Page 44 of Sinful Desires

Oh, right. The sociopath I had fallen in love with.

I was shattered. I didn’t know where to begin putting myself back together again.

Eventually, there was a knock on the door for the first time in days. Heavy, almost pounding, telling me it wasn’t Mom ormy sister. “Aria. I want to see you in my study. Right now. Don’t make me seek out the spare key for this door.”

Dad sounded stern, maybe even angry, but I could see through him. He was worried. Considering this was the first time he had tried to reach out to me since the party, I figured it had to be important. I didn’t much feel like obeying, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to kick the door in if he couldn’t find the key. I didn’t have it in me to witness that when I was already on the verge of tears most of the time. But it meant dragging myself out of bed, grabbing a hoodie from my closet, raising it over my messy hair, and wrapping the rest around me like armor.

I wanted to disappear inside it.

I wanted to disappear, period.

The rest of the penthouse was dead silent by the time I eased the door open and crept downstairs. Dread had me feeling jumpy, wondering what he had to tell me.

He was sitting on the leather sofa across from his desk with two steaming cups of coffee in front of him and a small plate of cookies. The clock on the bookshelf told me it was barely past ten in the morning. “It’s early in the day for these, but I remembered how much you like the chocolate chip cookies from Levain,” he explained, gesturing toward the plate. “And you need to eat something. It’s not the healthiest choice, but it’s better than nothing.”

They did look good, and the coffee smelled great. Still, I would’ve refused them if he didn’t look so worried. The least I could do was meet him halfway and snag a thick cookie before sitting on the other end of the sofa, my feet tucked under me.

“You don’t know how worried we’ve been this past week,” he murmured.

“I’m sorry I worried you,” I mumbled, picking at a chocolate chip.

He leaned forward to grab a cookie of his own and took a big bite, chewing slowly. “I’m sure you have questions. You deserve them answered. I have a few of my own, but it can wait.” The wry note in his voice told me he was talking about my personal relationship with Miles. We were not going to touch that. I couldn’t handle it.

“I don’t know what to tell you, anyway,” I confessed. “It happened, it shouldn’t have, it’s over.”

“I wish I had known. You have no idea how much I wish I had known so I could’ve put a stop to it. You were never supposed to get hurt. I wanted to keep you and your sister out of this.”

Until now, I had only thought about myself—the lies, broken trust, feeling used and stupid. Now, I sat up a little straighter, setting the cookie on the table and giving him my full attention. “How did you know what was going to happen? What do you mean, you wanted to keep me out of it? What the hell was going on all this time?”

The antique clock ticked away the seconds as I waited for answers. Dad picked up the coffee in front of him, took a big gulp, and cleared his throat. “Months ago, there was an attempted hack of our in-home network,” he explained. “Naturally, I have people who keep an eye out for things like that, and it was squashed before anything could come of it. But there were more attempts, and they were traced to servers in the UK. It happened I’d recently gotten word of Leila’s passing and had planned to fly out for the funeral. I didn’t first make a connection until I met Miles.”

God, just the sound of his name was a sledgehammer to my chest. It left me blinking back tears and forcing myself to listen to what came next.

“No matter what he thought, I’m not some drooling old man without a clue how the world works. What I didn’t know was how far he planned to go,” he admitted, his voice heavy withsorrow. “I would never have invited him to stay with us if I knew the full scope of his plan included you.”

I swallowed the lump in my throat, asking, “But you did know there was something sketchy about him?”

“I did. No matter what he told you, I had no idea he existed until we met at his mother’s funeral. I knew right off he was too old to be mine. Besides, she would have screamed for child support the second the pregnancy test turned positive. I knew he had to be the product of a fling prior to our getting married.”

“Okay…” I wanted to accept him at face value, but the brief bit of background he gave me raised red flags. Why would he pretend to trust somebody he knew had ill intentions?

When I arched an eyebrow, he explained, “Miles told me she raised him alone, never remarried, and he hinted vaguely at her being ill for several years. Since I hadn’t heard anything about an illness, per se, that was when I began to do a little digging. Leila had a hard life and made it everybody else’s problem,” he concluded with sadness in his voice. “Unfortunately, even with all the opportunities I gave her to live more securely, there was no saving her. She clearly squandered the divorce settlement, and that was after she blatantly cheated on me during our marriage. I had no idea there was a child involved all that time. Remembering her and the way her brain worked, it only made sense that she’d fed him vicious lies about our marriage and why it ended.”

He lifted a shoulder and released a weary sigh. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen him this way. For the first time in my memory, my father looked his age. “I knew if he was dead set on hating or at least resenting me for whatever reason Leila planted in his head, coming straight out and telling him his mother was wrong would be a waste of breath. I guess… I guess I hoped spending time with him, letting him see us, the waywe live and treat each other and how much we care about one another…”

“You should’ve said something,” I whispered, shaking as anger started leaking into my awareness the longer I thought everything through. “You told Mom you didn’t trust him. Why couldn’t you have told me? I was living under the same roof with him all these weeks. Didn’t I deserve to know?”

“Looking back, I see how much sense that makes.” When all I could do was stare at him in disbelief, he closed his eyes and groaned. “I might’ve thought I was protecting you. I honestly can’t remember anymore. I never expected things to go that far. I was determined to beat him at his own game and make him regret screwing with me. I lost sight of everything in his orbit. I only hope you can forgive me for that.”

“What are you going to do now? With him?” I couldn’t say his name. I could barely handle thinking about him, picturing his face in my head, not to mention other things like the sound of his voice and how his touch lit me up even back when I had wanted anything but to crave him.

His eyes opened, narrowing into slits. “I have a few ideas in mind, not the least of which being the dismantling of his company. Once word gets out in the press of his methods in applying his AI technology, not to mention the assholes he associates with him, hackers and the like, he won’t have a chance. I’ve considered buying what’s left at bargain basement prices,” he concluded. “To throw it in his face how easy it was to take everything from him when he started this planning on taking everything from me.”

I wouldn’t lie to myself and pretend the idea didn’t excite me. Watching Miles dissolve in disgrace, the way he deserved after seducing me, using me, using my family and friends, trying to break my parents up to ruin us.

There was something else, something bigger, something that turned the lingering sweetness in my mouth harsh and bitter. “You lost sight of the rest of us because all you cared about was punishing him for screwing with you. You let him think he was getting away with it so you could hold it over his head when the time came.”

“That’s not completely true. I just explained?—”

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