Page 90 of One Night in Glasgow
“It’s about Stewart,” he began, his voice raspy. “What you said yesterday… about him being a potential backer for that man in New York…you might be right, Elisabeth.” He pulled out his phone and slid it across the table. “I need you to see this.”
I looked at the screen. It was his private banking app, open to a series of wire transfers. My eyes scanned the entries, the dates, the amounts. One transfer for three hundred thousand pounds. Another two hundred. Another transfer. And another. All made out to Lord Stewart Beauchamp. Over the last three years, the total was staggering. Over two million pounds.
“What is this?” I whispered, though a cold, sickening understanding was already beginning to dawn. “Is he blackmailing you?”
My father let out a harsh, humorless laugh. “I wish it were that simple. That, I would understand. No, Elisabeth.” He finally met my gaze, his own filled with a shame so deep it was almost painful to witness. “It’s not blackmail. It’s sort of a loan or pre-payment. Your mother… she insisted. It was all on a ‘gentleman’s agreement’.”
I stared at him, my mind refusing to process his words. “A gentleman’s agreement? For what?”
“For you,” he said, his voice cracking. “It started small. A loan for some ‘urgent castle renovations.’ Then there were more and more castle renovations. But it was for the placewhere you would be living one day. Your mother… she was so convinced he was the key. To everything. The right connections, the right name. A Lord. You’d be a Lady.” He shook his head, a look of utter defeat on his face. “Sometimes he asked your mother for more money, saying you were taking too long to agree to marry him. She was so sure she could convince you. I… I just wanted to make her happy. To keep the peace.”
The room tilted. Two million pounds. Over two fucking million pounds of my family’s money—of my inheritance, my future—had been siphoned off to fund a man I would never marry, all on a handshake, all to appease my mother’s insane social ambitions. The betrayal was so immense, so absolute, it left me breathless.
Sean’s hand found mine under the table, his grip a firm, grounding pressure. He didn’t say a word, just let me know he was there.
“So you see,” my father continued, his voice heavy with resignation, “when you came to us yesterday with that dossier of the man who Stewart hired to destroy you, it all made sense. Stewart only had one goal: keep the money flow going, even if it meant breaking you. If you were able to build a new life in New York for yourself, without the support of us, Stewart would lose everything. And who knows how far Stewart will go. Your mother made a deal with the devil.”
Just as the full weight of his confession settled over us, a new voice, sharp and cold as ice, cut through the quiet of the bar.
“You’re such a bloody coward, Alexander.”
My mother stood at the edge of our booth, her face a mask of cold fury. She must have suspected where he was going and followed him. She looked from my father’s defeated face to me and Sean, her eyes filled with a withering contempt.
“How dare you go behind my back?” she hissed at my father. “Discussing private family matters with… them.”
“Fiona, please,” he started, but she cut him off.
“Don’t ‘Fiona, please’ me,” she snapped. She turned her icy gaze on me. “And you. You think you’ve uncovered some great betrayal? This wasn’t a betrayal. It was an investment in this family’s future! A pittance to pay for the standing Stewart could give us—give you. But you had to ruin everything, just like you always do. Have you any idea how hard I have worked to secure our place in society? To give you the life you so carelessly throw away?”
Her words, her cold, transactional view of my life, of me, was the final straw. The last vestiges of the frightened little girl who just wanted her mother’s approval died in that moment.
“Give me?” I said, my voice dangerously calm. “You weren’t giving me a life, Mother. You were buying one. For yourself. You were using your own daughter as currency to purchase a title. You didn’t just try to sell me; you paid him to take me.”
“You ungrateful little…” she started, her composure finally cracking.
“Enough!”
The word was quiet, but it landed with the force of a thunderclap. We all turned to look at my father. He had risen to his feet, his gaze fixed on my mother, his expression one I had never seen before—not anger, not disappointment, but a cold, hard finality.
“I said, enough, Fiona,” he repeated, his voice leaving no room for argument. He looked at me, a deep, profound regret in his eyes. “Elisabeth’s right. This ends now.”
My mother stared at him, her mouth agape, for the firsttime in her life utterly speechless. The queen had been checked.
The rideback to the hotel was silent, but it wasn’t an uncomfortable silence. It was the quiet of a battlefield after the tide had turned. I was still processing the seismic shift in my family’s dynamics, the image of my mother’s stunned, defeated face. Sean just let me be, his hand resting on my thigh, a constant, reassuring presence.
Back in the cool, quiet sanctuary of our suite, the adrenaline from the confrontation began to fade. I walked over to the floor-to-ceiling window and looked out at my city, which had felt like a cage for so long. But now, it looked different. It looked like a territory to be reclaimed.
The chill from the windowpane seeped through my dress, a cold that had nothing to do with the Glasgow evening and everything to do with the ice in my mother’s eyes. Then, I felt him. He didn’t say a word, just moved behind me, his body a furnace at my back. His arms came around my waist, not in a tight, possessive grip, but a steady, grounding weight that seemed to anchor me to the floor. For the first time all day, I felt like I could actually breathe.
I turned in his arms, needing to see his face. “I just…” I started, but the words caught in my throat.
“I know,” he said softly, his hands coming up to cup my face. His thumbs gently brushed away tears I hadn’t even realized were falling. “You were incredible back there. Absolutely incredible.”
His gaze dropped to my mouth, and the air between us thickened, charged with a heat that had nothing to do withanger and everything to do with us. I saw the admiration in his eyes, but it was mixed with something a raw, possessive desire that mirrored the storm inside me.
“All that fire,” he growled, his voice a low rumble that vibrated through me. “That righteous fury… It’s the sexiest thing I’ve ever seen.”
My breath hitched. The anger, the fury, the years of feeling powerless—it was all swirling inside me, looking for an outlet. And here was Sean, not trying to calm my storm, but wanting to meet it head-on.
