Page 161 of The Scandal You Started
They’d found out who Dominic’s heir was.
Zayan Benjamin Thorne.
Though Dominic had snapped that that wasn’t what he would have named his firstborn son.
Monty dipped his head with the sympathetic look of a father. “Victor insisted I didn’t need to get involved. But if you need any assistance, please don’t hesitate to tell me, Rayna. I will help.”
Her lips curled a little more earnestly. “Thank you, Monty. That means a lot.”
Rayna shook his hand, thanking him one more time, before she left his office. She walked steadily but swiftly through the maze of lab corridors that would eventually lead her to a lift that would take her up to the sealed car park under the Two World Research Limited building. It’d be a three-minute drive underneath the streets of Khaas before she got to the gated exit.
But as Rayna reached the lift, there was already someone standing there.
A tall, dark-skinned woman with her thin braids bunched in a low ponytail.
Upon recognising who the woman was, Rayna’s heart jolted, and her ears buzzed with caution.
Was it a coincidence there was a Board member by the lift? Or was it an ambush?
Sheun, the woman who’d sided with Jim and Lang against giving her and Dominic time, turned at the sound of Rayna’s footsteps and blocked her access to the lift doors.
So it was an ambush then.
But how had she known Rayna would be there? Rayna doubted Monty would have told her. But the older man had warned them that the Board had eyes everywhere, so of course, Sheun knew.
Spreading to her full breadth and height, Rayna approached the woman.
“Hello, Miss Faez,” Sheun said, her tone crisp and neutral.
“Hi,” she replied sharply. “What do you want?”
“How are you progressing with reducing Dominic’s Rupture?”
“We’re almost there,” Rayna lied with conviction she wished was real.
Sheun eyed her for a few quiet beats, then lifted her chin. “I’d like to offer you some help and advice.”
“I don’t want or need either.”
The historian, in her late thirties or early forties, sighed audibly. “I’m not doing this to try to hurt you or Lord Norland—”
“Really?” Rayna said sarcastically. “Because the more I learn about Dr Pine, the more it seems like he had some vendetta against my mum that he now wants to enact on me too.”
“I’m speaking for myself, not Jim,” the woman replied. “And as for the rest of the Board, we know of the unethical way he pushed your mum and Mr Aynsley’s parents to do an experiment they shouldn’t have done. And if you listen to me, Miss Faez, I can guarantee you he will lose his place as CEO and be banned from the POTeM project for good.”
Rayna dismissed the claim with a shrug. “I don’t need to listen to you to make sure he loses his place as CEO. I will do everything to make sure he does anyway.”
“Then listen to me because you care about Lord Norland and want what’s best for him.”
That made Rayna’s heart judder as the box of doubts and fears she was fighting and failing to keep sealed battered around in her head.
The Board historian seemed to realise her words had hit hard and softened her expression. “If you love him, Rayna, then please make him see that he has to go back. Don’t let him give up the life he was meant to lead. It wouldn’t be fair to him or his family.”
Rayna’s ears and limbs and chest were going cold as she listened to the woman, but she tried hard to suppress the sensation under the heat of Dominic’s promises and feelings.
“He can have both.”
“He can’t without losing more of one thing, and that one thing isn’t going to be you.” Sheun gave a slight shake of her head. “But he’s not meant to be yours. If that were the case, you two would have been born in the same period.”
