CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER TEN
T HEY ’ D BEEN MARRIED two months by the time they returned to London. Atlas said they needed to be in town ahead of the quarterly board meeting, but Stella suspected his real purpose was collecting Carmel from her stay at the clinic.
Atlas had spoken to his sister at least twice a week while she’d been there. Stella had noticed it was always under the guise of asking something about work, but it allowed him to check on her and let her know he was there if she needed him, not that she seemed to want anything to do with him.
Carmel faltered when she saw them waiting in the lobby for her.
“Did Daddy demote you to chauffeur?” She searched in her handbag for something.
“I haven’t spoken to him since the party, but I told Chester to expect us for lunch. Unless you’d rather stay in the city?”
“God no. I’m not ready for the brunch circuit.” She set aside a romance novel and found her sunglasses, putting them on her nose. Then she picked up the romance novel and waved it at Stella. “Thank you for these. I haven’t finished this one, but I got through everything else and left them in the library. It’s a nice change from all the Positive Thinking Solves Everything dreck that’s in there.”
“I’m glad you enjoyed them.” Stella had ordered boxes of books for Carmel three times, mostly to let her know she was thinking of her. “I started reading romance to improve my English, but they always make me feel better if I’m having a rough day.”
“Did you read the one where the hero is a minotaur?” She dipped her sunglasses down her nose to peer over them.
“Oh, I know!” Stella couldn’t help laughing. “It’s good, right? But also, what?” The premise involved milking bulls.
“Group therapy turned into book club over that one. Does he know you’re reading books like that?” She thumbed toward Atlas.
“What book? What minotaur?” Atlas frowned between them.
“Shh,” Stella admonished. “What he doesn’t know is not hurting him. At all.”
“Are you saying my brother is reaping the benefits from you reading sexy books? Ew… No. Too much information.” Carmel pushed the bridge of her sunglasses up her nose and tossed her hair, but she wore a reluctant smile of amusement as she sailed out the door.
“Do I?” Atlas asked in an undertone as he held the door for Stella to follow Carmel.
“Are you complaining?”
“Not at all. But I draw a line at putting on animal costumes.”
“Your loss,” she teased, making him smirk.
They continued to banter and talk books as Atlas drove them to the estate, but Carmel grew subdued as they arrived. Chester let them into the cavernous foyer and directed them to “the afternoon parlor” where Oliver waited. He stood at the fireplace holding a glass of something amber.
“Brandy?” Atlas said with angry astonishment. “On the day your daughter comes home from sixty days in rehab?”
That’s when Stella realized why Atlas had been so intent on bringing Carmel home himself. She really was married to the most protective, lovable man in the world.
“Not to worry, Daddy. I’m completely cured. Just like last time,” Carmel said with deep irony as she walked across to offer her cheek.
“Good to have you home, love. I’ve missed you,” Oliver said indulgently, then lifted his malevolent gaze to Atlas. “What makes you think you’re welcome here after causing this?” He jerked his head disparagingly at Carmel.
“I thought we could lunch together like adults and discuss the transition. Or define our battle lines,” Atlas said, tone cool and even. “Your choice.”
“Lines,” Oliver scoffed. “As though you don’t cross them when it suits you. You love to pretend superiority over me, then walk in here using women as your shield.”
So he had noticed Stella was here. He hadn’t spared her a single glance so she had presumed she was invisible.
“ I use women?” Atlas snorted.
“You put your sister in a sanitarium like a Victorian husband with his hysterical wife, to embarrass me at the party and divide the two of us.” He waved between himself and Carmel.
“I put myself there, Daddy. I’ve had to accept that.” Carmel clutched her elbows, looking as though she wanted to say more, but Oliver ignored her as he continued attacking Atlas.
“You kept a chambermaid as your mistress for years then married her when you got caught, purely to stick a knife in my back!”
“That’s not what I did.” Atlas sent a sharp glance to Stella. They hadn’t had a lengthy affair, but the rest was not inaccurate. She knew it as well as he did.
