Page 159 of Boardroom Sins

Soon enough, the vote is being called. “All those in favor of removing Lukas Lazarev as Chairman, please?—”

I stand.

The motion to vote dies in the secretary’s throat. Every eye in the room pivots to me.

I look at Kir across the endless conference table. I see his mother in the shape of his jaw. There, right fucking there, is the boy who used to climb into my lap and beg me to keep the monsters away. But that boy is lost to me now. He’s become a man who hates me for reasons I long to fix but can’t.

Yet I feel nothing but a strange, liberatinglovefor him.

“You want the company, Kir?” I say quietly. “Take it.”

The gasps are audible. Kir’s face goes blank with shock. His hand hovers in the air, forgotten. For the first time since he walked into this room with murder in his eyes, he looks like a child again.

I button my jacket.

“But you don’t gether.”

All around me, the room detonates. Voices overlapping. Outcries, roars, confusion, madness. Kir is shouting something and my lawyers and lieutenants are shouting something else, but I hear none of it, because I’ve stopped listening.

I’m walking toward Rae.

The assistants scatter like startled crows as I approach. All except for her—she doesn’t move an inch. Those brown eyes are wide, wet, and fixed on me like I’m a hallucination she can’t quite believe.

I take her hand and pull her to her feet. Shielding her with my body, we hurry to the door and out into the hallway. People spill out after us, calling my name, calling hers, but I don’t look back.

“Where are we going?” asks Rae in trembling confusion.

I pivot in place. She nearly crashes into my chest. I catch her face in both hands, tilting it up, and kiss her the way I should have kissed her from the very start. It feels like my whole soul comes out of my mouth and goes to live in her body from this day forward.

When I pull back, her lips are parted and her breath comes in shallow gasps.

“Home,” I tell her. “We’re going home.”

RAE

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