Chapter 2 - Gabriel
My son is a fucking disappointment.
Actually, that’s too kind.
He’s a liability. A waste of oxygen wrapped in a four-thousand-dollar suit I paid for.
I stand on the curb outside the country club, the cold mountain air biting at my face, watching the taillights of Blair’s beat-up sedan disappear into the darkness.
The red glow fades, swallowed by the winding road, but the image of her face—shattered, humiliated, beautiful in her devastation—is burned onto the back of my eyelids.
"Dad."
Ryder’s voice grates on my nerves like metal on bone.
I don’t turn around. I don’t want to look at him. If I look at him right now, with the adrenaline still pumping through my veins and the scent of Blair’s distress heavy in the air, I might actually kill him.
And as much as I loathe the weakness in him, filicide is messy.
"Dad, listen," he tries again, stepping into my peripheral vision. He looks flushed, manic. Like a child who broke a vase and is trying to blame gravity. "Vivi... she’s crazy. I didn’t know she was going to show up. You have to believe me."
I finally turn my head. Slowly.
He flinches.
Good.
"You didn't know," I repeat, my voice flat. Dead.
"No! I mean, yeah, we hooked up a few times, but she wasn't supposed to be here. She wasn't supposed to ruin the night."
Ruin the night.
He thinks this is about a fundraiser. About social standing.
He has no idea that he just handed me the only thing I’ve wanted for three years.
"Go home, Ryder," I say, reaching into my pocket for my keys.
"But the board... the donors..."
"I said go home." My voice drops an octave, turning into the growl that makes grown men in boardrooms piss themselves. "Get out of my sight before I remember that I’m the one who pays for the roof over your head."
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing in that weak throat of his. He looks like his mother, but he has none of her spine. He has none of mine, either.
He enters the club to do damage control—or get drunk, which is more likely—and I turn toward the valet stand.
I hand the kid a hundred-dollar bill to bring my car around fast. I need to be moving.
Because Ryder is wrong.
I knew.
I knew Vivienne Ashford was going to be here tonight. I knew she was fucking my son. I knew she was volatile and desperate and looking for a stage.
I’ve known about Ryder’s infidelity for six months.
I could have warned Blair. I could have pulled her aside, shown her the photos my private investigator took, saved her the public execution.
But I didn’t.
I let it happen.
I watched the train wreck in slow motion, and I didn't lift a finger to switch the tracks. Because I needed her broken. I needed her to see Ryder for exactly what he is: a boy playing a man’s game.
I needed her to be humiliated so completely that she would burn the bridge herself.
Because if she’s standing on the ashes of her old life, she’s going to need someone to build her a new one.
And that someone is going to be me.
The valet pulls up in my Aston Martin. I slide into the leather seat, the engine purring a low, dangerous note that matches the vibration in my chest.
I don’t head toward the estate.
Instead, I pull my phone from my jacket pocket and open an app that doesn’t exist on the standard app store. A black map loads, a single red dot pulsing steadily on the screen.
There you are.
I’ve been tracking her for eight months.
Illegal? Sure.
Do I give a fuck? Not even a little bit.
The dot is moving toward the lower end of Emerald Hills, heading for that shoebox apartment she tries so hard to make look like a home.
I merge onto the highway, keeping a three-mile distance. I don’t need to see her car to know where she’s going. I just need to know she’s safe until I can get my hands on her.
God, the urge to touch her is a physical pain.
It’s a dull ache in my jaw, a tightness in my chest, a throbbing pressure in my cock that hasn't gone away since she walked into the ballroom tonight in that green dress.
Green. The color of money. The color of envy.
She looked like a queen. And my idiot son treated her like a pawn.
I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white. The leather groans under the pressure.
For three years, I’ve played the part. The distant father. The disapproving patriarch. I watched her at Sunday dinners, sitting across the table, trying so hard to cut her steak the right way, laughing at Ryder’s unfunny jokes.
I watched her shrink herself to fit into his small, shallow world.
It made me sick.
Every time he touched her—a hand on her knee, an arm around her waist—I wanted to break his fingers.
Jealousy is an ugly emotion. It’s a poor man’s emotion. I’ve spent my life acquiring wealth so I never had to feel want again. I buy what I want. If I can’t buy it, I take it.
But Blair... Blair was the one thing I couldn’t just take.
Until tonight.