She rolled her lips inward, pinning them closed, deeply uncomfortable.
“Why did you marry her, then?” Oliver demanded. “It wasn’t her fortune or her connections. She doesn’t bring anything to your marriage except a great pair of—”
“Careful,” Atlas said through gritted teeth.
“Too close to the truth?” Oliver mocked. “You’re not fit to run DVE if you can’t recognize a gold digger when you see one. Well done, girlie.” Oliver finally acknowledged her. “I’ve seen some slick operators in my time, but you really found your mark with this one, didn’t you?”
“Don’t speak to her if that’s how you’re going to talk,” Atlas cut in sharply. “And you don’t have to listen to this,” Atlas said to her gruffly. “You can wait in the car if you want to.”
“I’m here to support Carmel.” Did they all forget she was fragile as a newborn right now? Did they forget she was here , hugging herself and looking wan? “Would you like to come to London with us?” Oliver looked to be in a vile mood. Stella would never leave one of her siblings to handle her father alone if he looked like this.
“No.” Carmel shook her head, body tense and expression stiff.
“Oh, she’s good,” Oliver said with sarcastic admiration. “I bet she told you she loves you to get her hands on all of this. Didn’t you?”
“No.” Stella reminded herself this man meant nothing to her, but she still felt stripped raw under his contemptuous regard. It was too familiar, compelling her to push back and assert her truth. “But I do.”
“Love him? I’m sure.” Oliver choked on a withering laugh. “I’ve never understood why they call them working girls when they never want to work .”
That was deeply unfair yet hit a tender spot in Stella. She had worked so hard for everything she had and had resisted becoming reliant on Atlas, but here she was, looking like the opportunist Oliver judged her to be. It stung to her very core.
Her throat closed, making it impossible to defend herself while Atlas visibly swelled with anger. He seemed to expand while his face darkened and his mouth tightened. So did his fist.
“I married her so I could get my hands on it,” he said with icy fury. “Does it feel good to see the monster you created in your own image? One who uses innocent people to get what he wants?”
“It always comes back to your mother, doesn’t it?” Oliver said tiredly. “She was no victim, Atlas. She wanted it. She threw herself at me and made out fine, exactly as planned. Exactly as this one will.” He waved pithily at Stella. “Exactly as you will.”
Atlas swore. “No. You have dangled DVE like a carrot for seventeen years. Tomorrow, I’m taking what’s mine. You can step down or I will leave DVE and take a third of its capital and assets with me. Yes,” he added grimly as Oliver’s face reddened with outrage. “I’d rather destroy it than let you keep what I’ve kept alive. You have met your match, Oliver, because I am you.”
He waved Stella toward the door.
* * *
“Will Carmel be all right?” Stella asked once they were in the car.
“Chester knows to get her help if she needs it.” Atlas had made that clear after last time. God knew Oliver wouldn’t do anything. “I’m sorry you had to go through that.”
“I don’t care about him or his opinion of me.” She sounded like she was being honest, but it was the ugliest blowup he’d ever had with his father. His attacks on Stella had infuriated Atlas, but far worse was his own behavior.
He had taunted Oliver by saying he was his mirror image, but it was hitting him that the words were too true. Appallingly true. He had ruthlessly used Stella in an attempt to get what he wanted. Even Rafael Zamos had seen it. Atlas could pretty it up with sparkling baubles and generous gifts and attentive lovemaking, but the truth was, he had used Stella’s worries over her family to achieve his own ends.
I bet she told you she loves you.
No. But I do .
His heart had nearly come out of his throat when she had said that. It made his behavior that much worse. That much more like Oliver, who had encouraged a woman to fall for him purely to appease his own desires.
Atlas couldn’t stand how far he’d sunk to his father’s level. It drenched him in disgust and self-loathing.
They didn’t speak again until they were in the penthouse in London. The housekeeper had finished for the day and, since they hadn’t been sure of their plans, hadn’t left any meals.
