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“Just know that I actually give a damn about you—and he never has.”
22
LAURA
Bartholomew’s driver took me to my father’s estate, and I spent the entire drive stifling my silent tears. Some of them escaped my eyes and made rivers down my cheeks. They hit the corners of my lips and made it to my tongue—tasting like salt pellets.
I’d known it was going to end, but when I didn’t know when or how, it was easy to forget the impending doom. When I’d woken up that morning with him beside me, I kissed his shoulder to coax him awake, wanting him the second I saw his naked body beside me. But those kisses would be our last.
If I’d known they’d be our last…I wouldn’t have left the bed.
The car stopped outside the gate, and I stayed in the back seat as I cleaned up my tears with a tissue. My eyes would be red and my cheeks blotchy, but there was nothing I could do to hide that.
The driver grabbed my bags from the trunk then left me on the sidewalk.
Then he left.
It was really over now.
The guys let me in the gate, pulling my suitcase behind me, walking right into the snake’s den. I felt like shit for betraying Bartholomew, but I felt even worse harboring this secret from my own flesh and blood.
Now I wished I’d never met Bartholomew. I wouldn’t be in this position. I would be in Paris, thriving in ignorant bliss.
I entered the house, and the butler immediately took my suitcase. “Will you be staying with us, Miss Laura?”
“I hope so.” I didn’t have anywhere else to go and not a lot of money to spend. “I need to speak to my father.”
“He’s not in residence right now.”
“Then Iguess I’ll wait.”
* * *
A couple hours later, he returned. I knew he was home because he was yelling the second he walked through the front door. “To forget everything I’ve done for him, the years of good business, even the years of bad business… A butter knife will be in his eye before this is over.”
Yep, that was my father.
I looked over the balcony of the stairs and saw him storm inside with Victor and some of the other guys.
The butler walked up to him. “Sir—”
“I don’t need anything. Get out of my face.”
Jackass. “He’s trying to tell you that I want to speak with you.”
All the men stopped and looked up to where I stood on the stairs.
“And I’m staying in my old room…if that’s okay.”
My father didn’t look excited by my stay. Didn’t look upset by it either. His head was somewhere else, deep in the war he was now fighting. He walked on, heading to the drawing room, where the men would smoke cigars and talk shit. Victor lingered, giving me a perplexed expression, but he eventually followed.
I joined them in the drawing room. “I need to speak with Leonardo—alone.”
“Laura, now is not the time—”
“I know who’s behind this attack.”
He let the cigar burn between his fingers as he stared at me, the smoke silently rising toward the ceiling. The other guys sat in silence, spread out across the other couches. Without looking at his men, he raised his hand and silently excused them.
