Roger’s eyes were unfixed and dull… as if he wasn’t quite aware of his surroundings.
And then they clarified, and I saw a hint of the old Roger VanCamp as recognition dawned.
“Marcus?” The words came out like sandpaper.
“Yeah. How long has it been? Two months?” I looked him up and down. “I didn’t know someone could change this much. Man, if I’d bumped into you on the street, I’m not even sure I would’ve recognized you. You look like shit.”
He drew his knees to his chest and hugged them, his arms just as marred with angry welts as his thighs.
He looked away from me.
“How long did Astrid have you?” I asked.
I got no response.
“How did you escape that day after we ousted you from the firm?”
That had been the last time I’d seen Roger before he disappeared, and it was one of the many burning questions I was looking forward to getting an answer to.
He still wouldn’t look at me… still no answer.
Had Astrid broken him?
He flinched hard as I stood, one hand raised like a child bracing for punishment, the sound he made too weak to be called a scream.
I used to think this man would destroy me. Now? He looked like he’d already been picked clean—hollow cheeks, sunken eyes, and faded hair… a shadow of the man he’d once been.
I turned and walked out of the bedroom, Psalter and Chloe behind me.
“Are phones still usable?”
“They are,” Henry said, the door clicking shut behind him.
“Great,” I said, pulling mine from my pocket. I found Astrid’s number and dialed it.
She answered on the second ring. “Hi, Marcus!”
“It’s defective,” I said.
“It’s not,” she said without missing a beat. “You have to give it a little shake to get it going, my dear. It won’t work on its own.”
“How long did you have it?”
“Find out for yourself. Don’t be afraid to be a little rough with it. I wasn’t. It’s well-made and can take the abuse.”
After witnessing what she’d done to Bobbi after one evening, I could only imagine the kind of gauntlet that Roger had been run through. I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to match Astrid’s enthusiasm for torture… especially if it involved anything sexual. I wasn’t interested in going anywhere near Roger’s man-parts.
“When can we meet?” Astrid asked.
Astrid’s question cut through my thoughts, and I started to panic. I was nowhere near ready to talk to Astrid about VistaVision.
“Give me a day. I need more time.”
Like hell I was going to do anything else until I’d had a chance to get some answers out of Roger.
“No,” she said, her voice cool. “I won’t let you just put me off. You accepted my gift. I’ve bought time with you.”
“The gift is pointless if I can’t use it,” I said.
“It’s not going anywhere. I want to discuss next steps, and I would much rather strategize with you than Hiro, but if I have to talk to him, I will.”
I could feel the millstone hanging around my neck getting heavier by the second; if I didn’t get in front of this situation, Astrid was going to lead me around by the nose.
“Go to Hiro if you want, but ask yourself what happens when he finds out you’re here to shoulder your way into his deal? Ryo Tanaka’s a snivelling little weasel, and he would’ve killed you if I hadn’t been there. His dad would wreck you.”
I was met with silence from the other end.
“Give me a fucking day,” I insisted. “Lunch. Tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow will be Friday,” Astrid said. “Let’s do the evening, and we can have some fun.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I have a date.”
I’d already made plans with Erin, and I wasn’t canceling them. I’d waited too long to cash in that date already.
“Bring her. We’ll make it a threesome.”
There was no way in hell I was letting Astrid lay a hand on Erin.
“I’ll be sweet,” Astrid said, almost as if she could read my mind. “Marcus, I just want to enjoy a relaxing evening with you. Is that too much to ask?”
“Saturday?”
“I’m not sure I have that kind of patience.”
I sighed. “Let me think about it.”
“Let me know something by the end of the day, Marcus. You may be correct—Hiro may not appreciate me butting into your deal, but my judgment weakens the more impatient I become.”
Still with the threats.
But at least she was making compromises. I could work with that.
“I’ll let you know something tonight. Talk to you later, Astrid.”
“Have fun!” She said and hung up.
I turned to Psalter and Chloe. “You guys mind giving Roger and me some alone time?”
Chloe’s look was enough of an answer.
“Oh, come on, Chloe!” I groaned. “You’ve sparred with me plenty of times! You don’t think I can handle one old man who looks too weak to fight a puppy and has the world’s worst hangover?”
