But that wasn’t possible. This was the great Nathanael Michiels, the hotel magnate, the man who could make an entire boardroom quake the moment he walked in. This was a man who had built an empire, coming from humble beginnings to a place where he was almost incapable of counting his own money and grasping the extent of his own holdings.
Change his mind? No. Not even she, the woman he married and claimed to place above all else could do that.
She backed away, feeling her fingernails bury themselves in her palms, her body signaling her to step down, regroup rather than attack. If she tried to fight him, she would lose everything.
But hadn’t she, though? Hadn’t she already lost everything? She thought of her younger self, growing up without a father. Wishing that the ghost of a man she vaguely remembered from her childhood would turn up, give her some love, some attention, anything.
And although Benjamin had what she never had, a father who lived under the same roof, that wasn’t enough. To her son, Nathanael would always be that ghost, that shadow who disappeared from the corner of his eye whenever he turned around.
And the thought of it was intolerable.
Shaundra stepped away, turned away from her husband, lover, friend, and walked out of his office.
“Where are you going, Shaundra?” he called after her.
He was talking to dead air.