I follow the red dot off the main road, winding down the darker streets toward the edge of town. The houses get smaller here. The streetlights flicker.
She pulls into her complex. I kill my headlights and glide to a stop across the street, under the cover of a massive oak tree.
I watch.
She gets out of her car. She’s still wearing the dress, but her shoulders are slumped. She looks small. Fragile.
My protective instincts war with my predatory ones.
I want to go to her. I want to wrap her in my coat, put her in my car, and take her to my house where nothing can ever hurt her again.
But I stay put.
I watch her walk up the stairs to her second-floor unit. I watch the lights flicker on.
Then I watch her shadow move across the blinds.
Is she crying? Screaming?
I recline the seat slightly, settling in. This is pathetic. I’m a billionaire. I control the skyline of three cities. I have senators on speed dial.
And here I am, sitting in the dark like a fucking creep, obsessed with a woman twenty years my junior.
A woman who, until an hour ago, belonged to my son.
No.
She never belonged to him.
Ryder didn’t know what to do with a woman like Blair. He played house with her. He wasted her time. He wasted her body.
My hands flex on my thighs.
That’s the part that drives me the most insane. The waste.
Blair Ashby is built for legacy. She’s smart, resilient, gorgeous. She has hips made for carrying children and a mind sharp enough to raise them to be rulers.
And Ryder? Ryder was spilling his seed into yoga instructors and influencers, risking some bastard grandchild, while Blair—my perfect, brilliant Blair—was left empty.
It’s a sin.
And I’m going to rectify it.
I don't just want to fuck her.
I mean, I do. I want to fuck her until she can't walk. I want to bend her over my desk, over her kitchen counter, over the hood of this car. I want to hear her scream my name the way she’s never screamed his.
But it’s darker than that.
It’s primal.
I want to breed her.
The thought hits me hard, making my cock twitch in my trousers.
I want to put my baby in her.
I want to plant my flag in the most permanent way possible. I want to watch her belly swell with my heir. I want to bind her to me so tightly that she can never leave, never look at another man, never doubt where she belongs.
Ryder gave her a promise ring?
I’m going to give her a life.
I’m going to give her a son who actually has a spine.
I shift in my seat, uncomfortable with the intensity of my own thoughts but unable to stop them.
Through the window, her shadow stops pacing. She sinks down, maybe onto the couch.
I check the time on my dash. Midnight.
It’s Christmas season. The air smells like snow and pine and exhaust.
Does she know?
Does she have any idea that while she’s crying over a boy who never deserved her, the man who is going to own her soul is sitting fifty feet away?
I could go up there.
I have a key.
Well, I have a master key to the building. I own the management company that owns the complex. She doesn’t know that, either. I bought the building six months ago just to make sure the maintenance requests in her unit were prioritized.
I could walk in there right now. I could comfort her. I could tell her that Ryder is trash and that I can give her the world.
But she’s not ready.
She’s angry. I saw the fire in her eyes when she left the ballroom.
And anger... anger is useful.
Grief makes people weak. Anger makes them reckless.
If I go to her now, I’m the comforting father figure. I’m the shoulder to cry on.
I don’t want to be her friend. I don’t want to be her father-in-law.
I want to be her monster.
I want her to come to me.
I want her to be so blindingly furious at Ryder that she looks for the biggest, sharpest weapon she can find to hurt him.
And I am the nuclear option.
My phone buzzes. A text from Cohen.
The papers are drafted. You pull the trigger, Ryder’s out by morning. Trust fund frozen. Executive title revoked.
I look at the message, the blue light illuminating the interior of the car.
I type back one word:
Wait.
I need Ryder to have just enough rope to hang himself completely. And I need Blair to be the one who asks me to pull the lever.
I glance back up at the window. The light in the living room goes out. A moment later, the light in the bedroom flicks on.
I imagine her unzipping that dress. I imagine the silk pooling at her feet. I imagine her crawling into bed, cold and alone.
"Soon, little bird," I whisper to the empty car. My voice sounds rough, foreign. "Sleep well. You’re going to need your energy."
Because once I get my hands on her, I’m never letting go.
I watch until the bedroom light goes out.
Then I wait another hour in the dark, just to make sure she’s safe, feeling like a guardian devil, before I finally start the car and drive back to the empty mansion that’s about to get a hell of a lot more interesting.