Chapter 30
Slowly, keeping my rage tightly under control, I walked into the bedroom to survey the damage.
Stella had been home for an hour and a half, according to Hamilton.
In that time, she had managed to destroy everything in the room.
“Get out!” I yelled, staring at Stella.
She made a move like she was going to go around me, and I stopped her. “Not you. You stay exactly where you are.”
I turned behind me and saw the rest of the staff still at what remained of the doorway. “I said get out.”
Immediately they all left, except for Hamilton. He stood there, giving Stella a smug smirk. He and I would have a conversation about that later.
“Now,” I repeated, and it took Hamilton a good moment to realize that I was speaking to him. His face paled as he straightened, turned on his heel, and left.
If there were still a door there, I’d close it to keep him from eavesdropping.
But Stella had made that impossible.
I turned to face her and the absolute destruction of the room, as well as her new pink haircut and the addition of a diamond-encrusted hoop in her nose.
“Would you like to explain what happened here?”
“What do you think happened?”
“I think I increased your pocket money, and instead of being grateful, you threw a fit like a twelve-year-old, dying your hair, getting your nose pierced, and then destroying everything.”
Feathers floating down from the ceiling fan caught my attention.
She had actually busted either the comforter or the pillows, probably both, judging by the sheer number of feathers blanketing the destruction. “Why? Don’t most girls go through this rebellious phase much earlier?”
“Because I thought maybe if I weren’t your perfect little trophy wife, you wouldn’t want to marry me. That maybe if I ruined this perfect little girl that you decided to steal from, that maybe my father’s money wouldn’t be worth having to put up with me.”
“Having to put up with you? Is that what you think I’m doing?”
“Isn’t it? The only reason I’m here is because you want my father’s money, and you thought, why not fuck his daughter at the same time. The only reason I’m here is because he died, and you saw an opportunity to add to your immense wealth.”
“You think the only reason you’re here is because of your father’s money? I thought you were smarter than that.”
I was actually a little dumbfounded and very insulted.
How could she think this was all about her father’s money?
It was absolutely not the only reason she was here.
Her father could have been dead broke.
In fact, from what I’d learned about his business, I was amazed he wasn’t. Of course, that was before I realized how much money was coming from shady dealings.
“Yes, and you can’t have it. It’s mine. I swear to god, I will take you down. I won’t just be some toy you use and take out for parties while you spend my father’s money. I will make you pay for everything.”
She was hysterical now, screaming and stomping around the mess she had made.
“With this?” I asked, taking the stolen ledger pages out of my breast pocket.
Hamilton had given them to me when I arrived home.
The maid had found them, and he felt the proper thing was to hand them over so I could deal with the ‘wailing banshee’ myself.
Her eyes got wide as she saw the pages, and then she looked back at the bed like she couldn’t believe they weren’t still there.
A scream of rage and frustration tore from her throat as she grabbed one of the Tiffany lamps and threw it at me.
I managed to dodge the lamp, but the cord still hit my thigh.
That little infraction would be dealt with later.
At that moment, I was more concerned about what she thought she was doing here.
“Do you really think I brought you here to steal your money?” I asked.
“Why else would you want me? I have no skills, I have no experience, I have nothing but my father’s wealth. I am absolutely useless.”
Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, and I didn’t know how to handle this.
“The only thing I am good for, the only thing that I can do is to be a good trophy wife. Isn’t that why you want me? So I can look pretty on your arm and in your bed, and you can show me off at parties to all your other old pervy friends, and brag about how you like to put me on my knees or on my back. I bet you laughed in the steam room before the match about how you planned to take me to the stables after the match and punish me for being so incompetent.”
I was rarely in a situation where I did not know exactly what to do.
Put me in a boardroom, and I would dominate it.
Put me in a firing squad, and I would make every single one of those men with guns piss themselves and somehow think that I was the only one with real power. Put me in any situation where someone needed to be broken, and I broke them down to their core elements.
If there was a war to win, I won it.
But when I saw a crying woman in front of me, one that I had unintentionally hurt, I was lost.
I thought she knew.
Looking back at everything, it was clear she had no idea.
For the first time ever, I knew what it felt like to be an idiot.
I had been assuming she had the same resources, the same level of information and back channels that the other men I worked with did.
There was no way she had that, and I just didn’t bother to realize there was no tongue-in-cheek with her. She didn’t know anything. I had been acting like it was all some kind of torrid game. But for her, it was her life.
Fuck.
“Stella, sit down.”
“No, I want to stand.” She stuck her chin up in the air, making her new pink hair fall back, exposing her long neck and showing off the new piercings in her ears.
“Fine, but I am going to sit.” I went to the armchairs that were covered in feathers but otherwise unharmed, dusted one off, then sat. “First, I don’t give a fuck what you do to your hair. Dye it a new color every day. Get as many piercings as you want, but if you decide to get your pretty little clit pierced, it had better be a woman doing it.”
Stella rolled her eyes, but I could see she was trying not to crack a smile.
She could fight it all she wanted, but she liked that I was possessive. She liked that I wanted to keep her to myself.
“Come here.”
She took a few steps closer to me, but it wasn’t close enough. I grabbed her arm and pulled her into my lap.
“Listen to me very closely, baby girl. I need you to hear everything I say. Is that understood?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, her head bent low so her hair fell in a pink curtain, hiding her face.
“I have no interest in your father’s money. I am managing it because that is what I do. I am also trying to track down some things that don’t make sense in your father’s books to protect you from whatever shady dealings your father may have been involved with.”
“My father wasn’t like you. He didn’t have shady dealings,” she sniffed.
“Your father was, at minimum, into some insider trading. But I think it was more, something with the Russian mafia,” I explained.
She shook her head.
“I don’t know for sure either way yet, and for the most part, I don’t care. I’m not judging him. I am just trying to make sure that no one is going to come after you.”
“But—”
“No, I said listen.”
She pressed her lips together and hid in her hair again.
“Before your father died, he was working on a deal to marry you to Ziegler. Do you know who that is?”
She nodded.
“Do you know what he did to Charlotte? How he put her in danger to stage some fucking PR stunt? Used her as a human shield and got her shot?”
I hadn’t wanted to believe it when I heard it.
In fact, I didn’t, but when I saw the video, I banished him back to his country. The little pissant didn’t listen. He tried to take my daughter again. So I ruined him. I had his creditors call in his debts, and his title was stripped. But he got to Deiderich before I could finish him.
“When your parents died while you were still in the hospital, I got a notification that Ziegler was back. He had a plan to claim you. He was going to forge the certificates and then have you institutionalized if you didn’t go along with it.”
“He couldn’t.”
I leveled a look at her that said she wasn’t that stupid.
“I chased him out of the country again and took ownership before he had the chance to get back to the city.”
“You stole my money to protect it?”
“You are young and in pain. He could have taken advantage of that. Where would you be? Married to a man you didn’t choose, who beats you.”
“You have beaten me.” Her voice was timid.
“Have I? Or have I taught you the things your body can handle and how a little pain makes the pleasure so much deeper?” I brushed her hair out of her face, tucking the cotton candy locks behind her ear just so I could see her blush.
“You really don’t care about the money?”
“Not a bit. I just needed in your father’s books, and to keep you here to keep you safe.”
“You don’t want me to be just a trophy you can laugh about with your friends?”
“Stella, you were made for great things. You were meant to be mine.”