Jessi jumped up and started talking but Cari didn't really hear a thing that her sister said. Instead she only heard what Dec said. Was he recommending keeping her because of their relationship? She couldn't keep her job if Emma and Jessi were both fired.
She stood up, pointed to Dec and motioned for him to step to the corner of the room. Her sisters were having a very heated discussion with Kell and Allan, but Cari was interested in only one person.
"What was that about?" she hissed when they were standing aside from the table.
"What do you mean?"
"Why keep me and not Jessi or Emma? We're all vital to the longevity of Infinity Games."
"You are because you're in the trenches with your staff. But the other two-"
"Stop it, Dec. The 'other two' are my sisters. We can't build a life together when you fired my sisters."
"We're not building a life together," Dec said.
"What have we been doing, then?"
"Hell, I didn't mean it like that," he said. "I couldn't save all three of you, Cari. Kell isn't happy that I recommended you stay on staff, but I told him that was the only option that I would agree to."
"I appreciate that. But you have no idea the kind of situation you've put me in," she said.
"It was always going to be impossible. I can't turn my back on my family," he said after a long minute had passed.
"I'm not asking you to. I'm asking you to think of our son."
"I am thinking of him, so don't try to blackmail me with that. He's on my mind as much as he's on yours."
"Yes, but your side of the family comes out looking like the victors. Do you think we can be happy when my sisters are angry? I'm mad, too."
"Be realistic. It's a better outcome than you could have hoped for."
"No," she said. "I showed you how we could keep working as we have been. I showed you how Infinity Games needs to stay as it is. I showed you everything I had and it seems to mean nothing to you."
"Infinity Games is no longer yours to decide. You're lucky we're even thinking of keeping any of the staff."
She shook her head as anger and hurt coalesced inside of her. "Of course you'd say that. You don't know how to stick around and see the devastation you leave behind you."
"I'm not running away this time," he said.
"Well, you might as well be," Cari said.
"Stop acting like this. It's business, not the end of the world. You can't operate a business based on emotion."
"You can't because you're the Tin Man and you have no heart. But I'm not like you, Dec. I love you. But I bet that doesn't even matter to you. You don't understand how love changes everything. How it makes you aware of all the people around you and the consequences of your actions. You said this won't affect me or DJ but it will.
"I've been a fool thinking you could change. I believed you were someone who would stay and build a future with me and our son, but I see now you were never interested in that. And as much as I appreciate you keeping my job, if my sisters go, then so do I."
She turned to step away from him and became aware of the others staring over at them. She saw the faces of her sisters, who had no doubt heard her talk about her son's parentage. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape. She took a deep breath and blurted, "Yes, you heard right. Dec and I have a son together. Even though he abandoned us, I welcomed him back into our lives thinking he was a changed man, though I see now he is still consumed with an old family feud that has nothing to do with the present."
"I knew it," Jessi said.
"You knew it? Why didn't you say something?" Allan asked her. "Seems like that's the kind of information you'd run with."
"I just got the report from my P.I. this morning. I should have said I suspected it." She turned to Kell. "You can't fire your own nephew's aunts."
"The baby changes nothing," Kell said.
"It changes everything," Emma interjected. "We're all related now and we can't keep trying to tear each other apart. It's time to settle the feud."
"No," Kell said. "I'm not giving up on anything because Dec and Cari had a one-night stand. That's not a commitment. That's a mistake."
Cari cringed at his remark. "Was it a mistake, Dec?" Cari asked him.
Dec glanced at her, and the look in his eyes reminded her of an animal caught in a trap. He turned his back to her and faced his cousin. "Kell, enough of this nonsense."
"It's not nonsense. It's good business sense," Kell said.
"Good business sense doesn't rely on revenge," Emma said, walking over to Cari and putting her arm around her.
As her sisters led her out of the conference room, Cari looked back at Dec. He looked stone-cold, as if he didn't feel anything. So different from the man whose arms she'd slept in last night. She felt her heart breaking into a thousand pieces and knew this moment was the worst of her life.
She started to cry as they walked down the corridors of Playtone Games to the elevator, and she couldn't stop. She felt Jessi patting her shoulder and she knew she should try to compose herself, but it was impossible.
She'd let herself be fooled by Declan Montrose again. It was bad enough when he'd physically abandoned her after their night together, but nothing was as bad as this emotional abandonment. After he'd spent weeks pretending to care for her, letting her believe that there was some hope for them … Well, it was just cruel, and it cut her so deep she didn't feel like she'd ever recover from it.
The sun was a shocking glare when they got to the parking lot, and she stopped walking, unable to go any farther. Her sisters wrapped their arms around her and held her close, and she cried in a way she hadn't since her parents had died.
She felt as if all of the hopes and dreams she'd had for the future were gone and she wondered how she was going to pick up the pieces of this break and move on. She wanted more for DJ than the life she now knew he was going to have. But she knew there was no way that a man like Dec could be the father she wanted for her son when he couldn't be the man she needed him to be as her partner and lover.
* * *
Dec stood shell-shocked by Cari's words. He shouldn't be shocked, he told himself. He knew she loved him. She would never have let him back into her bed if she didn't love him. That much had been obvious to him from the beginning.
But hearing her say that she thought he was heartless and that he was still stuck in the past hurt him deeply. He'd done his best to walk the fine line between what he owed his family and what he wanted for himself.
"You have a son?" Allan asked, walking over to Dec.
"Yes. I didn't know about DJ until I got back here and saw Cari again," Dec said.
"You should have said something to us," Kell said.
"Why?" Dec asked. "It wouldn't have changed anything."
"You're right. We couldn't change the path we were on, but I would never have asked you to manage the takeover," Kell said.
Dec looked at his cousin for a minute before he shook his head. "I don't agree with everything that Cari said, but she does have a point that we can't move forward when we are still consumed with the past. This was never about Granddad for me. You know he and I weren't that close," he said.
"Then what was it about?" Kell asked.
"I liked the challenge, and you two are family. We're all each other has left-or had left until I found out about my son."
"Do you feel like that as well, Allan?" Kell asked.
"I'm not in this for revenge," Allan replied. "I mean, sure, Granddad got a raw shake-"
Kell interrupted his response. "Maybe you both don't remember that Gregory Chandler deliberately cut Thomas out of the business for his own personal gain. That's not a 'raw shake.'"
Obviously, Kell wasn't going to be reasonable about this, Dec thought. And the argument was heating up to be the same one he'd heard before. Countless times. Dec realized he didn't want to rehash any of this with Kell. He stepped toward the conference room door. "My mother never really wanted to be a part of this and I understand why now. I don't know what's going to happen with me and Cari, but I do know I'm going to go after her. She's the first person in my life that I truly love." He stopped and banged his fist against the door frame. "Dammit, I told you before I've had a chance to tell her."
"Go after her," Allan said, gesturing to the door. Allan had a sort of envious look on his face. "Kell and I will figure out a way to make this more of an acquisition and less of a demolition of Infinity Games."