More specifically, insult Cain, the rightful heir, the son Barron Farrell kept and acknowledged. They really couldn’t care less about offending a man they didn’t believe would be around a year from now.
They weren’t wrong.
Sliding his hands into the front pockets of his suit pants, Achilles kept his gaze focused straight ahead, not glancing around and taking in the quiet but obvious wealth of the executive floor. It wasn’t the first or the fifteenth time he’d been here. But the art on the walls that cost more than his entire cabin or the furniture that had most likely been handpicked by some interior designer who catered to celebrities and presidents alike unnerved himevery timehe stepped foot up here. Hell, even the smell would make a great candle labeled “Money to Burn.”
Achilles silently growled, battling the urge to yank the tie from his hair, rip this restricting suit jacket from his shoulders and flip one of these desks like an enraged reality housewife. That would give these people a show. That’s why they watched him like a hawk, after all. Waiting for him to lose his shit like an uncivilized sideshow act. Just so they could say,I told you so. He’s not like his brothers. Not like Cain, the heir. Or Kenan, the charmer. He’s not one of us.
Again... They wouldn’t be wrong.
He wasn’t Cain, who, unlike Achilles and Kenan, Barron Farrell had kept instead of abandoned, and trained from day one to run his international company. Achilles wasn’t Kenan Rhodes, who, though he was another illegitimate son, had been adopted and raised by an influential and powerful Boston family.
No, Achilles was the ex-con, semireclusive bastard who preferred the company of code and computers to people.
There’d been only one time since he’d arrived in this city that he’d felt wanted...needed. As it often did, more than he cared to admit, his mind flickered with images of that sex-soaked night in a five-star hotel with a beautiful woman he was half-convinced he’d conjured up. Only the scratches he’d carried on his shoulders and on his waist and the chafing on his dick the next morning had proved to him that he hadn’t. Those and the dreams that continued to haunt him like erotic wraiths all these months later.
How many times had he woken up, shaking with lust, back bowed, lips twisted in a snarl? How many times had he found himself searching the crowded streets for that familiar, stunning face? Or cocking his head, listening for a certain low, sultry voice?
One night. That had been the limit he’d set. And he didn’t regret it. Because as his unconscious mind revealed, Mycah could’ve become an obsession with him. And he didn’t need anything—not obligations, not promises, not brothers, not obsessions—holding him here when his year came due.
Nothing would hold him back. He would be free to return home, unfettered.
Fuck.
He deliberately inhaled a breath, quieted the riot of morose thoughts swirling in his head.
None of this mattered. None of it changed the fact that he’d promised to remain in Boston for a year to helm Farrell International with half brothers he hadn’t known existed three months ago.
He’d made his billion-dollar bed and now he had to lie in it.
“Good morning, Mr. Farrell.” Charlene Gregg, Cain’s executive assistant, greeted him with a warm but professional smile as he approached her desk. “They’re waiting for you in the conference room.”
Achilles nodded and strode past her. Why Cain insisted on including him in these business meetings eluded him. Contract negotiations, board or acquisitions meetings... Having Kenan there since he was a marketing genius made sense. But Achilles? He couldn’t give a damn about any of it. Just leave him to ride out the next nine months on the IT’s eighth floor, where he’d carved out a place for himself, and he would be fine.
Clenching his jaw, he grasped the handle to the conference room door and pressed it down.
“...reputation precedes you—Here he is.” Cain stood from one of the black leather corporate chairs that flanked the long wood table, Kenan rising, as well. “We were waiting on you to arrive before we started the interview, Achilles.”
Achilles dipped his head in acknowledgment, quietly shutting the door behind him.
“Sorry. I had a call and was held up,” he said.
Partly true. He’d been on the phone with one of the sales reps about possible new virus protection software, but it’d ended nearly a half hour earlier. It’s what he’d started working on after the call that had consumed his attention and made him lose track of time. But he couldn’t share that with Cain and Kenan. Not with anyone.
He moved toward the chair next to Kenan and avoided his younger brother’s too-sharp gaze. God, for someone who constantly seemed to wear a smile the man was too fucking perceptive. It annoyed the hell out of him.
As if reading Achilles’s mind, Kenan smiled wider, a gleam in his eyes. “No problem. We know how much you insist on attending these meetings, so we didn’t want to go forward without you.”
Thank God he’d been an only child for thirty years.
“Achilles, we were just starting,” Cain said. The corner of his mouth twitched as if he were attempting to imprison a smile at Kenan’s not-so-subtle smart-ass dig. Three months ago, Cain Farrell would’ve seared the paint off the walls with a scowl at Kenan’s antics. But now, he fought back a grin. Funny what falling in love and getting engaged did to a man. Cain turned toward the woman rising from the seat across the table, sweeping an arm in her direction. “Let me introduce you to Mycah Hill. She’s interviewing for the VP of operations position.”
Mycah.
Shock, icy and rough, slammed into him. Every muscle in his body locked as he stared at the woman across from him. The woman who had let him lose himself in her body on several surfaces of a hotel room. The woman who, months later, refused to be evicted from his head.
Goddamn, she was...gorgeous.
As if Fate were having a slow day and decided to play a game of “Whom Can I Fuck with Now?” Mycah could’ve been plucked right from his memories and set down in this conference room. The same tight, honey-brown spirals that even now he could feel over his palm. The same beautiful face with its oval-shaped, dark brown eyes, sculpted cheekbones, lush, decadent mouth and delicate but stubborn chin. The same thick, curvaceous body that conveyed a sensual strength that had his chest squeezing and his dick hardening.
