The soft murmur of voices pulls me down the passage, and I shake my head with a laugh, thinking ruefully that there’s no changing a tycoon. Pausing at the door to the master bedroom, I slowly push down that handle and inch in, not wanting to cause a stir in case one or both of them are on a call.
“You deserve this, son. You did everything I asked and more. I couldn’t have chosen better for my Sissy girl.”
I stop dead in my tracks and duck to the right, my breath stalling as I plaster myself to the wall behind a thin, decorative bookcase at the door.
“As you said, sir, she needs a strong hand. Now that we’re married, I can guarantee Cecilia won’t be running wild in the streets of New York.”
“Good, good. I’ll transfer my shares in Blake’s over to you immediately, as well as my proxy. That should get you enough of a controlling share to shut those bastards down.”
The words become a blur of smug crowing and backslaps that stutter through my heart with resounding force. I’m frozen, numb as I half listen to what they’re discussing, my blood frozen in my veins as the extent of their duplicity finally sinks in.
This… I can’t even compute what this is, but as they talk it all comes down to one thing: Vincent and my father are in cahoots. Daddy has used me, trapped me with a man whose only interest in me is—
“You son of a bitch!” the word explodes from me as I come away from my hiding place and glare at them, my heart breaking so hard it’s difficult to catch my breath. “You used his interest in his family’s company…you…”
I can’t finish, not when I look up at Vincent and see the truth in his cold green eyes. I see nothing there anymore, no trace of the lovingly attentive man he’s been. Only calculation and a satisfaction that makes bile rise up in my throat.
“You never loved me. Did you?” I ask, feeling the sting of tears and deep humiliation.
The hard look, that coldness that has managed to seep straight into me wavers, and he shakes his head regretfully.
“Let me explain, dove.”
Chapter Twenty Seven
“Yo, Lily, order up, girl.”
As Nico dings the little bell at the window and pushes two orders of eggs over easy, bacon, toast, and lamb sausage my way, I wipe a bead of sweat from my brow and huff out a wired breath.
“You okay, Lil?”
“Fine, Nic, just tired. My section’s busting at the seams, and I still have to cover half of Ginger’s tables. Fucking college brats aren’t making it easy, either. Just don’t screw up their order, huh? Those rich idiots are already making my life a misery.”
He grins at me and hocks back, waggling his brows at me in a yay or nay move that makes me laugh and shake my head. The brats may be working on my nerves, but no one deserves a booger sandwich, and I say so.
“Your call, babe. Not me who has to serve the little assholes.”
I snort and grab the order, walking away with a bright smile plastered on as I deliver it to Earl and his wife Pearl and trudge back to get them coffee.
The last three and a half months-not that I’m counting—have been…enlightening. After confronting Vincent and my—Beau, I’d run out of the hotel wearing a ten grand wedding dress and nothing else.
I couldn’t go home because right now that was Vincent’s house, and I had no money, ID, nothing, so I’d grabbed a cab and begged the cabbie to use his phone.
Parker had answered on the first ring, and after explaining the situation and begging him not to let on that it was me on the phone, I’d begged him to meet me at the park and to bring some money—to pay the cabbie and to help get me out of the city.
Now, I know what you’re thinking: why run? Simple. Because despite being a twenty-eight-year-old adult and having the power to say no, I have this weakness were love is concerned, and I’d known that if I gave Beau or Vincent the slightest encouragement, they’d convince me that everything was just a misunderstanding.
Parker had given me twenty grand and hooked me up with a little place in Georgia, a little two bedroom house in the middle of nowhere that had belonged to his maternal grandmother or something.
It was not a luxury home or anything, but it suited my purposes just fine. I’d spent half of the money on a second hand car at a dealership just dodgy enough not to require my licence, and the other half I was keeping as an emergency fund.
That’s why I’m currently working nine-hour days at the diner to put food in my belly and keep the electricity on.
“Hey, waitress! Where are our burgers?”
Stifling the urge to tell them to go to hell, I smile sweetly instead and hotfoot it over to Nic, my eyes begging him to fill the order now, even if they’d only ordered five minutes ago.