“Mr. Upton is right,” Psalter said. “VanCamp is dehydrated, weak, and suffering from some form of PTSD. He’s no threat.”
“Why do you want to go in there by yourself?” Chloe asked.
It was a fair question. Truth was, I was about to go in there and—as Astrid so delicately put it—“shake him up a little.” I had no doubt both Psalter and Chloe had done their share of that. If I couldn’t trust them to get it, I couldn’t trust anyone.
“Because I don’t want an audience. Call it stage fright, if you want.”
She didn’t immediately answer… just stared, and I could see her weighing the options before she finally nodded.
“Thanks, guys.”
“We’ll be here in case you need us,” Psalter said. “But, I suspect you won’t.”
“Yell ‘melon’ if you need me,” Chloe added.
I arched an eyebrow at her. “What? We have a safe word, now?”
One look from her and I backed off. Message received: whatever we were—or weren’t—doing still wasn’t meant to be discussed around company, even if I was only teasing.
“Thanks,” I added and walked back into Roger’s room.
I kicked the door shut behind me and took a couple of steps into the room; my gaze settled on that son of a bitch lying on my floor like an infant left out in the cold.
“I used to wake up in a cold sweat, thinking about you,” I said, circling him.
The lights were off in the room, but the morning sun spilled in, bright enough to see him blinking… dazed and staring out at the skyline like I wasn’t there.
So I stepped into his line of sight, casting my shadow over the view.
“You were like… this presence. Always haunting. For a while, you were the fucking devil. I took your firm. I took Helen. I had you over a barrel… and you still managed to just… slip away.”
I studied him as he lay there, unresponsive—a husk of the man I’d known.
“You can’t imagine how disappointing this is.”
Still nothing. He just stared past me—right between my legs and out the window like I wasn’t even there. My pulse quickened at the insult of being ignored.
“I followed you to Amsterdam. I think you were there for a while. I think we got close to finding you, but then Hiro sent some people for me, and I had to leave. How long were you there?”
Silence.
“How did you even get out of the country? How have you been surviving?”
More silence.
“Did you have help? Who caused that wreck and got you out after our conversation?”
Still more silence.
So, I decided to change tactics.
“Helen gave herself to me. I’m the only man who’s touched her since. I put a collar around her neck, and she’s never taken it off. She wants it. Keeping her close was one of the smartest things I’ve ever done.”
He continued to lie there, almost catatonic.
I sighed. “How did Astrid find you?”
His eyes twitched at the mention of Astrid—the first flicker of life since I’d come back into the room.
You have to give it a little shake to get it going, my dear. It won’t work on its own.
Astrid’s words echoed in my head
I almost considered bringing her in for a visit.
But the last thing I wanted to do was owe Astrid anything.
Besides, some things just needed a personal touch.
I drew a slow breath. “Okay.”
Then I moved.
I grabbed the back of that stupid Looney Tunes shirt and yanked, dragging him across the floor toward the bathroom. He yelped wordlessly and started flailing, hands slapping uselessly against the wood, heels kicking at the air. I felt something tear around the collar and ignored it.
“You won’t talk to me?” I yelled as we crossed into the bathroom. “That makes you useless!”
His fingers scraped the doorframe as he tried to stop me. “No! Marcus, don’t! NO!”
I yanked at his shirt harder. The fabric tore away at his collar and down one shoulder, showing more angry welts across his back. I ignored all of it, grabbing his hair in one hand and wrapping an arm around his neck.
“You want me to stop, Roger? Then use your big-boy words!”
I hauled, and his grip on the door frame broke, nearly causing both of us to crash to the floor. Catching myself before I fell on my ass, I found my footing, twisted, and drove him toward the toilet.
“I don’t have time for useless things!”
I kicked the toilet lid off the rim, and it clattered against the tank.
“I w—”
I shoved him head-first into the bowl. Water sloshed over the porcelain as he thrashed, but my grip didn’t loosen.
Dragging him in here and holding him under had been easier than I expected.
He’d lost weight, and I’d put on muscle. It had almost been too easy… like throwing a doll around.
Deep down, I felt a twinge of guilt. Treating someone in his condition like this felt… excessive.
