11. Nash
Security stoodon either side of me when I pressed and held the doorbell the next morning. My lawyer had sent over the documents that officially made the Royal Phoenix entirely mine. As soon as I had the papers in hand, I’d called the staff who worked in Joseph’s villa.
Out of the chef, three house managers, and a butler, none had been sad to be reassigned. I wasn’t sure if it was relief at not having to deal with Nicole any longer or the twenty percent raise I’d given them.
From the moment Howard’s will was read, I’d been looking forward to this day. That anticipation only doubled after that bastard Joseph married the greedy bitch who answered the door in only her skimpy nightgown. A sleep mask was pushed up over her eyes enough to see. My security hastily looked away when one of her tits spilled out of her barely there top.
“Nash?” she grumbled, blinking away the last traces of sleep. “Why are you being obnoxious so early in the morning? Where the hell is Paul?”
“The butler has been given a well-deserved raise for having to put up with your diva ass and reassigned to one of our long-term-stay guests.”
“You can’t do that!” she screeched, wide awake now, causing the men on either side of me to cringe at the sharp noise.
“Cover yourself. No one wants to look at your sagging tits.”
Gasping, she tucked herself back into her nightgown. “They do not sag! My plastic surgeon is the best in the country.”
“What’s going on?” Joseph complained as he appeared behind his wife. He tightened his robe around himself, finger-combing his thick, dark-blond hair so it wasn’t as unkempt.
Seeing me and the team of security I’d brought with me, he tensed. “What the hell is this, Phoenix?”
“Moving day,” I announced, a hard edge to my tone. “These gentlemen are going to make sure you get all packed up and safely off the premises.”
“The fuck they are! You can’t do this. Just because the shares of the hotel are solely yours now doesn’t mean you can just kick us out. I’m entitled to this villa. My father left it to me and—”
“Let me remind you of what was bequeathed to you.” I flipped to a marked page in the stack of papers I held. “Ah, yes. All the money that was in your father’s accounts—and only that. Nothing about property. Or stocks. Or any other assets. Just the cash. Which would be cut in half if you spoke about the details within the will to anyone outside of myself or Samuel Vincent Sr. Unfortunately for you, Nicole let it slip that you had been confiding in her.”
All the blood drained from both their faces, but not even the sight of the growing panic in their expressions—something I’d been relishing witnessing—could give me pleasure. There was no satisfaction for me. All I wanted was them out of the hotel so I could get to Vincent’s office and sign the papers that would give Lily the half of the hotel she’d always deserved.
Rage quickly replaced Joseph’s panic. Grabbing Nicole by the arm, he jerked her around to face him. “You spoke to Nash? After I explicitly told you not to tell anyone?”
“I-it just slipped out,” she stuttered, drawing into a ball.
“You ruined everything! First, you couldn’t switch out that stupid girl’s birth control correctly. She would be pregnant by now if you’d done what I told you to. Now this? We’re going to lose hundreds of millions because of you.”
Tears spilled down Nicole’s face. “I did switch them! If she’s not pregnant by now, then she’s probably infertile. That, or she and Nash aren’t fucking like rabbits as you suspected.”
A chill slithered down my spine as what they were shouting about finally clicked in my head. The world around me narrowed, going dark at the edges. One minute, I was standing by the door with the other men. The next, I had my hands wrapped around Joseph’s throat as I held him against a wall.
“You sabotaged your own daughter’s birth control?” I snarled.
Sweat beaded on the bastard’s brow. “I didn’t—”
“He made me,” Nicole whined behind me. “He kept saying that if Delilah was pregnant with your baby, it wouldn’t matter if you married her or not. But I didn’t believe him when he said you were sneaking around with that little bitch. You would never be attracted to that mousy thing.”
Remembering how sick Lily had been that one morning, how tired and fragile she’d looked, I was the one who began to sweat. She was pregnant. Fuck, she was carrying my child in her belly, and she was all alone out there somewhere, thinking I didn’t love her.
None of this was how today was supposed to go.
I’d had so many plans.
I would have pretended to forget her birthday, and then this morning, I would have presented her with the signed documents that gave her fifty percent of the Royal Phoenix. While she was taking that in, I would have dropped to one knee and begged her to be my wife.
Feeling like I was going to puke, I released Joseph, letting him fall to the floor at my feet. “You have one hour. Take what you can pack in that time and get the fuck out of my sight. If I ever see either of you again, I’ll destroy you both.”
Nicole grasped my arm, her eyes pleading with me as she pouted out her bottom lip. “Please, Nash. I-I love you. It’s always been you. I only wanted to make you jealous with Joseph.” She pressed her body up against me, both her tits out now.
Nausea churning in my gut, skin crawling from her touch, I shook her off. “Get her the fuck out of my hotel. If anyone sees her within five hundred feet of the property, call the cops. There will be a restraining order on her and Joseph Royal by the end of the day for assault.”
“What?” Nicole screamed. “I didn’t touch anyone!”
