Her Forgotten Betrayal(74)

Losing her grandmother long before Cole and his dad had moved onto the mountain. Her summers in High Lake, becoming all she’d lived for as a young girl because of the amazing friend she’d made there, for whom she’d cried each summer when she had to leave Cole behind. Craving her father’s affection and attention and dying inside each time it was denied her, no matter how smart she was or how hard she worked or how perfect she became for him. Even Cole giving her Esmeralda’s charm after his mother’s funeral. It had been the only thing special of hers that he’d owned, and he’d wanted Shaw to have it.

Then there was warped, ever-scheming Sebastian, who’d always hated her. He had been their father’s favorite from birth. But that hadn’t been enough for her brother, not after their mother had died. He’d been jealous of anything good in Shaw’s life, dangerously so. He’d filled their father’s mind with hatred for Cole. He’d done increasingly disturbed things to upset her, until it had consumed all of them in an inferno of destruction.

After Sebastian’s death, after Cole left, her life had narrowed to earning her PhDs, then learning the ropes of Cassidy Global’s far-flung holdings. She’d killed herself to make her father proud. Then he’d been gone, too, and her world had emptied of everything except the demands of her job and the hollow sense of accomplishment that came with knowing how successful she’d become.

Until she began to realize something was wrong, that someone had infiltrated her personal computer and databases, secretly logging into sealed files and information across the company intranet using encrypted algorithms that only she had detected so far. There had been a flurry of unauthorized access to her research, the same time every night when the servers were supposed to be down for maintenance, often from a terminal in her father’s conference room. To discover whichever of her executives was involved, she’d hidden in the conference room closet one fateful night, to catch him in the act.

Only it hadn’t been one of her corporate officers at all.

“It was you…” She gasped, staring at Sebastian. “You were why there’ve been flames in my nightmare. They were from when you were killed in the barn…”

She grabbed for the wall behind her and came up with a fist full of air. Stumbling, her balance shot, she crashed flat on her butt. She pulled her knees under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking forward and back.

It wasn’t possible.

Her brother was dead.

She should be glad that he wasn’t. A younger Shaw might have been. But he was the monster in her dream who’d laughed while he talked about killing her. His very existence had been the truth her mind had refused to face, shutting down everything it had to in order to hide the reality of Sebastian still being alive.

“You see?” said the man who’d once been so similar to her in appearance they’d often been mistaken as twins. He stepped closer. His nose was two holes in his face, the cartilage burned away. His ears had seemingly melted to the side of his head. His forehead and hairless scalp were roped with burns. “This is exactly what I told Father would happen sooner or later. You’re not up for what it takes to survive in the cutthroat corporate arena. You’ve been a disaster since the day you were born. You can’t even lose your mind the way you’re supposed to, even after I gave you a second chance.”

“A…a second chance?”

“I looked into your eyes that night, after you’d heard my latest transaction being finalized, and I saw your mind unraveling. It was too tantalizing to end with a single bullet, even if it would be from our father’s gun. My rather irate client threatened to pull out of our arrangement, but I had my chance to dish back a bit of the pain you’ve caused me over the years. How could I pass up an opportunity like that?”

“Me?” A part of her consciousness snapped back. “What did I ever do to you?”

“You killed my mother, for starters, you little bitch!” Spittle flew from Sebastian’s misshapen mouth. “From that day on, your life was mine to do with as I pleased. You owed me. Then you got out alive from that nasty fire I set for your stupid boy-toy, teenage lover. There wasn’t a scratch on you, after your hulking, clueless hero rushed you away from danger and left me trapped inside. You’ve gotten to stumble about for all these years, running the legitimate side of our family’s business like a prissy prima donna, while I’ve lurked in the shadows, leaching my living off the lucrative counterintelligence world that wouldn’t think twice about doing business with a freak like me.”