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Damon didn’t bother to temper the harshness of his disbelief. He’d never been short on reasons to despise Randolph, but the way he had treated Carrie incited in him a fury that would have made the gods quake. So to hear her openly admit that she still harboured hopes of a reconciliation with the man was mind-blowing.
‘It doesn’t sound as though he’s been any kind of a father to you.’
She lifted her shoulders in a small, non-defensive shrug. ‘Because he is my father,’ she supplied simply.
And, looking into her guileless gaze, he realised that it was that simple for her. In Carrie’s view, no matter what sins he had committed, Randolph was her father, and that was a relationship she would always stand by with love and loyalty, even if it was unreturned. She was that open-hearted. That pure. Once she loved, she loved for ever. And that was a lot likehisfather. So like his father he felt a crippling twist of his gut.
‘And because I understand why he is so infuriatingly single-minded...why he pours all of his energy and attention into the Randolph Corporation.’
‘Why does he?’ Damon asked after a beat. He was unsure if it was a sensible question to ask, but she’d piqued his interest.
‘Because he grew up very poor. When his father died, my dad, as the oldest, got a job so the family wouldn’t be homeless. He went to school in the daytime and worked at night at all of fourteen years old. Can you imagine that? Having the responsibility for your whole family on your shoulders when you’re just a boy? Knowing that whether they eat that day depends on you?’
Carrie shuddered, and even Damon had to acknowledge the icy chill skating across his broad shoulders at the thought of such desolate circumstances.
‘Eventually he dropped out of school entirely and worked full-time to take care of them. Even when he started his own company and began to make big money he never stopped taking care of them. So everything he’s managed to achieve in his life is incredible. And I think he believes that if he takes his eyes off it, even for a second, it will all disappear. I think that fear is what drives a lot of his actions. It hurts me, but I think it’s understandable.’
Damon reached for his water glass, taking a long swallow. His throat felt like sandpaper.
This was information he’d never had any desire to know. Damon had made it his business to learn everything about Randolph’s business affairs, but the finer details of his life had held zero interest. It had been enough to know that the man had brought about his father’s death, and seeing him like that, in black and white, had suited him just fine.
But the particulars Carrie had just revealed shaded him in colour. It was hard to align the man who had endlessly provided for his family with the villain who had traded his father’s life for a greater profit, and it was hard not to feel some admiration for the man who had built his empire from dirt and air.
And that strange new feeling, wedged like a thorn in his side, was giving him uncomfortable pause for thought, raising quiet questions, for the first time ever, over what would happen to the man once Damon had succeeded in bringing about his downfall. With those facts of his life pinballing around his mind, Damon knew his vengeance held not only the power to bring his empire crumbling to the ground, but to cripple the man who sat at its helm.
It should have been a satisfying feeling. A few months ago it would have steeped him in elation.
But now...it didn’t.
And that disturbed him more than words could express. Because thinking of Sterling Randolph as a human being...No!He could not afford to start thinking of Randolph as a person if he was to defeat him...not now...not when he was so close.
‘You show a lot of understanding. More than I would argue that he deserves,’ Damon intoned, clawing back his anger.
‘I think everyone deserves understanding and compassion.’
‘Everyone?’ Her sentiment struck a flame to the emotions kindling within him and he eyed her with dangerously simmering outrage. ‘Is this your less than subtle way of telling me to let go of my anger towards him? To findunderstanding and compassion?’
‘What...?’ Bewilderment clouded her expression. ‘No. Of course not. I’m just... We’re talking... I was speaking for myself... I—’
‘Because that is never going to happen, Carrie,’ he exploded, his breaths heavy, his words loaded with a fury that was pressing against his chest like a bar of steel. ‘What he did is unforgivable. There’s no way back from that.’
Carrie’s throat was so tight with emotion she could barely swallow, let alone speak, but after a long moment, punctured only by Damon’s furiously ragged breaths, the question tearing at her emerged.
‘Is this how it’s always going to be?’
Her voice was small and quiet, but the stare she directed at Damon commanded an answer.
‘Everything I say, everything I do, you’ll assume some ulterior Machiavellian motive?’
He looked away from her. His sharp cheekbones were ablaze with colour and a nerve pulsed in his jaw, but he made no effort to respond. And in that deafening and frigid silence Carrie knew she had her answer.
She pressed her lips together to lock in the cry of anguish that tore through her. Could she be anymorestupid? She had thought something in him had softened towards her. She’d actually believed that over dinner and conversation they were forging a new connection. A tentative one, of course, but something new...something that was just about the two of them. But no, it could never be just about the two of them, could it? Damon would neverallowit to be. His anger over the events two decades ago was anchored so deep in him that it spilled across all else like a flood of thick black oil.
Suddenly exhausted, drained by the effort of trying and hoping and being let down, Carrie scraped back her chair and pushed herself to her feet. She was no longer interested in hearing whatever answer he might concoct, or in waiting to hear it. Nor in giving him yet another chance.
The only consolation she could draw was that at least she now knew unequivocally where she stood. That pesky, hopeful part of her that was always waiting for the sunshine to break through the clouds had pushed her to hope that there could be more between them—even if only a friendship—that it might be possible for him to see her as Carrie the way she saw him as simply Damon. Not as the sum of his parts, or a victim of his past, or the face of his successes—just him. But no. Not possible after all.
Her eyes were well and truly open now, and the clarity was so bright it was blinding.
