Chapter 2
Damien
Marriage. to Ivy. That was the mostnonsensical proposition I’ve ever heard. Granted, it was only for a couple of months, but I know enough about that family to not trust a word a Hawthorne says. Especially Ivy fucking Hawthorne. I kicked her out after she uttered those words and enjoyed the humiliation she faced at being dragged out of a club. A gossip blog had even written an article about the event.
Even hell doesn’t want her. Desperate, Ivy chucked out of the Devil of Wall Street’s club.
The less than five hundred-word article had little to write about her. Ivy isn’t the most well-known member of the Hawthorne family, but everyone in New York knows the feud between me and her entire clan. Any gossip blogger wouldn’t have resisted writing an article about it.
But even that wasn’t enough for me to feel smug and forget about the entire thing. It’s a week later and I’m still thinking about her proposal. Ivy owns five percent of the company. Which nets her a cool half a billion dollars if she sells it at the current market price. She would be a rich woman, so I completely understand why she would think it worth the risk to come to me, even after all that’s happened between us. But giving me, of all people, even marginal control of their company is inviting a fox into a henhouse. She has to know that her family would be against it. I shake my head at the thought. But wouldn’t it be fantastic to see their shocked faces when they find out that I own part of their precious company? Would five percent get me a seat? I wonder as I enter Ivy’s apartment building.
I don’t know how I got myself here at all. I was determined to never speak to her again, but the offer was irresistible. My curiosity led me to delve deeper into Ivy and her activities over the past eight years. I found little. She has hidden herself well ever since that fateful night. The Ivy I knew was something of a socialite. Nothing insane, just the regular partying of someone rich and young, like her. But nothing ever since. Not even a wedding announcement in the papers. The only thing my assistant could find was Ivy’s home address.
And it’s in the last neighborhood I would have thought she would live in. The building is old, but clean. There’s no doorman at the door, not that I expected one at a place like this, but there is a concierge. It’s the kind of place one rents when they’re on a middle-class salary. Not an heiress. I had to check with my driver three times if it was the right place as he was driving into the parking lot. Even that didn’t satisfy me, so I checked with my assistant and she too said it’s the right place. But as I approach the concierge, I halfway expect him to say there’s no Ivy Hawthorne living in this building, but nope.
Instead, he says Ivy is not back from work, but if I want to wait for her, I can sit in the lobby. I take a seat on one of the hard steel chairs that remind me of a lobby in a dentist’s office.
What is going on, Ivy? She has enough money to own multiple apartments on the Upper East Side. Or did her family cut her off? That would explain why she was so desperate to contact me. Anyone else would have been intimidated by Nolan and fear his wrath if they went against him. While he’s not as vengeful as his father, he is still just as ruthless when dealing with his enemies.
Half an hour passes by and I take out my phone, intending to call her, but before I even dial her number, the door opens and the most beautiful woman walks in. Eight years later, she’s still beautiful. Even more so now that she’s all round and curvy in the right places. I was too angry to notice her beauty when she ambushed me in my club, but now, in daylight, my god. My groin tightens as I stare blankly, wondering how good it would be to have her under me once again.
She passes by the concierge waving to him, and he says something to her, pointing at me. Everything seems to happen in slow motion as she turns to look at me, frowning at first and then her eyes widening into saucers. “What are you doing here?” She looks just like she did before, if not a little tired. The big gray coat she has on does little to hide her delectable figure. If anything, it makes me want to take it off and…
“No hello or how are you?” I say, standing up.
“Uh?” She shakes her head. “How did you get my address?”
“You left it together with your phone number on one of the many times you visited my office.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Left half a dozen messages or so.”
She takes her phone out of her purse and goes through it. “Oh,” she says. No doubt seeing all my missed calls.
“Oh, is right.”
She puts her phone back in her purse and stares at me. I raise my eyebrows, wondering what’s next.
“Do you want us to discuss it in the lobby?” I say to her. She shakes her head again and taps her temple. “Sorry, it’s just I didn’t expect you. I thought… Never mind what I thought, follow me.”
Her apartment is on the top floor of the building, but it doesn’t mean it’s a penthouse. Far from that. It’s small. Smaller than I expected, even after seeing where she lives. Before we entered, she got a little agitated and asked me to wait outside while she tidied the place. Now that I’m in, I look around, trying to sus out the reason for her panic. Something tells me she wasn’t simply putting clothes away, but hiding things. Evidence of another man, maybe? It would be uncouth to ask one man to marry you while you have pictures of another man in your apartment, I guess. I take a seat on one of the smaller sofas while she’s in the bedroom. When she comes back, she has taken off her coat and is now wearing a green curve-hugging dress that matches her eyes.
A low burning ember within me lights up. Eight years later, and she still has the same hold on me as before. Her beauty has only improved with age. There’s a maturity and quiet elegance to her now that makes her all the more desirable.
