Page 19 of Late Nights & Love Lines
“No, I’m fine. Really. I’m, ah, going to take a shower. Alone. I mean, of course alone. It’s fine, really. I’m good. I can handle anything Seren throws at me. I’m good with kids. Really good. She’s only lashing out because everything in her life feels unstable. I’ve got this. I said that already.”
Shut up, Rowan. Close your mouth and stop talking!
The other man doubles over with laughter.
“Shut up, Alexei,” Seb mutters.
Snapping my jaw shut, I give an awkward wave and rush into the house to grab my shower caddy and some clothes.
Twenty days. That’s all I have left before everything goes back to normal. Twenty days. Easy peasy, right?
For the first time in years, I allow myself to believe in a lie.
5
NO ONE IS CHOKING ON YOUR MICROPENIS
SEBASTIAN
The room is too small.
That’s my first thought when I sit down at the conference table next to my attorney, Raj. The wall of windows behind me overlooking Boston’s Financial District does nothing to brighten the room. There’s a cloying darkness that hangs in the air like death.
Which I suppose is fitting.
A death of a marriage.
A death of a friendship.
But if Nick thinks it’ll be the death of my company, he has no idea how depraved his betrayal has made me. Just because I don’t normally fight dirty doesn’t mean I can’t do it. Did he really fucking forget who raised me? Marcus Walker didn’t know any other way to play—dirty was in my father’s blood, and it’s in mine too.
“How are the kids?” Raj asks, genuine affection tugging at the corner of his lips.
There’s no denying that the last week with Rowan in my home has been insanely good. Well, good if you can ignore thefact that I have a constant erection knowing she’s down the hall—filling every room with the scent of roses and sunshine.
She’s good with my kids, and she’s good for Pappy. The only reason I was able to leave my kids in North Carolina for this meeting in Boston was that my children seem happy with them.
“They’re good,” I say quietly, while secretly praying for that to stay true.
“That’s great,” Raj says. “Now to the business at hand. No matter what Nick says, keep yourself in check, Seb. We’ve been playing the long game, don’t throw it all away now. He’ll have enough rope to hang himself, so let him do it.”
Nick enters the room with his trademark swagger turned up a notch and my knuckles drain of blood as I clutch the arms of my chair, but my face remains impassive while Raj clamps his lips closed. Nick is followed in by an attorney, an older man I’ve seen with Mya’s father. Anger bubbles in my gut—he worked on our prenup.
Nick’s smirk flares into a snarl as he studies me and his attorney, but I offer no pleasantries to either of them.
Raj leans over the table and quickly hits the record button. My gaze hasn’t left Nick’s, and because I’ve spent a lifetime reading him, I know when his nostrils flair that he wasn’t prepared to have this meeting recorded.
He’ll have to work much harder to keep his lies straight now.
“Is that really necessary?” He scoffs. “Your choices are very simple.”
He’s a fucking idiot. Did either of them even read his contract?
The Pappy Clause is going to hang him. Once again, that old man is saving my ass, and he has no idea. But Pappy’s the reason I added the morality clause to every contract when I took over Walker Meridian.
Meridian Industries has been in my family for generations, but when my grandmother’s MS overwhelmed her life, the only one who could take the helm was my father. I was still in college at the time, and my mother had passed years prior.
In the few years he controlled my legacy, he managed to nearly destroy it. It’s why I had to rebrand as Walker Meridian, and it’s why I looked to my grandfather for guidance. He’d never wanted to be part of the corporate world, but he knew people, and it’s his instincts that are saving me now.
