26. All My Fury （Ethan）
ALL MY FURY (ETHAN)
I drum my fingers against the sticky table, my coffee cooling rapidly.
It’s more like espresso tar by now. A hole in the head would be better for my system right now than more caffeine, so I have no regrets.
Coffee just gives me an excuse to sit here.
Staring at Cooper.
Who stares right back at me with that blinding white smile I want to break.
The minute he walked in, I knew he’d pull the innocent act. Pretend it’s nothing personal, all for the best, standard operating procedure—after all, I agreed to it, didn’t I?
I expected to be Blackthorn’s CEO and the only man he’d deal with.
Rage gnarls like overgrown branches, screaming to be released, but I remain solid ice.
Margot would be proud of my self-control.
Hattie, too, if I hadn’t—
Damn.
The thought of her kicks like a mule. I almost swallow my espresso mud just to ease the tension.
Cooper rubs his jaw, lightly stubbled today. He’s trying to go for the slightly rugged look lately, but he’s too polished to pull it off with his baby face. Too well presented. I can tell he’s shaved his scruff down to the exact gravelly dusting he wants.
Nothing rugged about that.
Nothing real about this smarmy little rat-fuck.
So if he wants to look cut up about the predicament we’re in and how he’s so fucking sorry he put me here, he’ll have to try a lot harder.
I inhale sharply.
No way I’m giving up without a fight and letting him walk all over me, but for Blackthorn Holdings, I need a solution that doesn’t involve dragging the company through a complicated legal trap I was stupid enough to walk into.
First, we’ll see if I can reason.
We’ll try to resolve this like men, even if I know I’m looking at a cheating rattlesnake.
“Let’s cut to it. No bullshit,” I venture.
“Blackthorn, please. I’d never bullshit you on my life.” He laughs bitterly, like the very thought is preposterous.
Like he didn’t stuff that insane clause in the resort contract deliberately for me to stumble over.
“I never resigned from Blackthorn Holdings,” I tell him. “You know that. And insisting that I’m the sole executive officer you’ll ever deal with, that’s bizarre and unreasonable. Anyone would agree.”
“Bizarre? Is it now?” He raises both eyebrows.
“Obviously. No business deal should blow up over a personality contest. I thought this was a partnership? Daley Ventures and Blackthorn Holdings?”
“And I partnered with a man I thought would share Leonidas’ drive and vision by virtue of being his grandson. Hardly an unreasonable assumption, even if it’s a smidge unorthodox. No stand-in replaces talent. Just ask any great musician, actor, artist.”
My glare sharpens. “Do I look like goddamned Picasso to you?”
He barks laughter.
Obnoxious as hell.
Deep fucking breath. Again .
I grit my teeth.
I can’t lose it and toss my espresso in his face, however satisfying it might be.
“I thought you’d be straight with me,” I say as calmly as I can.
“I am, Blackthorn.”
“Then why are you clinging to this petty stipulation? You knew it wasn’t reasonable from day one. Almost like you expected something to happen.”
The corner of Daley’s mouth turns in like he’s trying not to smile.
“Listen,” he says, leaning forward like he’s about to let me in on some great secret.
“The reason—the only reason—I wanted you heading up the company is because you’re Leonidas’ grandson.
This is a fickle business, as you know. Blackthorn Holdings in anyone else’s hands won’t be Blackthorn Holdings, if you catch my drift.
Who else can I trust for a project this big?
And what good is the name without an actual Blackthorn?
” He stops and sighs. “Regrettably, you disappeared and—well, we had to explore other options. Just as we agreed on paper.”
“Other options.” I snort. “You mean you had to see how fast you could pounce on my grandfather’s property for damn near nothing. Also, for the last time, I haven’t resigned.”
“ Officially. However, you’ve taken an unexplained absence. It’s been weeks, Blackthorn. You failed to answer inquiries, even from your own team,” Cooper says, sounding like he’s regurgitating a statement from his lawyer. “That’s effectively a resignation in any reasonable terms.”
“Wrong. If I’m the CEO and I’m telling you face-to-face I haven’t quit, then who are you to say otherwise?”
He shakes his head slowly.
“I was so hopeful we could turn this around and make good, but that was under the assumption you had inherited some of Leonidas’ blood, and a lot of his work ethic. I see I was mistaken.”
Fucker.
I clench my jaw, inhaling flames.
Hearing him invoke the high bar Gramps set makes me want to break something. I have to remind myself we’re in public.
Assault charges won’t do me a bit of good, especially over a waste of oxygen like Cooper goddamned Daley.
“Seeing how you went behind his back with your previous acquisitions, I guess that’s why you wanted me to be more like him,” I say.
