Chapter 3
Jasper
You’re certain you want to make that low of an offer? If they get offended and pull out—”
“Then they’ll quickly learn they have nowhere else to go,” I said, cutting off my VP’s argument as my feet pounded down the hallway toward my office.
The small chime alerting me that someone was at the front door poured into the hallway from the surveillance room, grating against my already inflamed nerves like a Taser to the back of my neck.
I fucking hated people at my house—hated it.
I was meeting with some old fuckwad from a botanical garden or something.
Sowerby had always been perturbed by the state of Mother’s old conservatory and had finally nagged me enough that I’d agreed to a meeting when the garden society or whoever the fuck from town came begging to get into it again.
I would take the meeting, but I wasn’t allowing them in the conservatory.
I’d sooner plow it under than allow anything of hers to be alive in this manor again.
“Jasper, be reasonable,” Easton tried to argue.
“They are lucky I’m offering them any—” The words dropped off as my feet stilled in the hallway. My eyes were dialed in on the driveway’s security camera. “Make the offer,” I said before I hung up my cell phone and turned into the surveillance room.
I noticed it in her eyes instantly and it hit me…
uncomfortably. She was beautiful, but that wasn’t what was interesting about her.
It was hidden, but once I caught sight of it, it was impossible to ignore.
Only those who have felt it could pick up the deep anguish in her eyes.
I’d never seen it outside of a reflection in a mirror.
What had caused it in her?
A host of emotions pressed in on me and my steady hatred for life returned. I pulled my gaze away from the camera and continued down the hallway to my office, grabbing the letter from my mother out of my pocket along with the lighter.