Chapter 24
Tyler
The rest of the night wasn’t as bad as the beginning, but it wasn’t good, either.
For starters, we were seated at the head table with our parents and the rest of the company’s higher-ups.
Oh, and Blake. He’d turned up right before dinner and was acting borderline hostile toward his sister.
I’d attempted to catch his eye to silently tell him to stop being such an insufferable shit, but he’d avoided my gaze throughout the entire four-course meal.
Stella and I were both in terrible moods, her for obvious reasons, me because I was still thinking about Maddie being a manipulative little bitch, was also deeply confused about my feelings for Stella, and because I was fighting pre-event jitters because my next party loomed, and the pressure to get everything right was astronomical.
Oh, and I’d been around Richard for far too fucking long.
I wanted to snarl whenever he opened his mouth. Force him to drop this charming act and reveal his true self—just like how Stella had forced Maddie.
The longer dinner dragged on, the more my thoughts spiraled. Feelings I’d kept shoved down were rising to the surface, refusing to be ignored. I couldn’t stop thinking about my mother, a young, na?ve country girl who’d come to the city with big dreams, only for Richard to crush them.
My father laughed at something Phil said, and I tightened my grip on my dinner knife.
He should have done the right thing and taken care of us.
I didn’t mean mansions and yachts, but basic goddamn necessities, like constant access to power and running water.
Instead, we were left with intermittent utilities dependent on Mom paying the bills on time.
The absolute bare minimum in child support would have been life-changing for us. But no. He hadn’t even done that.
I drained my drink, signaling to our server for another.
My eyes tracked the young woman as she headed for the bar. Was this how my parents had met? Mom said she’d been waiting tables when a handsome man fifteen years her senior swept her off her feet and promised her a dream. Instead, it turned into a nightmare.
Mom hadn’t been shy about telling me what she’d gone through.
She’d repeatedly told me I should stay away from anyone with wealth because they couldn’t be trusted.
That money was the ultimate corrupting force in this world, turning even good people bad.
That was the point where our opinions diverged.
Money wasn’t the problem; these people were.
The server returned with my drink, but I barely sipped it, too distracted by my dark thoughts until Stella rose from her seat, and I snapped back to myself. Dinner was over.
We stayed and mingled afterward, just long enough to make the rounds, and for Stella to introduce me to more people she thought might fit my criteria. At one point, I made some excuse and wandered away. There were other people I needed to introduce myself to before the party was over.
After my errand, I found Stella, and we exchanged a silent look and decided it was time to go.
Outside, we stood shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk, waiting for my car. Thunder rumbled in the distance, another storm blowing in off the water.
“Are you okay to drive?” Stella asked.
“I only had one drink and a few sips of the second.”
She was quiet, eyeing me.
“I’m six-five and weigh two hundred and fifty pounds. Plus, I ate a lot. I’m fine.”
She didn’t seem convinced, and I started to get annoyed.
“I’m not some rich idiot who doesn’t know their own limits.”
She flinched, and belatedly I remembered that while she might not have been driving the car that hit Runa, she had her own DUI under her belt from a few years prior to that.
“I don’t know what you have to be so pissy about,” she sniped. “You aren’t the one who had to face down the person who ruined your life.”
Anger swelled in my stomach. Yes, I fucking had. But it wasn’t like I could tell her that, so I locked my jaw and fixed my gaze on the street, silently urging the valet to hurry the fuck up.
We were only in the car a few minutes before the skies opened up and rain started pelting the windshield.
“Can you slow down?” Stella asked.
“I’m barely going over the speed limit.”
“Yeah, but it’s raining.”
I ground my teeth and eased off the gas.
“There’s a party at Feddy’s tomorrow,” she said. “AJ invited me.”
“Talk to him a lot now, after your reunion?” I sounded like a jealous boyfriend. Fuck, I even felt like one.
“A little. And I think we should go. Everyone there will either be from my parents’ circle or trying to break into it.”
I shook my head. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”
“Why not? It’s a room full of bored rich people. They’re literally your dream clients.”
“I don’t need it. The guest list is pretty much set and it’s too late to vet new ones. Plus, it’s better to keep it small and exclusive.”
