“Handledis a wild description for someone who’s still breathing.”
I shove to my feet and lunge around my desk. “You wish her dead?” I grab his shirtfront and haul him close. “Is that what you want? To be our father? To become what we’ve fought so fucking hard to keep ourselves distanced from?”
He glares back, unflinching. “Maybe we’re fighting a losing battle.”
My fist curls in his shirt, my knuckles bleaching of color. “Maybe therapy needs to go back on the damn table.”
A pulse at his temple ticks. “I’m not doing therapy.”
“Then pull yourself into fucking line.” I release him with a shove. “Learn to control yourself before you ruin everything.”
“Someone had to take down those companies and avenge our mother.”
I bite down on my tongue, fighting not to grab him again, not to launch my battered knuckles into his nose. “Wewereavenging her.Discreetly.Through the fucking shell corps.”
He scoffs and glances away.
He wasn’t always like this. He used to smile. Have hope. Possess a heart.
The truth stole that from him and replaced the brother I knew with someone who seeks refuge in darkness. As if his callous sterility will somehow make the father he was never allowed to have proud from beyond the grave.
“I want eyes on her,” he demands.
I sigh and scrub a hand down my face. “It’s being arranged.”
“I wantmyeyes,” he clarifies. “Surveillance is my forte—not yours.”
“Fine.” I lean back against my desk. “You handle it. From a distance. If you step foot in her apartment building or go anywhere near her cat?—”
“Fuck her cat.” He stalks for the door. “It clawed my Fendi Casa sofa.”
“I’m serious, Eli. I don’t want her knowing we’re watching.”
He glowers at me over his shoulder. “Don’t worry, brother. I’ll be well-behaved.”
I bite my tongue and watch him leave.
The rest of the afternoon passes like penance, each hour dragging, every thought circling back to Isla and all the things I can’t give her.
Thursday is no improvement.
I sit behind my desk, staring at spreadsheets I can’t read, contracts I can’t focus on.
Michelo eyes me whenever he passes my office, but he knows better than to engage. And when calls come in from CrossPoint, I have Jessica forward each and every one to Eliseo, justifyingpassing off the workload because this is his mess—he can take on the added labor to fix it.
He retaliates accordingly—turning up whenever he feels like it, leaving when it suits him, and always carrying that sharp-edged attitude he wears when he wants to be impossible. A spoiled prince testing boundaries. It’s nothing I haven’t managed before.
It isn’t until Friday morning that my assistant interrupts my second hour of staring out my office window when she buzzes my phone.
“I have Philip Cross on the line,” Jessica offers with caution. “He’s insisting he speaks to you.”
The mention of Isla’s father unleashes something poisonous inside me. The fact it took him days to reach out after he scurried off the yacht doesn’t improve my mood. “Put him through.”
A second later the subtle click of the line changes.
“Philip,” I snarl. “What do I owe the pleasure?”
There’s a pause. “I, um, want to discuss my daughter.”
