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IF YOU WERE mine, there’s no way I’d let you do this.
I was his. I was his for as long as he wanted me. But he didn’t want me then. He broke my heart and left me as soon as I told him I loved him. Oh, I heard him, this weekend. His father and his upbringing never taught him how to love. I get what he’s saying, but he’s thirty-two years old. At some point you have to grow up and become an adult in your own right.
Has he?
He was about to settle down, become a husband. Maybe that does mean he has changed. But even if, if, he’s changed, just weeks ago he was about to marry someone who wasn’t me.
Irritated with myself, defeated by my shitty day, I swipe another tear from my cheek, wondering how many more can come before I’m hospitalised with severe dehydration.
I’m someone who cares about you.
Maybe so, but I’m not a rebound. I can’t be. I won’t be. I’ve admitted to myself I’m still in love with him, which makes me vulnerable. Do I want to be with Clark? That’s a question my head is too messed up to deal with right now. What I’m not willing to do is try, just to have my heart torn in two, again.
I let the door to my hotel room slam behind me. I pace the floor of the lounge, trying to get myself out of this godforsaken dress.
“Who the hell does he think he is?” I ask the empty room as I jump, in a tantrum, trying to get the dress over my breasts. You can’t do this. I won’t let you. “Really? You won’t?”
Even if I wanted to listen to him and take his advice, which I don’t, he doesn’t know how much I need this win.
I finally free myself of the dress and kick off my heels as I walk into the bedroom of my junior suite. I stare at the king-size bed like it’s taunting me. All this space for one.
Shaking my head, I walk past the velour chairs and chaise longue at the bottom of the bed — damn this room could be sexy — and hang my dress in the mirrored wardrobes.
I strip out of my underwear, unpin my hair, and take the hotel’s white robe into the bathroom. I take off my make-up at the bloody his-and-hers sinks while the shower heats and steam begins to fill the room.
Emotion balls in my throat, and I have no idea what’s the bigger cause: Clark fucking Layton, the terror of sitting in a restaurant with armed men ready to put a bullet through my skull if I made a wrong move, or that venomous look in Caspar’s eyes as he glared at me across the bar.
Not for the first time since I’ve been CEO of SP, I feel totally, completely, utterly out of my depth in work, life, every way. I step into the shower, deflated, and tilt my head back, letting the warm water run over my face.
How did I get here?
I wash my body and hair, thankful that I can go to bed soon and put this day behind me. I dry off, slip into my robe and head to bed, towel-drying my hair as I go, knowing I won’t bother blow-drying it. Also knowing I’ll regret that decision in the morning.
I open the door to the bedroom and scream. A man sits in a chair at the foot of the bed. My heart thumps against my ribs. My lungs contract frantically until I can get a grip of my erratic breaths.
Caspar Kahn sits in his dinner suit, legs crossed, eyes boring into me, turning a knife over and over. He drops the point of the blade to the dark-wood side table, then he flips the knife so the butt of the black leather handle taps the surface. I watch the knife, trying to stay calm. Eventually, I look at him.
“Get out.”
He laughs sardonically. The sound resonates in my ears and brings home to me that I’m trapped, naked but for a loose robe, in a room where no one can hear me, with a man who all but killed my father and eleven innocent people. A man who looks like he wants to kill me.
“Sit down.”
I cast my damp towel to the bed and put my shaking hands into the pockets of my robe, trying to mask my fear. “I’ll stand. I’m sure it won’t take long to say what you’ve come to say, then you can fuck off.”
He looks at the knife, continuing to turn and tap it against the table. “Ah, Dayna Cross. Stupid like your daddy.”
He stops turning the knife and slams it down on the table, making me flinch. “You see, he had two problems. The first was that he just didn’t belong in this industry. The second, his biggest problem, was that he tried to meddle on my ground.”
The noise of my own inhalations fills my ears, but outwardly I’m calmer. Not as confident as I’d like to look, but not as frantic as I am in my own mind, thinking about the blade under Caspar’s palm.
“I don’t even think you believe that, Kahn. I think the reason you hated my father was because he was a threat to you. You were afraid of competition because you’re weak. You can’t fight fair. The only way you could beat my father was to sabotage his rig.”
He stands so abruptly my eyes lose focus, as the knife he’s been turning comes hurtling past my head and slams into the wall behind me. Caspar charges at me, and I can’t push him off. My feet lift off the floor as he slams me back against the wall, the knife in my peripheral vision. He digs his thumbs so hard into my trachea I can’t breathe. I try to fight but it’s useless; he has me pinned.
“The Middle East is mine. It’s always been mine. The only people I allow in the Middle East play by my rules. Your father couldn’t play fair and he got what he deserved.”
My legs kick frantically. I’m going to die. I blink, but my vision is starting to blur.
