“Leave her to me, lad. I know what to do with trash,” he mutters, growling low in his throat.
I turn and look at him and feel a slow, evil smile twitch at my lips. If they thought that she would suffer with me, they don’t understand the things that my father is capable of.
“Edward—”
“Keep your mouth shut, Cynthia.”
When she stops her pleading and crying instantly and stiffens her spine, I know that everything I could have done to this person will pale in comparison to what she will now face, and I bloody revel in it.
Don’t get me wrong: I am in no way mending bridges with the old man, but for the sake of the children I’m willing to ignore that in favor of them feeling loved and wanted by their only grandparent.
Plus, I really just enjoy having an ally as ruthless and heartless as I am. Makes for a better killing when you’re sharing with one of your ilk.
“Ash, love, run along and go have a drink with the girls,” I murmur, kissing her reddened nose as I lead her to the door and nod to Cammy.
“No. Lucian—”
“No, love, Father and I will take care of this. Please. Go.”
I turn back and smile coldly only when she’s stopped fretting and being led away by the bevy of females.
“Now then,” I say sweetly, closing the door with a snick. “Why don’t you start at the beginning and tell me what I want to know. And you can stop those tears. I could care less about your histrionics.”
As before, she loses the act and sits staring at us stonily, her disdainful demeanor back in full force.
“She was a little nobody. She would have ruined all of our plans for you once you found out about the baby. I simply did what any mother would do and took care of the problem.”
“Problem?” I snarl, throttling back on the rage coursing through me with an iron will.
“Lucian, you weren’t even out of school yet. You still had university, and your father wanted to take you into the company early… It would have ruined everything—”
“You stole my fucking kid and left her to that piece of shit—”
“Calm down, lad. She’s trying to provoke you.”
I hear what he’s saying and just barely manage not to lunge at her where she sits, trying to explain away her actions as if what’s she’s done means nothing.
I shouldn’t be surprised, and yet I am. Even having known this whole time that she was behind this…the hope that she wasn’t had still been strong enough for me to sit through dinner with this…thing.
Now I just want to hurt her. If they’d let me I’d take a pound of flesh for every year I’d missed with my daughter.
“That excuse doesn’t fly, woman, and you know it. We’re old money. We could have taken care of the child while he did what needed doing. Hell, I’d have taken her myself if I’d known,” he snarls, letting her know how truly angry he really is.
“So we will ask you again, once only, why you saw fit to rob this family of their flesh and blood.”
That’s Father, always calm and to the point. That’s when he’s at his most dangerous, because then you know he’s not just violently angry, but he’s making plans to cut you down.
The bitch finally gets it and starts crying again, her thin shoulders heaving as she covers her face and sobs into her hands.
“I knew that he was getting ready to leave. The little shit had been telling me for weeks. With him gone Camille would have been first to inherit the businesses, and…I knew that if you got a whiff of a grandchild you would never let him go.”
Ah, greed. The stupid arse had been eyeing the business for Cammy, no doubt intending to use the poor girl to get what she wanted, which is and has always been more money and power.
She comes from a long line of aristos, the type that know nothing about hard work and look down at others just because they think their blood is blue.
She must have wanted to die when she’d married a second brother thanks to the marriage contract my grandfather had worked out after my own mother had died on giving birth to me.
“You wanted the money, huh? I don’t give you enough to satisfy your greed?”
“You’re too soft to take this family where it needs to go, Edward! We could be so much farther if you’d just stop feeling sorry for everyone and push the business the way you need to.”
“You mean you’d like me to retrench half the workforce and sell the company so we can live like your freeloading relatives? Sorry, dear, but a Jasper man does not spend his life lounging around while others do the hard work. Fortunately for you, the ghastly sight of your husband going off to do a hard day’s toil will no longer have to be borne.”