Chapter Thirteen. Holden
THIRTEEN
Holden
Fuck.
Just fuck.
I sit in my office, my mood surly and head still a fucking mess.
Friday night still ghosts through my mind. The engagement party. The revelation that I’m being played. Her kiss.
None of them I want to believe happened. All of them I have to acknowledge.
It’s Sunday, but I’m here burying my head in fucking work. Isn’t that how I cope? How I plot and plan and figure the best way to carry out everything I’ve worked toward for years?
I let distraction fuck me once. That won’t be happening again.
So I put my head down and sift through some of the proposals that Bob has sent my way: offers to buy, offers to sell, land that might be of interest, and palms that might willingly be greased.
It’s a shady business fucking someone over, but isn’t that the best part of living in the gray? You blend into the shadows without a second look?
I’m on my second glass of scotch and making ample progress as the sun slowly begins to slide from the sky. My office is growing dark but I don’t get up and flick the lights on.
I don’t need to.
I spent many a night in my early twenties sitting in darkened rooms staring at servers and screens. The dark has never bugged me.
A whole two hours where I haven’t thought of her.
Making progress, Knight. Making progress.
It’s the voices in the hallway that throw me. The cheese-dick laughs I know all too well that have me rolling my shoulders and tipping the remainder of the scotch into my mouth.
Fuck me.
I can’t escape them if I fucking try.
With a few keystrokes, I check the cameras to the parking lots and see they parked in the one on the opposite side of where I did.
I bet they don’t even know I’m here.
So I sit in the darkness, welcome the anonymity, and wait to see what might come.
“I don’t fucking care. All that matters is it’s finally fucking happening. All that hard work is coming to fruition,” Chad says somewhere down the hallway.
“It is. It has. But … how?” Rhett asks as a door opens and then shuts.
“She knows if she wants to stay with the company, I’m the best option she has. It’ll make our moms happy and her life easier. I wore her down. Simple as that. And now I move on to the next phase.”
“Which is?”
“Making her fall back in love with me. She did once.”
Rhett snorts. “In fucking high school.”
“Don’t underestimate me,” Chad says. “I’m a sleeper.”
“You could say that again.”
It sounds like hands are slapped as a high five is given, and my stomach churns. I fight the urge to stay silent but fuck that. Within seconds I’m in my doorway and staring at the backs of the two dipshits as they stand in the hallway.
“You’re in my office,” I say, and they both jump.
Gasps turn to awkward smiles and further still to narrowed eyes as they look at me. “You mean we’re in the hallway,” Rhett says.
“No. I didn’t stutter. I meant my office.” I offer a shark’s smile as I hold my hands out and gloat in a way I’m unable to with anyone else. “My company. My building. My office.”
Chad rolls his eyes.
Wrong move.
“Congrats. I guess. I didn’t quite make it over to you to say that the other night.” I was too busy kissing your fiancée.
He eyes me leerily—as he should. “Thanks.”
“From what the two of you were just saying?” I say, causing his head to whip back up to mine. “It sounds like you two will have a marriage that will stand the test of time.”
Chad clears his throat and glances over at Rhett.
“I’m talking to you, Chad. No need to look for Rhett’s approval to speak to me.
I thought we’d already established this fact.
” I lift my brows. “Anyway, as I was saying, sounds like a perfect pairing, but is that what you’re going to tell your kids some day?
That you badgered Mommy over and over until you wore her down to the point of exhaustion so that in a weak moment she agreed to marry you?
” I blow out a whistle. “And that’s how the men in Westmore think you keep a woman happy.
” I take a step back. “No wonder you’re all so fucked up. ”
“No, I’ll tell them I gave her what no other person in this town would,” he challenges and has me standing taller.
“What’s that?” I expect some smart-ass retort about happiness or some shit like that but his words knock me back.
I don’t wait for a response. Don’t care to. I turn on my heel, move back toward my office, and call over my shoulder, “Such a pity that your engagement party was such a hit that you have to come in to the office on a Sunday to get fucked over by me, but hey, whatever floats your boat.”
I wouldn’t be surprised if I turned around to find both of them holding their middle fingers up at me.
In fact, I’d be disappointed if they weren’t.
But I don’t give a fuck and make a point to prove it when I walk into my office and purposely leave my door open so they know everything they say can be heard by me.
And they wouldn’t dare shut their door for privacy. That’s an invitation for me to come in unannounced.
Their murmurs fill the hallway as I half work, half listen to their discussions about nothing. Curiosity has me wondering why the fuck they are here but since Bob has put the deal back on the table, no doubt they came here for the secrecy my presence isn’t affording them.
And while they discuss an offer I made, I refine and revise it on my end, just steps down the hall, as I anticipate their next moves.
I pretend like I didn’t hear the footsteps or expect the knock on my doorjamb when it comes. “Hmm?” I ask before I look up.
Rhett’s standing there, his eyebrows raised as he eyes the decanter of scotch and my empty glass.
