Page 42 of Hard Limits

“I thought the sex industry was booming?” Zach said.

“It is. And it’ll make Carissa a very rich woman.”

“What the fuck?” Justin put everyone’s expressions into words. “You’re not honestly considering giving her that exorbitant divorce settlement?”

“I’m starting to believe I don’t have a choice. And money isn’t everything. I used to think it was, but now I know otherwise. We only get one shot at life, and I keep asking myself: do I really want to waste another five years being utterly miserable?”

Carissa wasn’t going to give in; he understood that. In the past two weeks, he’d sent three charming, handsome, and very different men into various situations to tempt her. They’d even tried luring her into a bar just in case old habits died hard. She hadn’t bitten. Not even a nibble.

“Is this about the woman you asked Vi to buy the jewellery for?” Dawson asked.

Since Brax was monitoring Carissa’s spending habits—via Alexa—he had to assume that Carissa was doing the same with him. And where Meera was concerned, he was taking no chances.

“I can’t get her out of my head.”

“Wait, who is this?” Zach asked. “What have we missed?”

“Assistant number twenty-seven. You win the pool, by the way.”

“This is the one who insulted your car and your dick?”

“She was having a bad day.”

“Damn.”

They all stared at him, and Justin shook his head, incredulous.

“You’re actually serious, aren’t you? You’d give up, what, half a billion bucks for a woman?”

Something like that. It wasn’t half a billion in cash, of course. Roughly a quarter of the investments could be readily liquidated; others were tied up for years.

“Yes and no. Carissa would run Nyx into the ground pretty quickly. She might have an MBA, but she doesn’t have the experience or the personality to carry it. The relationships with the clients, those are all mine. I could start up a rival enterprise. One thing that isn’t in that fucking prenup is a non-compete clause.”

It would take several years, but he’d already built one business from scratch in less than a decade. He could do it again. Losing the commodity investments would hurt—he’d had some luck with timing that would be impossible to replicate—but he didn’t need hundreds of millions to be happy. These past several weeks had taught him that he only needed Meera. He’d never felt like this about a woman before. Last year, he’d been sceptical when it came to Zach’s feelings for Ari, that love could trump all the lies she’d told him, but now he understood. Once you felt it, you’d do anything to keep that high.

“I’ll still get a million bucks as part of the settlement,” Brax continued. “And I’ll push Carissa to set up a trust to cover my mother’s medical care. I think she’d budge that much.”

And besides, if it hadn’t been for Carissa, Brax’s mom might not even be in the Cardinal Center. Yes, her first trip had been very necessary—Brax’s father had seen to that—but not the second.

Three decades with Vernon Dupré had left Leonora Vale with layers of psychological damage—depression, anxiety, an eating disorder—and her first suicide attempt had almost been successful. A neighbour had found her after she wouldn’t answer the phone, unconscious in bed from an overdose of sleeping pills. But she’d gotten better. The doctors had cleared her to go home, home being a guest room in Brax and Carissa’s New York apartment.

The relapse was partly his fault, he realised that. He’d been busy with work, and both women said everything was fine. But Brax had forgotten just how good his mom was at wearing a mask. At pretending. The second time, he’d been the one to find her. Bleeding out in the shower, scarlet trails spreading from her wrists to the drain. Only in the safety of the Cardinal Center had she admitted just how inadequate Carissa made her feel with her snide comments. That she was a failure as a mother and as a human being. The following month, Brax had moved to LA. Things had been bad with Carissa before his mother attempted to take her own life, but afterward, they’d become unbearable.

“Are you sure about this?” Dawson asked. “You barely know the woman. Have you even…?”

“No, of course not. Because that would breach the terms of the fucking agreement. In fact, Meera specifically said she wouldn’t sleep with me.”

“You told her about Carissa?”

“Yes.”

“But you like each other?”

“I think so.”

“You think so?”

“Well, I like her, clearly. And she hasn’t called me an asshole for at least a week, so that’s progress.”

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