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Shit. If my work life wasn’t already bad enough, he would make it unbearable now.
Chapter10
Cain
As soon as I exit the apartment, I’m brimming with anger. She noted me on her fucking calendar. My phone rings, and I answer it when I see it’s my half-sister Kat again.
“It’s rude to disconnect before the conversation is over!” she mutters petulantly.
“I said you’d know when I get there,” I grunt.
“Why? Are you planning to douse the place in gasoline and drop a lit match on it?” she laughs sarcastically. “He’s not the only one you’re burning, Cain.” She’s referring to her father, Royce.
“Not my problem.” I end the call again and take the stairs two at a time.
“Are we practising for the marathon?” Perry huffs behind me as he follows me down the stairwell.
“What apartment block doesn’t have a working lift?” I growl in response.
“This shit hole.” Perry steps in beside me as we leave the block of flats. “Imagine sleeping on your sofa every fucking night.”
“I’d rather not,” I reply, heading straight for his car. I send Justine a text and drop my location.
I want all the information on this building.
“She looked embarrassed,” Perry says, pulling away. I find myself looking back at the building and shift in my seat. She did, and I dislike that I put that emotion there.
“Her choice of accommodation isn’t our concern,” I lie breezily. I wasn’t in the right frame of mind to face her tonight.
“Cain, you could have her out of that flat by morning and in new digs before she could pull that shit sofa out.” Perry gives me his best puppy dog eyes, but he forgets I’m not some eager woman trying to please him.
“I could,” I drawl. I could, but I won’t. She’d hate me even more than she does now.
“You’re an arsehole.”
My hands fist the steering wheel until it creaks. “I’m aware.” We drive mostly in silence, and every now and then, Perry glances at me in annoyance. He’s too fucking nice.
“Why are you getting so close to her? You don’t like any of my other employees?”
“I didn’t give any of them concussions.” He grins at me, then shrugs. “She’s different. I like her. She isn’t out for herself or eager to get in your good graces because it poses an opportunity. She didn’t even know who you were.”
“I don’t like it,” I mutter.
“Then why come to the restaurant? Why go to the hospital?” We drive for a few more minutes, and he pulls up outside a large residence. “You want her, Cain, and for once, I can actually see why. She isn’t the kind of woman you can fuck around with. Don’t hurt her,” he says sternly before exiting the car and waiting for me to meet him on the pavement. We’re deep into the richer side of London. I grew up here and spent most of my youth and teenage years behind the large metal gates of Carson Court—gates that will soon belong to me once again.
“Are they home?” Perry asks. They, meaning my spoiled bitch of a mother and her waste-of-space husband. Her husband, who cheated my father out of his business, weaselled his way in and slowly began chipping away at my father’s fortune while plucking his wife from beneath his very nose. He ripped everything my father had built away from him in a blink of an eye: his businesses, his home, and his wife. Me. I became a tool for them to use, and my proud and respected father had wilted before my very eyes. It became too much, too great a loss. He could have lived without the business and our family home, but losing my mother had destroyed him. The last time I had set foot in this house was to clear out my belongings, years after my father had killed himself, and I was no longer trapped in their care.
Shaking my head, I walk over and key the code in. “They left for St. Lucia a few days ago.” The gates click, and I push my way in.
“Do they know you’ve already acquired that property?”
“They will. I signed the paperwork this morning.” That, along with the deeds to this place. Royce may own the building, but I own the land because, while he has become complacent in his own smugness, I’ve been working to rip it all from him. He thinks his business is at risk, so his focus is there and not on how everything else is unravelling around him. He’ll fight me tooth and nail, of course, and that’s what I want—for him to use all of his money fighting me every which way he can because he will lose every penny battling me, fighting to keep something that was never his in the first place. And when I finally take ownership of his businesses, he will be as penniless as my father, as broken and destroyed as he left us.
“What about Kat?”
“I’d never hurt her, but if she chooses him.” I shrug. “Well, that’s on her.” My friend chews his lip thoughtfully.
Kat opens the door before we reach it. “Happy with yourself?” she spits, brow arched high as she leans against the doorframe.