“What’s a man without a few indulgences every now and again,” I say and lean back in my chair to welcome this face-off. “Feels like we’ve done this before. Me here. You there. What’s on your mind, Rothschild?”
“You got what you wanted, the majority stake. You don’t need to be such a prick,” he says.
“What I wanted?” I laugh. Your head on a platter? “More like what you sold to keep your shell game going, but I won’t nitpick.”
His glance over his shoulder says his best buddy doesn’t know he’s here sticking up for him.
Aw. How sweet.
“You really get off on this, don’t you?”
“I do. Yes. I’ve never minced words about that, now, have I?
” I begin to stack some of the papers on my desk.
“You sold me your family company but still look at me as an enemy, so what does that make you? A hypocrite? An opportunist? Or a man desperate enough to sell the very thing that made his family just to save his own ass? Hmm?” I go to open my top desk drawer and just as I tug on it, remember I need to grab the keys.
But my half tug has the drawer opening and my whole body startling.
“What the actual fuck?” I mutter to myself as I stare at the half-opened drawer, my mind buzzing.
“Desk is old,” Rhett states absently, oblivious to the shitstorm of thoughts and revelations sparking all at once. “I’ve always had problems with that drawer. It locks solidly at first but then the mechanism is old. The weight or something about how it’s installed unlatches it sometimes.”
Fuck. Me.
She knows.
She goddamn fucking knows and I wasn’t crazy for thinking it.
“You okay, man? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
I realize he’s standing there for the first time. Sure, I heard him talking, but I physically look up and see him standing there.
“I need to make a call. Shut the door on the way out,” I say without room for error. And when I look up and Rhett’s still standing there, I point to the door. “Go.”
You left them in the top drawer of your desk. Not a very safe place to keep something so very important.
My own words about her sapphires come back to me. The top drawer of her desk—a place to put them and hide them from prying eyes.
The same location of the contract in the locked drawer that apparently doesn’t lock.
The same drawer above which she left the box of cuff links.
I should have trusted my gut in this. Should have fucking known.
The minute the door is shut and I know I can’t be heard, I have my phone dialing as my heart thunders in my chest.
She knew all along.
Ring.
She knew and didn’t come to me.
Ring.
She knew and sided with Chad instead of coming to me.
“It’s late, Holden,” Audrey scolds by way of greeting.
“I need you to call for an emergency board meeting tomorrow morning for ten A.M.”
“Tomorrow is a holiday.”
I glance at the calendar. “No, it’s not.”
“In Westmore it is. Founders’ Day, to honor the captains of industry. The Rothschilds. The Williamses. All your favorite people.”
Fucking perfect.
“Call a board meeting. When has a holiday ever stopped me?”
“People might not be in town.”
“They’re in town. No one dared miss the social event of the season,” I say, referring to the engagement party.
“I did,” she says dryly.
“You were the only smart one who didn’t RSVP,” I mutter.
“People might not get the message in time.”
“Then make it for tomorrow afternoon. I don’t care. If they’re not here, they can forfeit their board seat.”
“Can you even do that?”
I shrug, even though she can’t see. “No clue, but the threat will work. These people live for their clout. They wouldn’t risk diminishing it.”
“You’re sure to piss everyone off with this meeting.”
“Good.” My smile is more of a grimace, but when I think of how this is going to rock the foundation of this company, it turns into a full-blown grin. “I’m sure to do that anyway with what I have to announce. Might as well add insult to injury.”
“I thought you were going to wait on this.”
“It’s imperative that I do it tomorrow.”
“Why?” she asks as my mind runs a million laps.
Because Rowan thinks I didn’t keep my word and screwed her over. Because until I prove otherwise, I’ve lost her.
“It’s a long story.” I don’t owe an explanation to anyone, let alone one that’s based off of conjecture. If I don’t already sound a little crazy then I sure as shit would then.
But this is the only logical explanation, the only reason for Rowan’s sudden engagement to Chad and accusations of betrayal.
How many times did she tell me you lied, to which I didn’t pay close enough attention?
“I’m sure it is a very long story,” Audrey says.
“One last thing—”
“Holden. It is nine on Sunday night. Don’t make me pull people out of bed.”
Shit. “I need all of the new documents.”
“For tomorrow’s meeting?”
“Yes.” Start pulling people out of bed.
“They’re still at the lawyers’ office. You told them they had until—”
“Well, now they don’t. I have complete faith you’ll get them to figure out how to have them to me by tomorrow.”
“Holden,” she growls.
“With two sets of copies. One for Rowan and one for Rhett. Just so we can all be on the same page.”
“Why the change of heart? I thought you were out to ruin these people.”
“I am.”
“Less one.” Those two words weigh down the silence, her point made, and when I don’t take the bait and react, she murmurs, “Someone is planning to light some fireworks tomorrow.”
I grunt in response, “It seems I already have.”