Then I remembered what he’d done to me. I remembered Natshya waking up, crying.
I shoved his head deeper into the toilet.
His elbows thudded weakly against my ribs; I barely noticed. Fingers clawed for purchase, but they might as well have been made of wet paper.
If anything, the water soaking my pants bothered me more than his weak scrambling.
More water sloshed as I ripped his head out of the toilet. I wrapped an arm around his throat, pinning him against my chest.
“Got anything to say?” I growled in his ear.
He sputtered and gasped for air. “I-I-I can’t—
Back his head went into the toilet.
I had to take long, deep breaths to tamp down the urge to do something I couldn’t take back—like snap his neck.
Fuck, I could do it. I had the literal, physical power.
And I wanted to do it too. For me. For Natashya.
For Helen.
I wanted to take my rage—my fury—out on this man.
I’d never wanted to actually kill anyone before.
Calm down, Marcus. He’s no use to you dead.
…and you’re no killer.
I had to tell myself that over and over again.
VanCamp’s thrashings started to slow, and I pulled him back out of the toilet, flushing it to refill the bowl. Once more, I wrapped my arm around his neck, keeping him pinned against me.
“Roger,” I said again as he hacked up a mouthful of water and breathed deep, ragged breaths. “I’m trying really hard not to completely lose my shit. Please help me out, man. Tell me what I want to know.”
He struggled weakly against me. “You don’t—”
Back in the toilet.
Fuck it.
Maybe I would leave him under and just finish the job.
It wasn’t like I didn’t already have the authorities sniffing around, looking to pin a murder on me. If they did find enough dirt, then maybe it was better to actually be guilty of the crime.
At least, that way, I would deserve the punishment.
The bubbles around Roger’s head slowed, and something ugly boiled up in my chest.
I couldn’t do it.
Not because I didn’t want to. Not because I couldn’t justify it.
I couldn’t throw this away just to feel better for a moment. Killing him would be easy… a momentary satisfaction. Living with what I still didn’t know wouldn’t be.
And the fact that that was my breaking point—losing the opportunity—would’ve made me sick if I’d had the bandwidth to care.
I pulled his head out of the toilet, noticing how he felt more like a boneless sack of dry goods than before.
I checked his breathing.
Nothing.
“Oh hell no,” I growled and slapped his back.
Still nothing.
“Fuck you, Roger!” I hit him again.
He still didn’t breathe.
Self-hatred curdled in my gut. This wasn’t what I wanted! Not really!
“You’re not getting out of this!” I snarled
I punched him in the gut; warm, foul water spewed from his mouth and down his chin. He coughed once, gurgled, coughed again, and more water spewed across the toilet.
Relief washed over me. “That’s it, man. Breathe it in.”
He coughed again, spilling down his chest as he shook.
His face contorted… and then the sobbing started, broken up by ragged hacking.
I dragged him away from the toilet, his ass smearing water across the tile, and propped him against the opposite wall. He slumped against it, soaked, exhausted, and breath hitched in ragged gasps.
I stepped back, exhaled hard.
Christ… waterboarding was a workout.
Bending over, I placed my hands on my knees and sucked in oxygen. “You good… buddy?”
His head stayed lolled to the side, but he cracked a single eye open to look at me.
Good enough for me.
I stared at him. He was sopping wet, 160 pounds, and too weak to hold a sandwich.
I lost it and began laughing. I couldn’t help it!
This? This was the guy?
This wet fucking noodle?
I chuckled and backed away until I bumped into the opposite wall. Sliding down it, I sat on the floor with my forearms braced on my knees, still amused by the fact that I’d nearly killed the great Las Vegas boogeyman.
“Fuck you, Roger,” I chuckled.
He answered with a thin, wheezing rasp.
My head dropped back against the wall as I glanced down at the mess we’d made in the bathroom. There was water everywhere. A little bit of blood…
My heartbeat was starting to slow down.
“I don’t get you, man,” I said. “One minute, you’re a partner at a top law firm, representing the wealthiest man in the world. You were married to a woman so far out of your fucking league that money shouldn’t have even mattered.”
I looked back at him. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“You…
His bottom lip quivered. It was bleeding.
“You took her from me. Turned her against me.”
