“I’m afraid I don’t see the correlation.”
“No? Funny, because the man who fathered me couldn’t have cared less about my existence my whole life. Now that he’s lost his male heirs, I’m some sort of a messiah? I find that extremely entertaining. Don’t you?”
She clears her throat. “Please consider this very carefully, Mr. Osborn. The family is providing you with generous incentives. Your mother will have her own villa in Graystone Ridge, and you’ll have a penthouse, as well as a substantial number of shares in Osborn Corporation and its subsidiaries. Naturally, your student debts will be paid off, and all of your mother’s debts will also be taken care of.”
“I’m afraid that’s not enough for me to sell my soul tothe devil.” I push past the men. “Send Dad my condolences for the pending death of his legacy.”
“You can’t run away from who you are forever, Mr. Osborn.” Her voice echoes behind me.
“Watch me,” I say without looking over my shoulder.
“I regret to inform you that we might have to resort to drastic measures in the future.”
I don’t reply. They don’t deserve my words.
They can’t hurt me now that I’m their only option for survival. They can’t hurt my mom either, because that’ll be a sure as hell way to make me go completely berserk on their miserable lives.
Dad lacks any form of a fatherly bone in his body, but he’s not an idiot. Besides, he’s a businessman. He’ll keep trying to find the best solution to recruit me to his side. Whether it takes a year or ten or twenty, he’ll keep trying.
And I’ll keep crushing his hopes every time. Just like he crushed mine every time I waited for him and he never showed up.
It’ll be my sweet revenge against the man who has only ever been a problem in mine and Mom’s lives.
The moment I step into the club, it erupts—cheers tangled with alcohol and slurred words. Eager hands hit my back, sweaty bodies press in, everyone trying to get a piece of me.
I pull on my public smile like a second skin, raising my glass, returning praise with the usual lines: “It was a team effort,” or “Give it up for my guys, Richardson and O’Connor.”
My attempts at modesty don’t really work. The guys carry me and toss me in the air, making the whole club chant, “Captain! Captain! Captain!”
It’s…inconvenient, to say the least.
But I put up with it. They killed themselves for this game, and winning against the Vipers is a championship in and of itself. We have dust compared to their funding, equipment, and fancy coaches.
The only reason we won was due to pure determination.
And well, I did manage to cripple their wild card left wing, Armstrong.
Not that I didn’t try during last year’s games or the ones before that, but he’s always been slippery and like a chameleon who changes personalities in a fraction of a second.
He’s also barely given me the time of day, preferring to go for defensemen instead.
Did that make me work harder on my defense? Possibly. I’m more of an offense-type center—or was. Over these past couple of years, I’ve been playing defense like nobody’s business.
I perfected it to the point that even Richardson can’t keep up, and he’s one of the best defensemen in the league.
And it was all worth it because tonight, I finally gothim.
A jolt of electricity sparks through me at the memory of the contempt rolling off him in waves when he checked me into the board.
It was so violent, the board shattered and he fell on top of me, his eyes wild, his teeth bared as he panted like an injured animal.
Acorneredanimal.
Even though he was the one crushing me to the ground.
I reached out a hand to him then. No idea why.
Even as I think of it now, I don’t know what I wanted to do. Remove his helmet? Touch his face?