“But fewer people mean less money.”
“Not if one of them gets shit-faced and blows through three million in one night like Blake did.” It was a dumb thing to say, and I knew it, but I was in too shitty a mood to try and fix it.
Stella blew out a breath. “You’re such an asshole.”
“I’ve never claimed to be anything else.”
“Then hopefully the night is a great success, and we’ll never have to see each other again.”
I gripped the steering wheel. “Desperate to get away from me, Sunshine?”
“Can you blame me?” she said, her voice rising.
“Since you barged into my life, I’ve taken on millions in debt, experienced my worst flare in years, lost money because I’m missing so much work, and then, tonight, to cap it all off, I had another ugly fight with a woman I hate, because you dragged me in there! ”
“I didn’t drag you anywhere,” I snapped. “You chose to follow me. I was perfectly fine to handle her on my own.”
“No, you weren’t. Threatening Maddie clearly didn’t work the first time, and it wouldn’t have worked a second. Whenever life gets hard, she runs straight to her parents.”
“You don’t know that that’s what would have happened.”
“Yes, I do. Before the night of the accident, she was my best friend. She always goes running to them.”
I shot a look in her direction. She’d been best friends with that monster?
“Don’t,” she said. “Don’t you fucking dare judge me. You are a fucking bookie, Theo. You ruin people’s lives for a goddamn living. Where the hell do you get off looking down your nose at anyone else?”
“Been holding that in a while, huh?” I said, my voice low and ugly.
“Yes. And something else, too.” She leaned toward me. “You might not be able to see it, but you are just like the people you claim to hate.”
“Shut up.”
“You take and take, with no remorse and no empathy for those you prey upon. And I know for a fact that not all the people you go after are corrupt, because you went after my brother.”
“Stop it, Stella.”
“At the end of the day, you’re as bad as they are, maybe even worse, because you do it for profit.”
“I said shut up!”
Headlights flashed across the windshield.
A horn blared. I shot my arm to the right, holding Stella back as I slammed on the brakes and cut the wheel to avoid a car that had blown through a stoplight.
Stella screamed as I swung back the other way to keep from hitting a driver who’d careened into our lane while dodging the first vehicle.
More horns blared, and I let Stella go because I needed both hands on the wheel to get us out of the chaos.
A few seconds later, we slid to a stop on the side of the street, our gasping breaths loud in the sudden silence. I glanced back toward the tangled intersection. It was a goddamn miracle we’d gotten out of it unscathed.
“Are you okay?” I asked Stella.
In answer, she popped her seat belt and threw open the door, stumbling into the night.
Fuck. She must be having flashbacks of the crash, and while I was probably the last person she wanted near her, I couldn’t let her run off alone into the night.
I eased the car forward, parking in an empty space, and got out. “Stella!”
She ignored me, arms clasped around herself as the rain started to soak her dress.
I shrugged off my jacket and caught up to her, draping it over her shoulders.
“Get away from me,” she said, hurrying up the sidewalk.
“No. I can’t have you getting serial murdered, or I’ll never recoup my loses.” I’d meant it as a joke, but after our shouting match, it felt wrong as soon as the words were out.
“Is that all I am to you?” she said, her voice low and shaky. “All anyone is to you? Pawns on a chessboard?”
I grimaced. Yes, that was eerily close to how I’d first thought of Stella.
As a game piece, there to be used and discarded once I was ready to move on to the next one.
Because that’s how I had to look at people to survive.
Otherwise, I might actually start listening to their sob stories—or worse, caring. And I knew the folly of that.
Take the guy Junior had stolen our play club from.
He’d tried to sell me one tale of woe after another, when the truth was, he was nothing but an asshole with an addictive personality.
He’d had money his whole life and didn’t understand it was a finite resource, so when he started losing at my tables, he just upped the rent on all his tenants to cover the cost.
Stella took my prolonged silence as confirmation of her accusation. “You’re such a bastard.”
I shrugged. “You’re not saying anything I haven’t heard a hundred times before.”
“Why, though? Why are you like this?”
“Remember what I told you? I’ll take any reaction I can get.”
“Stop it! Stop lying. No one is this awful unless someone really hurt them. Who hurt you, Theo?”