I let out a short, bitter laugh. “You sent her to sleep with me in the first place!”
He had no response.
“This is all on you!” I snapped. “I wouldn’t have gone after her if she hadn’t shown up at my door that day!”
“It was just supposed to be temporary,” he rasped. “You seemed like the type who might shop around. We couldn’t risk losing our biggest client.”
It was a fair observation, and one I’d seriously considered on first hearing about my grandfather, but that hardly excused him.
“Then you buy me a car or take me to the Hamptons… at the very worst, get me a really expensive hooker. You don’t pimp out your own wife. If you wanted her loyalty, maybe you shouldn’t have treated her like some kind of party favor to be passed around. Did that ever cross your mind?”
He didn’t respond… never even looked in my direction.
“If you’d treated her as someone to be desired and cared for—someone with feelings—then maybe she wouldn’t have jumped ship the second I treated her like the queen she was.”
Then I caught myself. “Like the one she is!”
Roger muttered something under his breath.
“What was that?”
Finally, he looked at me. “You hypocrite.”
“Hypocrite?”
“How many women do you have at your beck and call?” he spat. “How many have you fucked? You think Helen likes being just another hole you sink your dick into?”
It would have sounded way more menacing had his voice not sounded like a drowning lawnmower.
I snorted. “You know how many of these women Helen put in my orbit? Jesus Christ, Roger. I can’t keep her hands off most of them.”
Looking at him dead in the eye, I said, “And I sure as hell can’t keep her legs closed when I’m around either. I don’t think she’s ever been happier.”
His eyes narrowed. “What about Nanford?”
“You’ve been gone a while.” I shook my head. “I once told Bobbi that I was thinking about letting her go, and she literally tried to choke the life out of me.”
He looked at me, disbelieving.
“Yeah, I know. I don’t get it either, but it’s the truth.”
Roger’s head rolled back to the side, looking away from me.
“Anyway,” I said. “I’m done talking about my love life. Let’s change the subject.”
“I can’t—”
“Roger.” My voice went cold. “I’ll kill you if you don’t talk.”
“You’ve never killed anyone,” he muttered. “You don’t have it in you.”
“The world was flat until someone took a boat trip. Try me.”
He turned back to me, his gaze appraising.
And I didn’t blink.
“I need more than just assurances I won’t die,” he finally said
“You’re not in a position to make any demands.”
Roger’s jaw clenched. It was the first time I’d seen anything even close to defiance. “Marcus, I need to start thinking about my life after all this.”
“There is no life after all this, Roger. This is it for you.”
“You can’t keep me here forever.”
“Like I said… try me.”
“You really expect me to be your prisoner for life?”
“Fuck,” I said, standing. “I don’t know, Roger. That’s up to you, isn’t it? Maybe you’re this endless fountain of useful intel—great, I keep you happy. Maybe you convince me you’re a changed man, and I'll put you to work. Be a good boy, and who knows? Use your fucking imagination!”
“So you want everything I know, with no promises in return.”
“Hmm,” I tapped a finger to my lips as if giving it serious thought. “Yes.”
He screwed his eyes shut and dropped the back of his head against the wall, trying to resign himself to this new reality he’d been shoved into.
“What do you want to know?” He finally asked, sounding completely drained.
I lowered the toilet lid and sat. “Who was behind Vegas?”
Roger took a deep breath. “Amber.”
Fucking knew it!
“And you?”
Roger shook his head, then hesitated. “No… I… well, sort of.”
“Sort of? What does that mean?”
“I told them you were in Vegas… where you would be while there.”
“Why?”
“Because I wanted you dead.” Roger’s voice was thin, reminding me of a man stepping out onto a frozen lake, testing it. “Helen wouldn’t stop sleeping with you even after I told her repeatedly to quit. Then my daughter was getting tangled up with you.”
“That’s it? You were just playing the overprotective father and husband?”
He hesitated and then shook his head. “Amber agreed to pay me a lot of money for my assistance.”
“Your assistance,” I echoed. “You mean letting them know where I would be?”
Roger nodded.
“How could you know that? Ashlee?”
He nodded again.
“So she was spying on me.”