“I respected him.”
I don’t .
But I also respect him a hell of a lot more than this liar.
My feelings with Gramps are complicated.
Yes, he lied to me.
Yes, he roped me into a fake engagement that wound up smashing Hattie’s heart, but his letter showed nothing’s cut and dry.
When the truth first hit me, I didn’t want to be like him at all.
Now, maybe I’m more like him than I’ll ever want to be.
And maybe that’s okay.
Especially if I learn to own up to my mistakes a whole lot quicker than Gramps ever did.
“Let’s be real,” I bite off. “We both know this is a ‘gotcha.’ A trapdoor you built for me to fall through at some point, knowing I don’t have your experience, or my grandfather’s. Just admit you want the land—all of it—and this was never a sincere partnership at all.”
Cooper exhales slowly.
“No such thing, Blackthorn. Look, I don’t pretend to know what you’ve been going through lately, but I think it’s getting to your head. All I wanted was to work with a Blackthorn, one on one. I wanted to work with you. ”
Absolute bull.
But that fails the first test—common sense isn’t working.
Fine. On to phase two.
“And if we litigate?” I ask. “If Blackthorn won’t forfeit the land at your insane reduced rate?”
“That would be regrettable,” Cooper says in a wooden voice that isn’t sorry at all. “Particularly with the trouble you’re in. In a few weeks, you’ll wish you’d just resigned openly, I think.”
What?
His tone gives me pause.
My body reacts before my brain, tensing like it knows he’s about to drop an atomic bomb.
“What trouble is that?” I wrap my hands around the mug so I don’t lunge for his neck.
“The Taylor Rollins case. So tragic for Portland, losing her so young.” He gives me a carnivorous smile, even as he shakes his head with practiced regret. “I remember reading about it when it happened. Just awful, and written off as a freak accident, I believe. But what if it wasn’t that simple?”
My blood freezes over.
The way he looks at me—he can’t know.
Can he?
I think of Hattie, but she never would’ve told him.
Margot, my parents, they never knew.
Even Hardass Holden wouldn’t have ratted me out—if Gramps ever filled him in. His bodyguard is loyal to a fault. I can’t imagine he wouldn’t die first unless he’s that hard up for money.
Shit.
What else is there? Who else knows?
Or who made it their business to find out?
Then again, I never knew who Taylor told about us.
No one, I assumed, considering the situation.
What if I was wrong?
What if there’s someone out there, sitting on the devastating truth for over a decade?
What if I’m completely fucked—and maybe I should be.
“Bad memories? You look concerned.” Cooper raises his eyebrows in mock-sympathy. “The poor girl’s family never did find out what caused her accident that night, did they?”
Say nothing.
And no, they never knew how torn up she was, how my rejection almost certainly caused her to drive recklessly and go crashing to her death.
They never knew if she deliberately killed herself, and neither do I.
They suspected it was a bad decision, a horrible error, not desperation.
And maybe it was. Maybe.
Only, I know better.
Because I saw the look in her eyes when I walked away.
I had one chance to stop her, and I fucking choked.
My heart stops for several beats.
This is it, my darkest secret, the stone I’ve carried on my shoulders for too long, and now Cooper goddamned Daley can demolish my entire life with it.
“What the fuck are you talking about?” I snarl.
I shift my leg under the small table too hard and my knee bangs it.
The whole thing shakes from the impact, threatening to collapse. Should’ve known it would be practically cardboard.
“You know what I’m talking about,” he whispers.
“Who told you?”
“Now, now,” Daley says, drawing it out like the oily little bastard he is. “Really, it’s your own fault for running your mouth with your lovely fiancée in public at a certain French restaurant. Anyone could have heard.”
I’m shocked cold.
That dinner was the beginning of the end, and I’ve tried not to think about it ever since, though I haven’t gone a day without replaying everything.
But no one was sitting close enough to hear us.
I’m sure of it.
Plenty of people would’ve been interested in listening if they could, but no one came near us except—
“The waiter,” I snarl.
“That’s a big accusation.” Daley smiles. “True or not, you never know who’s listening. Or how much someone else is willing to fork over to keep tabs on potential friends.”
“Friends.” I spit the word like rotten lettuce.
Bribery is a great way of getting people to talk—even to people they shouldn’t.
Hell, especially to people they shouldn’t.
I think back to the annoying way the waiter hovered around, butting in constantly to make sure ‘everything was fine.’
Sure, everything was fucking brilliant.
That was the moment everything started falling apart.
I let my guard down.
“Did you hire him to spy? Were you following me, you miserable fuck?” My fist bangs the table.