On Monday morning, I’m sitting in my office, behind my desk, staring at the glass-clad skyscrapers in the Financial District. Taylor weighs heavy on my mind. I’ve always been the guy who enjoys sex. The dirtier, the better. I’ve lusted after money, making me into the billionaire I am today. I’ve hungered for power. That’s the guy I am, and that’s not the guy Taylor needs in her life. But the barriers she’s keeping between us, and the pain I know she’s hiding, are ripping me apart. I can’t help but wonder what would’ve happened to her if I never let her go. I thought I’d been saving her from a lifetime in my shadow. But all I’d done was cause her misery.
Most times I have a plan. A well-thought-out idea that sets me on the right path. I never doubt myself. I don’t accept failure as an option. This time, though, I don’t have a plan. I have no idea how to handle Taylor now. All I know is I want to make this better for her, any way that I can.
A knock on the door drags me from my thoughts. I spin in my chair, finding Bennett, Inc.’s CFO, Greg Hopkins, standing in the doorway. “Good morning, Greg,” I welcome him.
Greg gives a bright grin, holding up a file folder in his arms. “Mornin’. Got some time for a couple updates?”
“Of course.” I force Taylor and my culpability for her situation from my mind, and wave him inside. “Come in.” While Greg opens his blazer and settles into the brown leather wingback chair in front of my desk, I continue, “What have you got?”
“We’re wrapping things up at Richardson’s over the next week or so,” he reports.
“Ah, good news.” Richardson Real Estate is the company that Allie worked for as a real estate agent before moving over to Micah’s company, Holt Enterprises, after he bought out Richardson’s. My team came into play when Micah decided not to swallow up Richardson’s, but to turn the company into Holt’s Homes, a division of Holt that focuses on real estate targeting families. Seeing that my company, Bennett, Inc., excels in giving smaller companies a lift to compete in today’s market, we’ve been with Holt now for over a month. “Things are forging ahead there, then?”
“Indeed.” Greg nods, handing me the file folder. “Sales are on a good upward trajectory.”
“Perfect.” I open the file, noting that sales have increased 200 percent since my team came in and that the marketing plans in place are seeing a good return. I’m not surprised. I have one hell of an outstanding team working for me, and that’s why Bennett, Inc. is a billion-dollar company. “Anything else to report?” I ask, handing him back the file.
“At this point,” Greg replies, placing the file on his lap, “it seems unnecessary to stay on there. We’ve hired upper management to take over control and they’ll do fine on their own now. To stay on would simply cost Holt’s Homes money that they need to keep themselves afloat.”
“Schedule a meeting, then, so we can close their file.”
“Will do.” He rises from his seat, redoing the buttons on his jacket. “Any travel plans this week?”
“No.” Even if I had any, I would cancel them. I need to be close to Taylor now. I need to ensure she’s safe. “I’ll be staying in the city for the rest of the month.”
“Good to know.” Greg moves to leave my office. “I’ll arrange the meeting around your schedule.” At the doorway, he spins back to me. “Sound good?”
“That’ll work.”
“All right…” His mouth snaps shut and his eyes widen at whatever he sees in the hallway.
I nearly ask what’s wrong, but then I don’t need to because I see that what’s captured his eye is the tall, brooding figure stepping into my office. Coldness seeps into the space and an edginess invades every muscle, making my body tense, ready to act if I need to, as black eyes, belonging to a dead soul, lock onto mine.
Then my father, Frank Bennett, breaks the silence. “Darius.”
I recoil as that icy tone rolls over me, and all I can do is glare into a face that I haven’t seen in ten years. A face that reminds me of my harsh past.
“I forbid you to do this, Darius.”
I’m staring out the window on the sixty-second floor of the largest office building in the Financial District, The Bennett Group.
The sound of my father’s voice is like nails on a chalkboard, shivering down my spine. Knowing I must face this fight, I turn away from the window. “What other choice do I have?”
Frank’s dark eyes narrow. “You can send Allison into foster care.”
The thought sickens me, even if I hardly know my half-sister, Allison. In fact, I hadn’t even known she existed until our mother died in a plane crash yesterday, along with Allison’s father. One phone conversation with the police later, I’d come face-to-face with an angel missing her wings. “That’s what you would have me do, put her in the foster system? You cannot be serious?”
“I’m dead serious.” My father takes a seat on the couch near my desk, folding his arms. “That’s what you must do. This girl is not like us.”
No, she’s not as privileged. That’s something I still don’t understand. Throughout the years I grew up at boarding school, I’d never had the opportunity to ask my father properly why my mother left me after she divorced him when I was four years old. Now it seems too late to ask him why she never came back for me, choosing to start a brand-new life.
I can’t wrap my head around why she’d given up all the money entitled to her from her marriage to my father. For reasons totally unknown to me, she walked away from upper class to live a middle-class life with a new husband. I don’t know anything about my mother. I can’t remember her. She simply wasn’t a factor in my life. “But is that enough of a reason not to take Allison in?” I ask my father.
“You know, and I know, that of course it is,” my father shoots back at me. “She won’t fit in. What will happen once the press gets ahold of this? Is that what you want, a scandal about your terrible mother who walked out when you were a child?”
I let the jab roll off me. I’d heard it many times growing up. My father hated my mother presumably for what she did to him. My father never lost or failed at anything. Failure was simply something he never accepted. And I could accept that, but this, with Allison, showed the ruthlessness only his enemies must see. “Again, is that enough of a reason to ignore that she is family?”
“She is distant family to us,” my father snaps, cheeks becoming redder. “The press will dig up anything on your past to make a story of it. Is that what you want? To go from Harvard to the cover of the tabloids?”