“She didn’t know,” Roger said quickly, cutting in before I could quite finish my accusation. “She wasn’t part of it. I was fishing for details, and she gave them to me. I passed it on to Amber, and she sent her men to that rooftop.”
“Beating the shit out of me and killing me… that was just a perk?”
He started to answer… then looked away.
I simply stared at him, letting the uncomfortable silence settle between us.
“Why did Hiro want me killed?” I asked, cutting through the silence.
Roger blinked up at me. “Hiro didn’t have anything to do with your kidnapping.”
I arched an eyebrow at him. “The guy’s wanted me dead for months.”
“That was after you betrayed him!”
“I didn’t betray him! He backstabbed me!”
“The way he sees it, you seduced his wife and stole her votes!”
Honestly? I was a little impressed he could match my volume, given the shape he was in.
“I didn’t!” I snapped. “I didn’t even know she had votes! I thought they were all his! He was voting for my guy! Why would I go behind his back!?”
Roger sighed and rolled his eyes. “It’s a chicken or egg problem.”
“It’s really not,” I said flatly.
“It doesn’t matter! Tanaka had nothing to do with Vegas! He had no reason to come after you before the vote!”
“You’re sure about that?”
He looked around the bathroom, as if it might cough up a better answer.
“No,” he admitted.
I sighed and leaned back against the toilet tank, working the puzzle.
Hiro and Amber, working together—it made sense.
There was the kidnapping meant to end in my death. When that failed, he betrayed me at the shareholder vote. When I managed to scrape a win for Chandler, there was the economic pressure, the attempted blackmail from Rajesh, and then the frame job for his murder.
And then, just before it all became too much, Amber Bell sweeps in like some fucking knight in shining armor, offering to “handle” Hiro in exchange for controlling shares of my company. It all tracked really well.
Or maybe I was just trying to force a theory that didn’t hold.
Because there was no way for Hiro to be sure of what would happen to my estate if I died.
And if he did, he sure as hell wouldn’t want me dead because then he would have to deal with Shawna Upton, who was a hell of a lot tougher than me.
And the more I thought about it, the less Amber working with Hiro lined up.
Amber had nothing to gain from my current deal with Hiro. And if I folded to her, that would’ve left Hiro with nothing. There was no mutual benefit there—just a shared goal: my removal.
And, unless I was missing something, that wasn’t enough of a motive for Hiro.
If Hiro really had nothing to do with Vegas, then that meant Amber was the real villain, and the old man was just stubborn with too much pride and money.
God, I really wished I could talk some sense into him.
“So, it really was just you and Amber in Vegas?” I finally asked.
“And the mercenaries she hired,” he confirmed.
“Did you have anything to do with Tanaka?”
Roger sighed. “No. Just regular dealings between him and your grandfather. They were heavily entangled in business.”
“What was the flash drive Amber kept asking me about?”
“I don’t know. I thought it was corporate information Colin left with you. But Amber told me it wasn’t something I needed to worry about. She was paying me well and giving me… time with you, so I didn’t ask questions.”
“Well, Roger. I’m a little disappointed with how much you don’t seem to know.”
“I’m being honest with you.”
I changed the subject again. “Where’s Ashlee?”
It took him a moment to catch up with my question. “I don’t know. I lost contact with her after I left the country.”
I stared hard at him. “My people tell me she’s with my brother. Tyler.”
Judging by the look on his face, he hadn’t expected me to know that information.
“I… I didn’t…”
“Yeah. You did,” I said. “You knew.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed, resigning himself to the fact that he’d been caught.
“Did you send her after me like you did Helen?”
“No!” Roger was quick to say. “Like I said, Ashlee wasn’t involved in any of this.”
“How long has she known Tyler?”
Roger grimaced. “She’s been seeing Tyler Gerrard for months—well before your grandfather died.”
That was a fucking surprise. “Excuse me?”
“I tried to keep her away from him, but it was inevitable. Tyler was practically raised by his grandfather, and I’d been his lawyer for years. Functions… social obligations… of course they would meet.”
“Do you think Tyler used her to get to me?”
“I… don’t know.”
I stood up.
“Fine! Yes!” Roger blurted, looking as if I were about to hit him. “I think she was feeding him information about you!”
Well, that certainly confirmed my suspicions about how Tyler found out about Natalie.
