Wesley lets out a small laugh under his breath. “That’s probably a little late.”
I ignore him.
The reply comes less than thirty seconds later.
Confirmed.
I turn the screen toward Lydia. “Done.”
Her face goes still in the way spoiled people go still when money, charm, and timing fail them all at once.
Wesley’s laugh dies.
Natalie makes a tiny sound beside me. Her hand catches my sleeve for one brief second, fingers curling into the fabric before she realizes what she’s doing and lets go.
She lets go too late, because I already felt the way her fingers curled into me.
Having her this close is already testing the control I spent the last hour rebuilding, and that small, unconscious touch nearly finishes what began in my office this morning.
This morning still sits under my skin.
Her hands on my chest. Her mouth open. Her eyes dropping to my towel like she wanted to look away and could not make herself do it. I got dressed, buttoned my cuffs, sat behind my desk, and forced myself through contracts while my cock stayed hard and my mind kept putting her back in front of me.
If she had looked at me like that for another second, I would have bent her over my desk, pushed that yellow dress up her thighs, and shown her exactly how hard she made me.
Instead, I let her leave.
Now my hand is on her waist, and my body remembers every inch I did not take.
Lydia finds her voice first. “That seems excessive.”
“For a weekend wedding?” I ask. “No.”
“For Natalie,” she says, and the second the words leave her mouth, she knows she made a mistake.
Natalie tightens under my hand. This time I feel embarrassment with it, the old kind, worn smooth by repetition.
My father would have hated that.
He had no patience for people who used good manners to hide bad character. He built Richmond Corp with straight deals, hard work, and the kind of temper that made dishonest men think twice before sitting across from him. When his heart gave out, the company became more than an inheritance. It became the last living thing he left behind.
I was still in uniform when my mother called me home.
Four years in the military had taught me discipline, obedience, and the clean relief of direct orders, but duty did not end when I left the service. My father’s legacy was slipping through hands that cared more about access than stewardship, and my mother was too soft-hearted to see every predator before he got close.
So I came back.
She tried to hold it together after he died. She tried to hold herself together too, usually by believing the next man who promised forever would mean it. New rings. New husbands. Honeymoons that ended with lawyers. Spa trips after divorces. Men who mistook her soft heart for an open wallet and walked away richer than they deserved.
She still believes love makes people better.
I stopped believing that too many years ago.
Sabrina made sure of it.
I loved her. She loved what came with me: my name, my money, and the life my father’s company could give her. She was beautiful, elegant, convincing, and empty where it counted. I learned the cost of a polished smile before I was twenty-five, and I have had no patience for pretty cruelty since.
So when Lydia looks at Natalie like Natalie is worth less because Wesley chose someone else, I do not see a sister.