“Should I make something for lunch?” Stella asked. “Or would you rather order in?”
“Did you mean it?” he asked, unable to hold the question in.
“What?”
“When Oliver asked if you loved me.”
She stiffened. Shadows of indecision swirled in her eyes before her expression softened, becoming so naked and defenseless, it dropped his heart even further, until it was churning with his gut.
“I would never lie about something like that. I wouldn’t lie to you ,” she said.
He flinched. “How could you?”
“That’s not a real question, is it?” she chided as she came to set her hand on his arm.
He stepped back, withdrawing from the contact because it created thorny sensations that pierced more than his arm. They went into his chest and his throat and his belly. The magnitude of her confession, of her tender feelings, was too big inside him. Too heavy.
“It’s okay if you’re not there yet,” she said in a voice that wavered. “We’re still new.”
Yet . The expectation in that word was so loaded, it only made him feel worse about what he’d done.
“I don’t deserve your love, Stella.” He doubted he ever would.
“Of course you do. You’re a good man, Atlas.”
“Ha!” He ran his hand down his face.
“Please don’t question my judgment,” she said with quiet dignity.
“Were you in that room?”
You love to pretend superiority, then use women as a shield. You married her to stick a knife in my back.
“It’s my judgment you should question,” he said tightly. “I’ve been behaving exactly the way he does. Think about your future, Stella. If I’m capable of this today, I could be worse tomorrow. Do you want me leaving you pregnant to fend for yourself and our child? Encouraging you to drink yourself to death?”
“You wouldn’t do that.”
“You don’t know that. His poisoned blood is in me. I’ve turned into him to fight him and now that’s what I am. Run while you have the chance.”
“I’m not leaving you, Atlas,” she admonished with a flex of injury across her face. “I love you. I want to be with you.”
“And I refuse to use your feelings to keep you here. I’m liable to use your feelings to destroy you.”
“You’re not making sense.” She tried to approach him again and he stepped back again. Her shoulders fell. “If you care about me enough that you want to protect me, then you’re not a bad person. You’re not like him,” she insisted.
“You don’t know the thoughts in my head.” The rage. The desire for revenge that wanted to stop at nothing to vanquish Oliver once and for all.
“No,” she agreed. “But you do care about me, don’t you?” Her faltering smile fell away as she searched his eyes. Anxious lines etched in around her eyes and mouth. “A little?”
The pang in her voice matched the ache in his chest. Yes, he cared about her. So much he couldn’t look at her because she would see it and he refused to manipulate her. He refused to keep using her.
He clenched his teeth so hard he thought his molars would crack.
* * *
Stella knew how to hide her emotions, but it took all her effort to breathe through the pain of this rejection.
When Atlas had told Oliver he was using her to get the better of him, she had heard a certain truth in it, but she’d believed their connection went deeper than that.
As the silence dragged on, ringing with his refusal to say he returned any scrap of her feelings, she had to accept that he did not.
She swallowed, trying to assimilate the agony of being in love with a man who was letting her down. She had overturned her life for him, allowing herself to become dependent on him emotionally as well as financially. She had sworn she would never let this happen, but she had. What a foolish, horrific, devastating mistake.
“I…” Her voice didn’t want to work. She blinked, trying to clear the hot sheen from her eyes. “I’ll go see my family.” Run away. That’s what she would do. Again .
She pulled out her phone and began tapping.
“I’ll arrange the jet,” he said in a graveled voice.
Oh, he couldn’t wait to get rid of her, could he?
“There’s a train in two hours that connects in Paris. It will get me there by morning.”
“You’re not taking the train overnight.”
“Excuse me, Atlas, but you just told me to look after myself because I can’t trust you to do it.” Her voice was ragged but hard as she snapped her focus back to him.
She heard his breath hiss in as though he’d been punched.
“I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself and I will.” She booked the sleeper, already anticipating crying her way across the continent. “I have to pack.”