“What makes you think that Ashlee was feeding information to Tyler?”
“Besides being his girlfriend?” Roger asked. “Because while we were holding you, your brother called and asked me how likely it was I could help him acquire as much of your estate as possible—before I killed you.”
“Were you going to do it?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I don’t know. I wasn’t even sure something like that could be pulled off at that scale.”
I sighed. “So your daughter was dating Tyler the whole time I knew her.”
“I think so…”
The idea that Ashlee might never have been interested in me stung more than I wanted to admit.
“And she was only after me so she could stay close and feed information to my brother?”
Roger hesitated. “Maybe at first, but I don’t think it stayed that way.”
“Why?”
“The last time I saw her, she screamed at me. She said Tyler and I had ruined everything… said she hated me and never wanted to see me again.”
“Wait—are you suggesting that she had a change of heart?”
Roger hiccuped and nodded.
“Why?”
He gave me a look like I was being dense. “Trading up? You’re worth considerably more than Tyler Gerrard. Less of a bastard, too. He started dating that friend of yours from your former job and kept breaking Ashlee’s heart.”
“Jesus.” I shook my head, not realizing how much of an asshole my brother was, nor that Ashlee was going through so much emotional turmoil.
Still, I pressed on. “She vanished from Vegas the second I got kidnapped. What happened?”
He looked at me, guilt written all over his face. “She thought she was responsible for your kidnapping… that she’d been used.”
“So, she just bailed on everyone and flew home?”
Roger shook his head. “I think she went to Tyler first. She must have thought he was the one to kidnap you. I didn’t see her again until the night of your party.”
“Yeah. That was weird. Why was she there, and why did you rush her out?”
“Like I said, it was the first time I’d seen her since your escape. I didn’t know why she’d run, or where she’d been. I was afraid she might suspect me, so I got her out of your house as fast as I could.”
“And?” I pressed.
Roger closed his eyes and bowed his head. “That’s when she screamed at me. After that, she didn’t want anything to do with me. I thought about keeping her home anyway, but I knew people would start asking questions. Her work contacts, I could handle—but she was in school. She was popular. A lot of her friends had powerful families.”
He sighed. “I let her go back. But I kept security on her.”
“And then the day at Yunger, Price, and VanCamp happened, and I had to run. I don’t know what happened to her after that. I couldn’t reach her or…”
He trailed off.
Helen.
He had Helen for a long time, and it was difficult to break old habits.
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in as I tried to make sense of it all.
I tried to see it through her eyes—a manipulative father, a step-mother she couldn’t stand, and a narcissistic, abusive boyfriend… or whatever the hell Tyler had been to her.
And then I show up.
To someone like her, I probably looked like a breath of fresh air.
I didn’t get the sense that her social circle was full of warm, emotionally available people.
“And even after all that, she’s back with Tyler.”
“It doesn’t surprise me,” Roger said quietly. “With me out of the picture and Helen… where she is now, it’s not like Ashlee has many places to turn. She’s probably terrified of you.”
“She wouldn’t be if you’d actually left her alone that night. You rushing her off before I could talk to her probably made things worse. Then I go and make you disappear and take Helen. Jesus… no wonder she looked like she hadn’t slept. ‘Terrified’ is probably an understatement.”
“That’s not the only reason,” Roger said. “There’s the drugs.”
I froze. “Drugs?”
Roger nodded grimly. “Tyler has something of a reputation. There are rumors of him using drugs to keep women dependent on him. It helps him keep them in line when he gets rough.”
For the first time, I saw something resembling a father in Roger’s eyes. “I tried to keep her away from him, but he’s a charismatic young man. Ashlee didn’t have a chance, and she’s exactly the type of girl that a man like Tyler Gerrard goes after.”
I recalled the way she looked that night. It wasn’t just fear on her face. She looked haggard and exhausted. At the time, I’d been too shocked by her presence in Erin’s office to register much else. But now, thinking back, the signs were there.
She might have been high.
More alarming, though, was the sudden realization that struck me—she’d been in Erin’s office.
Alone.
Erin had left her to come find me.
Which meant… Ashlee VanCamp might have had the chance to plant the vial.
