes. “Until they make themselves problems. But you were fourteen.”
“I joined the Marines the day I turned eighteen. Had to get away. Grow up some on my own. But I still owned part of the company. It was in my mom’s trust. So when I met Felice—my ex—and she wanted me to get out and settle somewhere, I thought I could handle as an adult what I was moody about as a teenager, and I went back.
Claimed my place in a business I still half owned. Four years ago now.”
“But it was a different business then,” Margot guesses.
“He changed everything. Mom was picky about clients. Xavier wasn’t. Mom had procedures. Xavier didn’t.”
“Was it profitable?”
I snort. “Of course not. Then he would’ve had to cut me a check.”
She makes a low, aggravated hum.
“Yeah.”
“You still own half?”
“No.”
She lifts a brow, and I realize she dyed them too. Her real eyebrows are lighter in the pictures.
“I’m assuming you didn’t voluntarily sell to him,” she murmurs.
“He set me up. He knew Imogen Carter didn’t like bulky guys on her security squad, so when I had to more or less manhandle her into the car when she got rushed by some nutjob when we left dinner—”
“Imogen Carter got rushed by a nutjob?”
God, I like this woman.
She’s smart and sexy and multi-faceted.
I nod. “Called her name and came running directly for her with something in his hand that I couldn’t see clearly but knew wasn’t good.”
“She’s pissed a few people off over her decades in the business, but she’s not exactly relevant in the industry now. That’s…unexpected.”
“Like I said. He set me up.”
Her hand lands on my thigh. “Do you have proof?”
I grimace. “We didn’t make it far enough in our mutual lawsuits against each other to force document production.”
She winces. “Court’s never fun.”
“It is not,” I agree. “Especially on the tail end of being told I no longer belonged at the firm my mother founded. Where she would’ve wanted me to have the option on my own to stay or go.
It was a family firm. I was family. Except not to him.
Add in that that’s the night I got home and found Felice packing up to leave me.
Week before our wedding. Said I was making her choose, so she was choosing him. Life’s kinda sucked.”
Margot’s grip tightens on my thigh. “Had she—had she participated in planning the wedding?”
“Fuck knows every opinion I had about it was wrong, so yeah. Yeah, she participated. Planned the whole thing when she clearly didn’t want me.”
She stares at me with wide eyes. “You have very bad taste in women.”
I snort out a laugh.
Fucking worst moments of my life, and this woman has me cracking up about it. Cracking up and wanting her to inch her hand higher on my thigh.
“You know I think you’re sexy as hell?” I say to her.
She grins. “Like I said, terrible taste.”
“Why’d your ex dump you?” I need a distraction before I kiss her.
“He gave me the line that since his father had been sent to prison, he didn’t want the dirt on his family’s name to sully mine, but really, he couldn’t handle filling his father’s shoes at his family’s company and also having a relationship with me.”
“He couldn’t do both?”
“In all fairness, his business situation and mine were vastly different. My father’s unlikely to go to prison, and his father had run their company to the brink of bankruptcy. I’m sure you’ve seen the articles.”
Is she serious? “And now you’re being fair.”
Her eyes crinkle as her smile widens, making me hope they never fix this lift. “Now, yes. Then, no. Then, I was furious and hurt, but my parents cut my sister off about two weeks later, and suddenly the world looked very different.”
“Seriously? You got over being dumped because your sister was hurt?”
“It was eye-opening to realize how much I’ve always been rewarded by my parents for not being her, and how much she’s been punished for not being me.
I sometimes wonder if they timed destroying her to take the attention off of my ended engagement.
They could’ve…handled what they thought was a problem…
without putting her in the position they did, but they chose to actively hurt her the worst way possible.
Suddenly no one in our social circles was talking anymore about how Oliver called off the wedding.
It was more fun for them to talk about how terribly Daph must’ve fucked up and how funny it was that she was suddenly broke with nowhere to live and no functional skills about how to survive in the world without security and household managers and assistants. ”
My respect for this woman is growing exponentially, helped by the clear offense she feels on her sister’s behalf. “Hence you want no collateral damage.”
“Exactly. So. Would you like me to take care of your stepfather, or do you want to be involved?”
I look her straight in those pretty blue eyes, and I say the thing I’ve wanted to say for over a year.
The thing I can’t take back once it’s out.
The thing I might regret later, but the thing that makes me feel like I have a voice again. “I want him to know it was me.”
She smiles, but it’s not a friendly smile.
It’s a wicked smile.
A wicked smile, with her eyes going dark and her lips parting and her gaze dipping to my lips, like she’s turned on by revenge.
Revenge is no basis for a solid relationship, that voice in my head whispers.
Fuck a relationship though.
I just want to have fun.
And fun—fun is kissing Margot Merriweather-Brown.
My new partner in crime.
My soulmate in executing justice.
I lean in.
She leans in.
I finish what I started, wrapping my arm around her, and settle my hand on her hip.
Hers glides up my chest.
And then everything jolts, and we’re thrust backward as the gondola starts moving again.
I block her head from hitting the glass at the back of the car, and she grabs onto my shirt as an anchor while the car sways with its new movement.
“That couch can’t be comfortable,” she murmurs as the car begins slowing almost as quickly as it got up to speed. We’re almost at the end of the ride.
“Slept on worse.”
“Maybe we can find a way for you to sleep better tonight.”
So I’ll be walking around with a boner for the rest of my shift.
Fabulous.
Her smoky blue eyes sparkle. “Provided you help me clean up a mess I apparently made.”
“I cook or clean, Skillet. I don’t do both.”
“Are you offering to make me dinner?”
“Yes.”
“I can cook too.”
“You can prove it tomorrow.”
The doors start to slide open as the car enters the terminal.
I rise and help her to her feet.
Adjust my crotch.
And then get the pleasure of watching her ass as she exits before me, passing by a group of dudes who don’t even look at her.
Fucking idiots.
And I’d say that whether she was a housekeeper or a billionaire hotel heiress.
No relationships, just fun, I remind myself. Fun and revenge.
So long as I don’t contemplate that she’s the first person I’ve told this much about Felice and my stepfamily, and how much I genuinely like her as a person, I can keep believing that.