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We shared a moment of silence.
Finally, I studied her, my brows creased. “You okay?”
“Yeah, fine,” she hedged, hopping up. “Hey, want to get dinner Friday? Just you and me?”
“Sure. Mom doesn’t have dinner plans for us?” My mom usually had every minute of our days planned when I came home.
“Nah, she and dad are going to his office Christmas party.”
“Okay. How’s school?”
She rolled her eyes at me. “You’re only four years older. You act like my freakin’ father or something.”
Someone has to. “All right, simmer down now. Simmer down.”
She rolled her eyes again but smiled. “Want to watch It’s a Wonderful Life?”
Hell to the no. “Absolutely not.”
“A Christmas Carol?”
It’s like she has a window into my conscience. “No, let’s try something funny.”
“Elf,” she recommended.
“Elf it is.”
That night I opened my laptop and set it on the bed beside me. I toggled between wanting to log on to my Swiss account and wanting to throw the whole damn machine across the room. I settled on logging on. I couldn’t help myself.
Seven million two hundred ninety-three thousand eight hundred fifty-nine dollars and seventeen cents.
A burn of satisfaction radiated across my chest and I couldn’t help the smirk that appeared after, but that burn turned into a different kind of heat, an uncomfortable heat in my stomach when I thought of the imaginary image I had of Peter Knight’s wife.
I imagined Peter’s face when she opened the envelope of pictures. I imagined how he would fluster and struggle to explain images he had no recollection of. I imagined her slapping the innocent man, imagined her packing up a bag and the kids and leaving him.
I slammed my computer shut and ran to the bathroom, vomiting once more. But it did no good. I still felt like the piece of shit I was, and there was nothing I could do about it. My only choice now was to sit there and pray that he would choose the merger route, to save his family.
My only consolation was that he seemed like the kind of man who would pick his family over his career.
Besides, he’ll get rich off this merger...Nevermind that he didn’t want the merger in the first place because he thinks your father is a dishonest prick.
And yet, despite the fact that I knew it was wrong, I was going to keep the money because the idea of letting it go was more painful to me than the sin I’d committed against Peter Knight. I was deathly afraid to admit it out loud but I was exactly like my father. And it felt like I could do nothing about it.
The greed was more powerful than the will to do right.
I’ve got to get out of here.
Chapter Four
I took my dad’s private jet without asking. I did this often whenever I would do his bidding. He never questioned it. The pilot would return to L.A., and I’d call him back when I needed him.
A limo sat at the bottom of the airstairs. I immediately climbed in just as my cell began to ring. I stared down at the name displayed across its face. My mother. I hesitated for a moment, trying to decide whether I should answer it.
Get it over with.
“Hello?” I asked.
“Spence, honey, where in the world have you gone?”
