A low laugh. Gage’s. She trembled, wanting to scream out a warning. He didn’t understand. Her father wasn’t a man to taunt.
‘You can’t destroy everything I love, Chevalier, because you’ll never have Eve. She’s safe from you.’
A crunch like a fist on flesh turned her stomach to stone. She couldn’t move, even though she was desperate to know Gage was okay. Shouts, noise. Cries of pain as he took a beating because of her. She should jump down, save him like he’d always tried to save her. He claimed she was one of the bravest people he knew, yet tonight she’d made him a liar, hiding like the coward she was.
She buried her face in the arm of Gage’s coat, the earthy scent of the man she loved permeating the fabric. Reminding her of everything they were set to lose if things went wrong. There was no going back, not now. Eve sobbed into the damp fabric, the sound drowned out by the rain pounding on the roof above her.
CHAPTER ONE
Now
EVE SAT AT the expansive table in the plush boardroom with its million-dollar view over Seattle. Everything here screamed of a company on the top of its game with sparkling glass, gleaming wood, bright chrome. A company winning at everything, taking no prisoners. The last place on earth she wanted to be, yet a place she couldn’t avoid.
She checked her watch. Ten past the hour. He was making them wait. She tapped her finger on the papers in front of her, stomach churning in a tumult of emotion she didn’t think she’d ever untangle, no matter how many years she lived.
‘I’m not sure this is a wise idea, Ms Chevalier.’ She shot a stern glance at her lawyer, the man who’d served her family company for years. He was part of the problem and not the solution for what had gone catastrophically wrong. Yet she’d been forced to bring him, the board having trouble accepting her at the helm in lieu of her father. Trust was in short supply where she was concerned. She doubted she’d get any here either.
‘It’s our only option.’ That was a truth that even the most pious believer in miracles could accept. The family company, Knight Enterprises, sat on the brink. Teetering, ready to plummet over the precipice into oblivion. If it died a swift and public death she’d survive. She’d been through worse than anyone could imagine—this was nothing.
Eve ignored the bright stab of pain that at any other time might threaten to crack her heart in two, the fleeting memory of a tiny white coffin in an empty church on a bright sunny day. There were far worse things than a company failing, but her mother and little sister had no chance if Knight folded. Protected to obsession, controlled, they’d fail right along with it. She wouldn’t let that happen.
She’d done some things; terrible, hurtful things in her life. Destroying her mother and baby sister would never be one of them. Never.
‘Your father would say otherwise. Your father—’
Another sharp glance sideways from her and the lawyer stopped talking. She’d become good at silencing people with a glance. Like father, like daughter. The burn of gall rose in her throat. Would Daddy be proud of her right now? She hated that he might be.
‘My father is unconscious in hospital. He has no say here.’ He’d been cut down in a way his enemies had never been able to accomplish. A mosquito bite, an overwhelming infection. It was hard to contemplate that something as mundane as an insect had felled the man now lying in an ICU bed in Jackson. She searched deep down for a shred of emotion, but all her energy was taken up with hiding the truth of her father’s illness for now, while keeping Knight afloat.
Her father had forced them into this mess when he’d reset a ticking time bomb seven years earlier. She either defused it in this room or the whole thing blew up in their faces. Eve was an expert at defusing things. She’d done it her whole life. She’d do it again.
‘Caron has been chewing at your father’s heels for years. You do this and it will be the end for Knight. Do you want that on your conscience?’
Caron Investments did more than chase after them. It was a behemoth, mouth agape, waiting to swallow them whole. A hatred between two families and business rivals had led her to this boardroom. She was currently reaping the toxic reward of all that loathing, but in her case that punishment was deserved. She’d fuelled the enmity, throwing petrol on a bonfire. In many ways, she was the reason they were sitting here.
Ultimately, one of the companies was destined to consume the other—she’d just never thought it would be Caron devouring Chevalier in its bloodied maw.
But today, it seemed, Caron would win the battle.
‘If someone had told me what was going on, we may not have ended up here,’ she hissed. She hadn’t seen it coming, having been tucked away safely overseas. Hidden, inured from it all. She raised an eyebrow at the man sitting next to her, who now fidgeted with a pen and his compendium. ‘But they didn’t. And I still haven’t received an explanation as to why I was never informed about the parlous state of things in the US. It’s gross negligence on the board’s part, which you should know, being the company lawyer.’
She reached for the glass of water in front of her, condensation slipping down the sides and pooling on a coaster protecting the mirror-like wood of the table. Gage was being rude with this lateness. A deliberate message.
‘You’re nothing. You have no importance to me. You are here at my bidding. Your fortunes survive or fail on my word alone.’
She could stand up. Go. Refuse to tolerate the slight and walk from here with her head held high and let everything implode around her. There was a certain wicked satisfaction in imagining that. Her father’s one true love, his company, being destroyed at her whim.
But Gage had called her and requested the meeting. Well, not Gage himself but an assistant, requesting her attendance at his Seattle headquarters. That was enough to keep her in the chair, because she hadn’t seen Gage in the flesh since that night seven years earlier. When he’d looked up at her in that gritty abandoned building, kissed his fingers and run, drawing her father and his men away from her.
The door cracked open and her heart rate spiked, a pounding that punched at her throat. Eve swallowed down the sickening sensation. She wouldn’t allow anyone here to know her blood pressure pushed critical. She took a deep, steadying breath. Frosted herself over. Icy was a veneer she’d perfected years ago. No one could touch her, not anymore. She’d no tears left to shed. She’d cried them all as a naïve twenty-year-old. Her well was now truly dry.
Finally, he appeared, filling the doorway. Her breath was crushed in her chest, there was no air in the whole world enough to fill her lungs. All the years of seeing photos, reading about his business exploits on the internet, was not enough to prepare her for seeing Gage in the flesh again.
He strolled into the room, looking down at his phone, no acknowledgement of her presence at all. Not even that could hurt her, though, as she devoured the sight of him. His hair golden and perfect, every part of him the golden boy the press claimed him to be. He owned the room in a dark blue suit, crisp white shirt, red and blue tie. Bespoke, tailored to fit his impressive body. He loomed as a presence more than a mere man. Like he owned everything around him—in perfect control.
Eve tried to keep breathing, tried not to show the effect he had on her because, damn, after all these years he still owned her body.
She hated him for it.