AllFreeNovel
Share Us
But not knowing was killing me. Something unfamiliar crept through me, stalking low and hot. Tendrils of desperation wove through my cells. I hadn’t felt this in a long time. In eight years, to be exact. Not since Cora told me she wanted to break up with me and I’d sold off stocks to be able to afford the flight out to see her. I’d begged. It hadn’t made a difference.
There was no begging with the world. Once bad news hit the cycle, it spread like wildfire.
If the Jeffrey Epstein links were already here, who knew what else awaited us?
The reputation my brothers and I had scraped and scrambled for—vanished in a fucking instant.
We’d always been the outsiders of Wall Street. The bad boys who didn’t do things the conventional way.
But now we were something worse. Something much more damning.
And I planned to find out who was responsible and make them pay.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
CORA
My father turned stony silence into a sport.
He lobbed it around like a football. Not like he actually played physical sports, or even watched them. The only reason he was ever caught at sporting events was en route to the luxury box as part of a networking event. No, the only true sport he played was manipulating other people’s emotions.
Specifically, mine.
And his three-week silence said it all.
He’d stopped responding to my emails unless the matter directly pertained to life-or-death business matters. But since the news about Axel and his brothers had spread across the nation like wildfire a few days ago, whenever my father needed something from me, he sent a courier. Even if he was in the office down the hall.
My relationship with Axel wasn’t common knowledge, and already I was suffering the consequences. Apparently the divorce papers I’d served Eli with also applied to Allan—especially now that Axel was under scrutiny. My father showed me how it would feel to go all the way with Axel. He’d already weaponized my own actions against me without even saying a word, and it was only the tip of the iceberg.
My kneejerk reaction was fear. I had an urge to cower, contemplate my actions, and chart a course back to what he wanted from me.
I was sick of cowering, contemplating, and charting the course that wasn’t even mine.
I was ready to charge ahead into the unknown. I just hadn’t planned on how deeply uncomfortable things could become in this new space.
Three weeks after serving the divorce papers, Eli acted as though nothing had happened. This didn’t feel like merely bad news; this felt like a hurricane when I’d been preparing for a snowstorm.
So when a board meeting brought me to the office that Friday, I had no idea what to expect.
But it certainly wasn’t what actually showed up.
Eli waltzed into the hallway outside the board room, intercepting me casually with an air ofOh I didn’t expect to find you here.His blond hair was in a Ken doll wave, not a hair out of place, his broad shoulders straining at the medium blue suit he wore. The perfect example of affable douche.
My stomach twisted into a Windsor knot.
“Cora. Looking beautiful as always.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets. A whiff of his cologne reached me, a complex mixture of yacht clubs and expensive aftershave.
“Good to see you, Eli.” I lied. It wasn’t. “Have you thought about the papers I sent over?”
“Oh, those. Yeah. Right.” He cleared his throat, looking down the hallway over my shoulder. “Put me on your schedule? Let’s set a date, and we can finish that up.”
My heart pounded as though I’d just run up a flight of stairs. “Seriously? My lawyer should probably come too, then.”
“This is a white flag,” he said in a low voice, stepping closer. “Let’s just get this over with. You and me. Come on.”
My mouth went dry, and I almost forgot how to speak. I hadn’t expected compliance. Not like this. Not sosoon. There was a high possibility I was dreaming. Perhaps I was feverish. Maybe this was a vision from within a coma. “Okay. Sure. How about lunch today?”
“Name the place.”
