Page 20 of A Man of Wealth

He pounds a fist on his desk, and I jump. He doesn’t say anything as he picks up his phone and makes a call. I don’t know who he’s speaking to, but he relays everything I just said and then hangs up.

“Who was that?”

“Sebastian.”

“Congressman North? Why are you calling him?” I ask as I step away from his desk. For the first time since I’ve become well-acquainted with Conner Sterling, all of Conner Sterling, I’m scared. Why did I come here? He has a home-court advantage here. I’m fairly certain that’s why he brought me here the other night. This house is everything I expected of Conner. It gives me zero new angles. I internally curse myself for having played right into his ploy. Conner, as it turns out, is a worthy opponent.

Conner sighs and runs a hand over his face. “We need to talk.” His eyes search mine and I can see him, really see him for the first time. He’s not the arrogant prick I thought he was, at least not right now.

I lower my shoulders, realizing that I’d bunched them up in my retreat from his desk. “OK,” I reply slowly.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Vivienne,” he says in a low rumbling voice that has chills running through my body, but no longer from fear. And why do I get the sneaking suspicion that he is going to hurt me, just not in the physical sense?

I release the breath I’m holding. “Fine. What do we need to talk about?”

“Follow me,” he says as he opens the door and walks out of the room, holding it for me to pass over the door’s threshold. I follow him to a bar in the corner of his kitchen. He pours himself a drink and reaches into a wine fridge to grab a bottle. He pours me a glass of wine, my favorite type of wine. He hands me the glass and motions for me to follow him. Frowning in confusion, I comply as we walk to a set of double doors that lead outside. He presses a button on the wall and a firepit turns on. Another press of a button, and classical music begins to play softly from outdoor speakers. I roll my eyes. His house is insane, and that’s saying something considering where I was raised.

He sits down on a comfortable outdoor sofa and pats the seat next to him. “Sit,” he commands. I give him a pointed look and he returns it. Rolling my eyes again, I comply, but only because my curiosity is killing me.

His voice is low when he speaks. “I don’t trust that we aren’t being listened to inside.”

My hand pauses on its way to bring my glass to my lips. “Listening?”

He nods and scoots a little closer to me. I can feel the heat of his thigh against mine. Memories of our hate fuck at the hotel come tumbling back to me. I squeeze my legs together remembering how he felt slamming into me.

His gaze drops to my legs for a moment. I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs on a swallow. There’s no way he’s affected by me, is there?

“Why do you report on us?” he asks as his arm comes up to the back of the sofa and he turns a little to face me.

I process his words. Us. He said “us.” “So, there is a brotherhood?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

“My fraternity,” he clarifies, but something about the way he says that tells me that he isn’t unveiling the entire truth yet.

I nod and clear my throat as I run a finger along the seam of the cushion. I look to the flames in front of us, unsure how to begin. His hand gently grabs my thigh right above my knee and gives a squeeze. I give him a sideways glance.

“I know you won’t believe me yet, but you can trust me,” he assures me. Part of me wants to laugh because I don’t trust anyone. Yet, for reasons I can’t explain, I believe him when he says this, maybe I want to or maybe I’m letting my lady parts do my thinking. I watch his bicep flex through the thin fabric of his shirt. It’s a crime that this asshole has a body that apparently was carved out of stone by the gods of man's bodies.

I suddenly realize he’s watching me as I essentially undress him with my eyes. I blush and nod. “Just tell me what you need to tell me,” I finally manage to say although the words come out rushed and too high-pitched.

I watch the corners of his mouth twitch before he composes himself. “Tell me what you think is actually going on.”

I tilt my head to the side. “You already know. You clearly have read my investigation pieces.”

“I want to hear it from you,” he insists.

I let out a long breath and curl my legs up on the sofa next to me. The night air is cool, and as if sensing my needs, Conner reaches to the side of the sofa and pulls out a blanket from a side cupboard. He lays it across my lap.

“Thank you,” I say softly. He nods and motions for me to continue. I consider my words carefully. I’m about to divulge information that I hadn’t intended on sharing with him. I have no idea why I suddenly have an irrational need for him to trust me. So I decide to tell him the truth, or at least a shortened version of it.

“I guess it started with my grandfather…” I trail off and search his eyes, but he gives nothing away. “When I was younger, I overheard a conversation. And it stuck with me. As I grew up, I realized that my grandfather won the presidency because of who he knew and not what he knew. While he did do some good things, he also did some bad things. I tried to stay out of the politics business as much as possible, but then when I came home from college wanting to change my major to journalism, my father basically lost his shit and said if I did that, I’d be disowned.” I pause. “So, you know how that turned out. My grandmother and my brother kept begging me to change it back to political science, but I refused. I wasn’t going to go to law school. I wasn’t going to be a Stepford wife. And so, I was on my own at the age of nineteen.”

“How did you survive? Did you get a job?” Conner asks as if he’s truly curious.

“I did, but to be honest, I had a professor who took pity on me. She let me live in an apartment above her family’s garage for free as long as I babysat her kids after school, and she also helped me navigate grants and scholarships. I wouldn’t have been able to stay in school if it wasn’t for her.”

“My mother would have called that tenacity,” he says with a small smile.

I return his grin with my own and shrug. “I suppose. Anyhow, I got a coveted internship atThe Tribuneand when it came time to graduate, I was hired as a local reporter. I think mostly they liked to put that I was a granddaughter of a former president in my bio on their website. I didn’t love that, but if it got my foot in the door, then so be it. I worked my way up slowly. And during that time, in secret, I started researching my grandfather’s fraternity.”

---