I grip the steering wheel, my knuckles turning white. The leather groans under the pressure.
For three years, I’ve played the part. The distant father. The disapproving patriarch. I watched her at Sunday dinners, sitting across the table, trying so hard to cut her steak the right way, laughing at Ryder’s unfunny jokes.
I watched her shrink herself to fit into his small, shallow world.
It made me sick.
Every time he touched her—a hand on her knee, an arm around her waist—I wanted to break his fingers.
Jealousy is an ugly emotion. It’s a poor man’s emotion. I’ve spent my life acquiring wealth so I never had to feel want again. I buy what I want. If I can’t buy it, I take it.
But Blair... Blair was the one thing I couldn’t just take.
Until tonight.
I follow the red dot off the main road, winding down the darker streets toward the edge of town. The houses get smaller here. The streetlights flicker.
She pulls into her complex. I kill my headlights and glide to a stop across the street, under the cover of a massive oak tree.
I watch.
She gets out of her car. She’s still wearing the dress, but her shoulders are slumped. She looks small. Fragile.
My protective instincts war with my predatory ones.
I want to go to her. I want to wrap her in my coat, put her in my car, and take her to my house where nothing can ever hurt her again.
But I stay put.
I watch her walk up the stairs to her second-floor unit. I watch the lights flicker on.
Then I watch her shadow move across the blinds.
Is she crying? Screaming?
I recline the seat slightly, settling in. This is pathetic. I’m a billionaire. I control the skyline of three cities. I have senators on speed dial.
And here I am, sitting in the dark like a fucking creep, obsessed with a woman twenty years my junior.
A woman who, until an hour ago, belonged to my son.
No.
She never belonged to him.
Ryder didn’t know what to do with a woman like Blair. He played house with her. He wasted her time. He wasted her body.
My hands flex on my thighs.
That’s the part that drives me the most insane. The waste.
Blair Ashby is built for legacy. She’s smart, resilient, gorgeous. She has hips made for carrying children and a mind sharp enough to raise them to be rulers.
And Ryder? Ryder was spilling his seed into yoga instructors and influencers, risking some bastard grandchild, while Blair—my perfect, brilliant Blair—was left empty.
It’s a sin.
And I’m going to rectify it.
