And she sobbed. “It doesn’t matter anymore if I do. It’s over. You have your victory. And you’ll have to be content with it, because you won’t have more from me.”
His feverish lips stopped feeding at her pulse, stilled. Then he set her back on her feet.
Another agonizing moment pounded by as he stood there, his body curved over hers, a prison of passion she almost begged with every breath to never escape. Then, before she broke, succumbed, uttered the plea for a life sentence, he stepped away.
He brooded down at her until she could no longer bear the abrasion of his will-bending influence.
“Why are you here?” she choked. “You didn’t think you’d pick up from where you stormed off three days ago, did you?”
“I’m here to tell you I don’t care.”
She lurched as if he’d slapped her.
Would even he be so cruel as to come here, kiss her within an inch of her sanity, only to tell her he didn’t care about her?
And he was piling confusion on misery. “I don’t care what happened. I don’t care if your brothers pressured you, or if you felt you owed it to your father’s memory to see through his will.”
She shook her head. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about how your brothers eliminated me from the contract using information only I knew. Until I told it to you.”
Everything went still again. Then she jerked with the slam of comprehension.
That was why he’d looked at her so strangely when he’d gotten that phone call, the one informing him of her brothers’ coup. He…he… “You thought I gave them information?”
His eyes said he did.
Suddenly the intensity of his gaze wavered, as the certainty there shook. “They may have tricked you into inadvertently revealing that privileged info.” Then fractured. “Or they may actually be so good that they worked it out on their own.”
“So what will it be?” she rasped. “Which version will you sanction?”
He stared at her for one more moment, then he squeezed his eyes shut, his face clenching as if with severe pain. He opened his eyes again, bruised and defeated now that the anger and outrage was drained from their depths. “You had nothing to do with it.”
“Why, thank you! So good to be exonerated with a word from you. Just like I was accused, tried and sentenced without a word.”
“I didn’t want to believe it. Even when all evidence supported it. Then Alex was injured. It almost shattered me when I thought I’d lose him, and you. I might have looked strong as I took care of the crisis, but inside I was pulverized. I realized then that I’ve come to depend on you, on both of you, for my very breath. Then you suddenly wanted to go back, and it shook me further. I was at my weakest when your brothers confronted me with their victory and insinuations and demands and their every word seemed to validate my fears. I admit I let my worst suspicions take control of me for a while.”
“For a while? They were in control till moments ago!”
“But it took only the proof of looking into your eyes for me to know I was wrong. But even when I thought I was right, thought you never really loved me, I still didn’t care. I still wanted you.”
“I’m supposed to be happy about this, that you’d take me warts and all? You believed the worst about me, passed judgment without giving me a moment’s benefit of the doubt. Then you turned and committed the same crime you thought me guilty of! You took the privileged info I so trustingly—so stupidly—shared with you and snatched control of the contracts from my family.”
“I didn’t.”
His roar speared through her with its passion. And she had to believe he hadn’t. That soothed a measure of her heartache, but that he’d mistrusted her so totally… The scope and implications of that knowledge expanded inside her like the shock waves of a nuclear explosion, razing everything in its path.
He watched her with what looked like dread taking a firmer grip of his features by the second. Then he groaned, “I am the best at what I do—I can work my way around anything, in business. But in personal relationships it seems I’m almost clueless.” He clutched his hair as if he’d start tearing it out any second. “I took control of the contract only to show you that I can have my so-called victory if I want it, but that nothing means anything to me if I don’t have you and Alex, too.”
“You don’t deserve us,” she cried. “I hope absolute power will be as cold and cruel a companion to you as you are, for the rest of your isolated life. Yes, Aris, I will fight you to my last breath for Alex. I won’t let someone as paranoid and self-serving as you are be his father. I’m only thankful he’s too young to remember you and won’t grow up knowing he has such a monster for a father.”
He held out hands as if begging, Stop, enough.
Then he motioned toward the dossier he’d dropped on her desk. “This is what I came to give you—my proof that even when I thought you chose your family over me, I never chose anything over you. This contains all the documents giving control of the contract back to your brothers.”
She stared from him to the dossier, her thoughts burning up.
Then she heard her ragged taunt. “This could be your newest ploy to have your cake and eat it, too. Being the best at what you do, you calculated that you might have won the battle with Louvardis, but that the war, now that it’s really personal, would escalate to levels even you might not withstand. So you decided it’s wiser to throw the contract back as a goodwill gesture, and to keep me and Alex as your permanent insurance.”
“Selene, I beg you…don’t.”
“Don’t what? Don’t give you a taste of your own paranoia? Don’t tell you what you did to me, to Alex, when you walked out on us, thinking only of yourself? Alex cried himself to sleep every night since—he expected you to be there, and you weren’t, and I couldn’t tell him why you weren’t, couldn’t assure him you’d ever be back, or if you were, that it wouldn’t be even worse for both of us. You are your father’s son, after all.”
“No. Selene, no. I am nothing like my father.”
“But that’s what you always believed. Turns out, you were right.” She needed to expend that last surge of hurt. Only feeling his would assuage hers now. Then they’d be even. They could start anew then. “Maybe your father didn’t leave his family because he didn’t care for you, but like you said, because he loved you too much and couldn’t handle ‘depending on you for his very breath.’”