“You tampered with Lily’s birth control pills. That’s assault with intent to do harm.” Sending her one last disgusted look, I warned, “If I were you, Nicole, I’d run as far and as fast as I could. Your reign is over. Joseph won’t have any money to keep you dripping in diamonds by the time I get done with him. He’ll be lucky to afford all the legal fees in hopes of keeping himself out of prison.”
Rubbing at his throat, Joseph stumbled unsteadily to his feet in surprise. “For what?”
“All those deals you intentionally lost the Royal Phoenix over the last several months? They were worth billions. I wasn’t going to pursue legal action against you for them because I knew you would be out of the company soon. But you not only tried to hurt Lily, you succeeded.” I stepped through the still-open door. “See you in court, motherfucker.”
* * *
Worry for Lily weighed me down as I entered Samuel’s office at nine o’clock. Winston sat across from his desk, one leg casually crossed over his opposing knee. Sam stood beside him, hands shoved into the pockets of his designer suit, jaw clenched as he glared at his father.
“Great, Phoenix is here. Can we get this shit over with? I have a packed schedule this morning and need to be in court right after lunch.”
Ignoring his petulant tone, I crossed to my lawyer’s desk. “Is it ready?”
Samuel nodded, opening the file on his desk and turning it around to show me. “Everything is exactly as you requested. I just need your signature in a few places, and it will be final.”
After scanning each page, I scrawled my name on the lines indicated, and then I picked up the leather binder, shoving it at Lily’s best friend. He squared up on me, eyes shooting pure hate at me.
“Read it,” I commanded.
“Fuck off, Phoenix.”
Fighting the urge to punch him in the face, I opened it to the first page and forced it under his nose. “Read it. All of it.” I glanced at Winston, who hadn’t moved. “Both of you.”
Rolling his eyes, Sam finally took the file and scanned over the contract his father had started drafting for me the same day Howard’s will had been read. With each line Sam read, his face morphed, until he looked like he’d been struck by a thunderbolt.
“Holy shit,” he breathed when he got to the last page. “You’re really doing this?”
“What?” Winston demanded, standing and taking the binder from the younger man. “Is this legit? How long have you been working on this?”
“It was my plan from the very beginning,” I confirmed. “We all know Joseph would have continued to sabotage everything to the point that Lily would have been left with nothing by the time he died and she finally got her rightful inheritance. I couldn’t allow that to happen. Now, she has what should have always been hers.”
Winston snapped the file closed, tossing it back on the desk in front of Samuel. Scrubbing his hands over his face, he stared sightlessly at the wall.
“Tell me where she is. I need to find her and explain everything.”
Sam and Winston shared a look for a long moment before Sam shook his head. “No. We promised her we wouldn’t. Regardless of this peace offering, she has too much hurt in her heart to want to be near you.”
A frustrated growl ripped out of me. I took a threatening step toward Sam, but Winston stepped in front of me, blocking me from breaking the prick’s neck. “Calm down. You killing her best friend isn’t going to endear you to her.”
“I need to find her. She could be pregnant,” I choked out. “When I kicked them out of the hotel earlier, Joseph and Nicole confessed to tampering with her birth control.”
“Fuck!” Sam exploded as he turned and knocked over the chair Winston had been sitting in only moments before. “I’ll bury them both alive.”
Continuing to keep himself between me and the other man, Winston turned to face Sam. “This changes everything. He didn’t betray her.”
Sam shook his head, chest heaving with fury. “It doesn’t change anything. Giving her half of the hotel doesn’t fix what he broke. It’s not justice because it was supposed to be hers anyway. He treated her like shit, man.”
“Keeping our relationship a secret was to protect her. I didn’t want Joseph to try to use what we have as an excuse to contest the will,” I explained, my voice raspy and strained. “If Howard hadn’t died, I would have been married to her by now. But he did, and we all know that was probably the best thing he could have done for her. Because now, her legacy is safe. I made sure of it. No one can touch her shares. They can’t use her or the child she might be carrying.”
Snorting, Sam walked away from us. “All you cared about was fucking Joseph over. Keeping him away from the prize. If it was to protect Delilah, you would have told her. The only reason you’re pissed now is because your little fucktoy isn’t around to play with.”
Red descended over my eyes. Shoving Winston out of my way, I smashed my fist into Sam’s face. Blood gushed out of his nose as he stumbled back. “If you ever talk about her like that again, I will rip your goddamn head off your shoulders. She is not a toy. She’s the woman I love.”
“Enough!” Samuel bellowed from behind his desk. “Both of you, calm down. Fighting isn’t the answer to anything. Either rein it in or get out of my office.”
Squeezing the bridge of his bleeding nose, Sam righted the chair and sank down into it, his eyes blazing hate at me.
Turning to Winston, I dropped to my knees in front of him, knowing if I didn’t convince him, I’d never see Lily again. “Please, tell me where she is. I know I fucked up. I don’t deserve her. Fuck, I never did. But I swear to you, I’ll make it up to her. Every day for the rest of my life, I will work to make her happy and try to erase the pain I unintentionally caused.”