"Fuck man." Luca's tone is even, cold and flat.
I rock back on my heels and press the palms of my hands into my eyes. "Yeah, I heard what I said, too. Shit. Okay, look." Taking my hands down, I look at each of them. "That's not how I meant it but I can't let my father get his hands on what we have built."
Huffs and grumbles work their way through the men and it's Drake who holds a hand up for silence.
Ever practical, he reaches for the decanter and refreshes everyone's glass with the calm efficiency of a man who has been waiting for this particular conversation to happen and is pleased it has finally arrived. He sets the decanter down and looks at me. "You are saying we skip the dating apps and the fake fundraisers and go fishing in the wish pile for baby momma candidates."
I hold his gaze. "We set the price for our wishes, right?"
Drake grunts, his brows high on his forehead. "Always."
"Then the price for whichever wish we choose to grant is an heir." I pull out the chair at the head of the table and sit. Since it appears we are finally having a conversation about how to move forward and save the empire we've all killed to build, I use blunt words. "Massimo, you're our lawyer. Can this fly?"
Massimo considers me while Luca props his chin in his hand and says, "This is either the most efficient thing you have ever said or the beginning of a very expensive legal problem."
"Agreed. Massimo, which is it?" I ask.
Massimo is already staring at the ceiling. He's cataloguing the documentation this will require. "Both," he says, without looking down.
My phone buzzes on the table.
I turn it over and the screen shows a text from my father.
I pinch the screen open to see a photograph of a thick contract. He's peeled back several pages to reveal dense legal language that has my father's cruel, manipulative fingerprints on every subordinate clause. At the top of the page, in clean block letters it reads:
Redthorne Holdings, Inc. Bill Of Sale
And below the photograph, a single line of text glares up at me.
Tick-tock, son.
I set the phone face-up and scoot it to the middle of the table so everyone can see just how serious this is.
I pick up my glass and finish what Drake poured.
“Gentlemen," I say, my voice cold and absolute. "I either take what I need or I lose it all. Are you with me?"
Two
Persia
Iknow my fairy tales and this one starts with a dress the color of surrender and ends with me sucking on poisoned fruit.
And believe me, death feels like a happy escape.
Okay, not really, but I have an uncanny knack for seeing through my parents’ plans for me. I’ve learned a few lessons the hard way, so trust me when I say I know what I’m talking about. The first lesson being I have no control over my life. There’s nothing good that is coming from me putting this dress on and by the end of it I’ll want the poisoned apple.
But I don’t have a choice and I’m only being slightly dramatic about my ideas of an escape.
I swing open the door to my walk-in closet and come to a full stop. My mother’s wardrobe pick for me hangs from a large hook off to the side and damn it. As much as I want to take a torch to the thing, it’s beautiful.
A waterfall of soft white silk pools on the warm wooden floor and at the hem tiny seed pearls are scattered along the deep Vneckline. Delicate chips of crystals mingle among the pearls for an opulent effect that catches the golden overhead light.
It is beautiful and I hate it on principle. The fabric makes a soft, deliberate whisper as I lift it off the hook and hold it up to myself and twirl.
For a moment I let myself fall into a fantasy of being a real princess and not the bastardized version of royalty my father has crafted our family into over the years.
You see, my father likes to consider himself one of the elites. And I guess he is, but only among the underbelly of Chicago’s dirtiest criminals.
