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"What's his favorite little project, Kiara?”
She flicks her eyes to me. "It’s Watch. It's the streaming service you guys started."
"Good. So at least you know that much. What you don't know it that all this this niceness and wooing and getting you into bed, because you have had sex with him, haven’t you? I mean, he wouldn't want anything to do with you, if you hadn't."
“Nathan. That’s not true, you don’t know anything about us.” I shout.
"You've met Odette, haven't you? His resident booty call? She's been hanging around him for almost ten years now. She’s a little more than his executive assistant. She has the office next to his for a reason. Easy access.”
“Oh, my god,” Kiara says.
"This is total bullshit. Don't believe him!” I beg her.
"Fine. But you didn’t let me finish, I bet you didn’t know that the reason he’s paid so much attention to you was just to get Dad to sell Watch to him."
"What?" her voice comes out choked, disbelieving.
Nathan snickers, knowing he’s making leeway into his sister’s mine. "Yup, that day at Amber, Kylian was actually there to meet Dad. He made a deal with Kylian, that if he offered you a job, made you nice and respectable, that Dad would sell Watch to him. And surely you know how important the company is to him." He twists the knife.
"He loves Watch,” she whispers, almost as a reminder to herself.
"But not as much as I love you!” I shout. The first time I said it wasn’t meant to be in defense of myself. This is wrong, this is all wrong. I reach for her, but she’s already stepping away from me.
"Don't. Don't say that. Tell me the truth, right now. Did Dad make a deal with you?"
"No! There was no deal."
Nathan pulls his phone out of his pocket. "Don't take my word for it. Let the video speak for itself."
I watch, heart in my throat, as she presses a button on the phone. I can’t see the picture but audio from that day at Amber starts to play.
“My son tells me that you have a special interest in the joint venture you two share and that you might have your eye on buying him out."
"Watch?"
"Yes. It's doing well, yes?"
“If you can get Kiara settled somewhere at Baxter Enterprises, in six months, Nathan will sell Watch to you.”
When she finally looks up from the video, her face is steeped in the pain of betrayal.
"Kiara. No. It’s not what it looks like. Keep watching. I said I didn’t need it. That’s not why I offered you a job, it’s not.”
Nathan jumps in between us, his back to me, his hands on his sister’s shoulder. "Well, we’ll never know what his intention was. But he did offer you a job, didn’t her? So when the time came, he wouldn’t say no. You know he wouldn’t. You wanted to know what Kylian Baxter is really like? This is him. In the flesh. And blood"
I try to grab her shoulder, but she shakes me off, rewatching the video, her eyes blurring with tears.
"Kiara, angel, listen to me. It was never about the deal. Never. Ever! I promise. What can I do to prove it to you?"
"But you weren't honest about the job either. I thought..." When she finally speaks, her voice, her words, sticks in her throat. "I thought you offered me the job because you believed in what I was doing. You thought it was a good deal. I thought you wanted to be near me." The last one slashes right down the middle of my chest. Cutting me open. Bleeding out in front of her.
"Kiara. What happened between us, it wasn't about the job. Forget about the job! You and me, that’s what matters. And you know that. You know this is real. I know you love me, too."
"Come on, Kiara." Nathan says his voice now eerily calm. "Let’s go home. With people who actually love you and not just for a business deal."
I turn around, spitting I’m so furious at him for interfering, just because he’s mad at us for going behind her back. "You are a fucking evil mother fucker. Tell her the truth, tell her that I would never have done anything to hurt her. That the deal was never inportant to me. You know I felt that way. I told you."
He just snorts sarcastically. "What's that thing you always say, Kylian? What a Baxter wants, a Baxter gets?"