She perches herself on the edge of the couch facing mine and says, “I thought you didn’t want the deal.”
“At that moment, no, but I have since thought about it. Marrying you for a week doesn’t sound as bad if it means I get a stake in Hawthorne afterward.” She nods. She’s a little frazzled. From my coming here without her expecting it, or is there something else I am missing? “Ivy, if you have a boyfriend, you’re afraid will barge in any second and catch us discussing a marriage proposal. You can just say so.”
She settles in her seat. “Sorry, there’s no boyfriend. It’s just that you surprised me, that’s all. So you want to do it?”
“As long as there are no hidden clauses that would come to bite me in the ass.”
“Nothing of the sort. It’s only that to control my shares before I turn thirty. The trust says I should get married.”
“Can’t you just get married? I doubt you have to sell your entire stake to do so?” But then again, these old-money families have trusts with odd and archaic clauses.
“I tried that, but my father changed it after he kicked me out of the family. He had the trustee change it to add another stipulation. That my new husband would be the one in control. It’s a long story.”
“Oh. Care to get into the story? I’ve got time.”
She presses her lips. I’m sure she will not go any further into the story, but she then says, “My grandfather, or rather, great grandfather, set up a trust.”
From what I recall from the dozens of times Nolan Senior told me the story, Nolan Hawthorne, the first opened a department store on Fifth Avenue. It turned into a lucrative business with multiple department stores around the country. The second Nolan Hawthorne took the department stores global, and the third, Ivy’s father, diversified into retail chain stores, a fashion house, and garment suppliers. The fourth Nolan Hawthorne, Ivy’s eldest brother, has been a trailblazer in making the business a reliable online brand that’s hip to the current social media trends. I guess the one who set up the trust is the first Nolan Hawthorne.
“According to the trust, the men in the family can gain control of their inheritance when they turn twenty-five and the women thirty or if they’re married, they can gain control at the age of twenty-five.”
“A bit old school.”
“And then when my father learned I was trying to find a husband to marry, he convinced my brothers and the trustee to vote on a change, that if I get married before thirty, my husband will be the one to control the assets.”
I frown. Anger slowly bubbling inside me. On behalf of her? Can’t be. “What did you do that made your family so dead set against you?”
“Sleep with you.”
“They didn’t like their precious princess being touched by the help?”
She rolls her eyes. “Your mother was my father’s assistant, and you were an executive at the company. You were never the help.”
“You’re right. If you didn’t insinuate I took advantage of you, your father would have been happy to call me your boyfriend.”
“Boyfriend? I thought I was just a one-night stand.”
The aftermath of that night comes back rushing in. Nolan’s brother found Ivy and me together in bed, and a few seconds later, so did his father. The anger they both had would live with me forever. As if I had committed the worst crime in their mind. And to make things worse. Ivy’s actions only confirmed their thinking.
“They have you living in squalor and all because you slept with me?” I say, my gaze darting around the apartment, noting the small kitchen beyond the tiny island and the three doors in the passageway that can only be two bedrooms and a bathroom. Maybe the thing she’s hiding is a roommate. But why hide that? “Your father has been dead for what? Two years now? Shouldn’t your brother help you out? I’m sure he owns plenty of better apartments than this one.”
“Living here is my choice.”
“And yet you’re so desperate for money that you stalked me for an entire month.”
Her eyes bulge. “So you knew I was looking for you! Your assistants made it seem as if you didn’t even know I was there.”
“That means they’re good at following orders. Maybe I should give them a raise.”
“Why were you avoiding me? I would have thought after all we went through, I would have been the one to run away from you.”
“You should!” I spit at her, suddenly angry about that night. Or rather, the morning after. “Why did you lie?” I say without intending to.
“I didn’t lie.”
I scoff. “That’s rich.”
She looks away. “You know what my father is like. I couldn’t tell him what exactly happened. I got tongue-tied. When he said you were the one who seduced me, I went along with it.”
“And you didn’t care how much hurt you were causing. You ruined my life without even a saying a word.”
“You turned out fine.”
She’s right. If she knew what it took for me to be where I am, I don’t think she would think I was an uninjured party. Would she care, though? Ivy Hawthorne has always been selfish and spoiled. She was never responsible for her actions, and frankly, I should have known better than to be swayed by her that night.
Ivy turns back to face me. Are those tears in her eyes? “Do you want to marry me or not? If not—”
“Pack your bags. We’re going to Vegas.”
“Now?”
“I thought you were eager. Getting cold feet?”
Her gaze goes to the floor, then to the side, and then back at me. “I thought we could do it tomorrow.”
“I have to go out of town tomorrow.”
“What about a prenup? And stuff like that.”
“A prenup can be drafted on our way there. My lawyer can join us for the ride. We’re going to need witnesses after all.”