And if she did, did that somehow implicate Tyler in all of this in a much larger way than what Roger had told me?
And how did Amber’s flash drive fit into all this? Why had she kidnapped me in Vegas? What was she really after?
“Who does Amber work for?” I asked. “What the fuck is Brantwood?”
“It’s some kind of holding company that bought out several VistaVision shareholders a few years back… not long after Colin fired Kelly Maddox. She was contracted as a consultant for them soon after. I don’t think they could have acquired so much stock in so many of Colin’s companies without her… especially VistaVision.”
“But you don’t know who’s actually behind Brantwood?”
Roger pursed his lips and didn’t say anything.
“What is it, Roger?”
“No one knows who runs it.”
“Kelly?”
He shook his head.
“Not even Amber?”
He gave a dry, bitter laugh. “Even if she did know, she wouldn’t talk.”
“Why not?”
He leaned forward, eyes dark. “Because she’s missing whatever part of a person lets them care. Empathy. Emotion. A soul. That woman doesn’t have it.”
Roger shut his eyes and sagged against the wall. He shook his head. “I can’t…”
I didn’t say anything.
He opened his eyes again. Tears tracked down his face.
“If you’re going to kill me,” he said quietly, “can you just do it? I’m so tired. The last few weeks…”
Astrid.
That’s what he meant.
The fear. The hiding. The slow, deliberate breaking. Whatever Astrid had done to him, it hadn’t been quick. No wonder he looked like hell.
He started sobbing openly, mouth twisted in a silent rictus.
I didn’t think I’d get much else out of him right now.
Besides, I had plenty to think about… and act on.
“It’s fine, Roger. We’re done for now.”
I stood up. “Get some sleep. I’ll make sure they bring you some food.”
He nodded jerkily, still unable to stop weeping into his hands.
I watched him for a moment, then said, “One more question, and I need you to be honest.”
He peered at me through his fingers, tears streaming between them.
“Did you lay a finger on Natashya?” I asked. “Or was it just the mercs?”
He didn’t answer—just stared, hands trembling.
That was all I needed.
I stepped forward and drove my fist into his jaw.
He crumpled sideways with a wail, blood streaking the wet tile. A tooth skittered across the floor, stopping roughly a foot from his face.
Without another word, I stepped out of the bathroom. I would have hit him regardless of his answer… for Helen. Just maybe not as hard.
Chloe was waiting, leaning against the wall with arms crossed. As usual, the stare she gave me was unreadable.
“I didn’t say the safe word,” I said.
One corner of her mouth twitched—I really was getting better at reading her.
She straightened, hands dropping to her sides. “Just making sure you didn’t do anything you’d regret.” She looked me up and down. “You okay?”
I didn’t answer her question.
Instead, I stepped close, cupped her face in both of my hands, and kissed her hard.
After a moment’s hesitation, her lips softened against mine and then parted as my tongue brushed against them.
Our tongues met and twined around each other as I groaned into her.
I knew that I was skating on thin fucking ice by doing it, but after what I’d just done, I fucking needed it. I needed her.
And she wasn’t pulling away from me.
Fuck, she was a good kisser.
I broke the kiss but stayed close, my eyes locked on hers.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
“What the fuck was that?” she asked, not pulling away. There was a coolness to her eyes, like a layer of ice over boiling water.
“You know what it was,” I said, unapologetic.
I stepped back. She tugged at the hem of her shirt, visibly annoyed… and breathing a little faster than usual.
“Great,” she said. “I’m all wet.”
“You know where to find me if you need that taken care of,” I said.
She looked up at me, her eyes widening as she realized my double entendre. “That’s not what I meant.”
“I know what you mean,” I said. “Invitation still stands.
I nodded toward the bathroom. “In the meantime, get him cleaned up… maybe some fresh clothes.”
“Not in my job de***********ion.”
“I know,” I said over my shoulder, “but hey… gives you a solid excuse for why your clothes are wet.”
And then I left the room.
If I couldn’t have Chloe right now, a certain redhead was waiting in my office who would do just fine.
And after that, it was back to work.
I had a deal to land, a psychopathic blonde to manage, a spoiled rich girl to hunt down, a jealous brother to contain, and a date I couldn’t miss.