Page 67 of Lost Love

I was a smart kid. I excelled at everything I tried my hand at. I pushed myself for the sole purpose of gaining my father’s respect and attention. After I realized it wasn’t coming, I stopped trying. That’s when alcohol became my secret poison, and I abused it.

That’s when I woke up naked on the corner and secretly probably wanted to get my old man’s attention. That was on me. That was all on me. I knew all that, so then why was he still fucking with me?

Why couldn’t I disengage from the man he was? Why am I watching him, flushed with anger, hurling every expletive under the sun from across my desk and silently reveling because I pissed him off?

“Are you smiling?” he asked, slamming his hands on my desk.

I sucked in a lungful of air.

“You know, Alfred, you come in here, screaming at me for making the front page of the news, and you haven’t even asked me what happened.”

“It doesn’t matter what happened.” He threw theDaily Sunat me, and it bounced off my chest, falling into my lap.

I picked it up and flapped it back into shape. Someone had photographed me in an anger-infused rage, holding Casper Knight by the collar, the dickhead who felt up Pepper.

Probably not my finest hour. But I stood tall and muscular against the little pipsqueak who thought he had a claim over a woman walking in the crowd.

“But it does actually matter. All the little details if you care to look and focus on anything but you and your legacy for once.”

“Do you even care that the share price has dropped nearly twenty percent today as America wakes up to the news that its newly appointed CEO has assault charges leveled at him?”

That motherfucker. That would explain the many calls from the family lawyers I let go to voicemail.

“He was the one assaulting Pepper.” I exclaimed. “She was walking back to the table, and I was behind her when this fuckwit decided he owned a piece of her ass.”

“So you decided to punch him out, is that it? Tell me, son, why were you with Pepper and not with Francesca?”

“What?”

“You’ve been spending lots of time with Pepper, and as far as I can remember, Pepper is Lourde’s friend, not yours.”

My neck itched with a burning heat.Did the old man have me followed?

“How would you know that?”

“I know everything.” He looked at me seriously. “End whatever the fuck you have going on with Pepper now, or all of this is gone.”

I slammed my fist down on the table.Fuck him.

“We are friends. That’s all.”

He stood slowly. “Friends with women we’ve fucked isn’t possible.”

“I’m not taking relationship advice from a man who’s not happy in his.”

“Happiness is bought, and your mother is very comfortable.”

I shook my head. “But she’s not happy, and neither are you.”

He raised his finger, leveling it at me. “Listen here, Francesca’s family and ours have a lot to gain from this union. The legacy will be fruitful for generations to come. There are benefits to this union that go beyond your dick and its needs.”

“So what? I’m meant to take one for the team here? What if I don’t want to?”

He blinked as though he didn’t understand the question. The silence between us grew uncomfortable before he expelled a breath. “As Diamonds, we don’t have options, son.”

His steady eye contact reflected the tiniest bit of comfort in the unvarnished truth that was my future.

I knew he was right. We might be one of the wealthiest families in the United States, but that came at a cost. A responsibility that decades ago had been set in stone by my granddad.

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