Page 125 of Ruthless Claim

“If we don’t close this today it’s another two weeks before we can get everyone in the same room and—” Doyle is talking over him, both of them talking at once, but I can barely hear them over the sound of my pulse hammering in my ears and Valentina’s voice on a loop in my head—Claire Murphy is here, with her—or should I say—your son.

Everything is imploding right now in real time while these two men sit here talking about container schedules and I can’t take it anymore.

“Shut the fuck up!” I roar.

Both of them fall silent. Kristoff jerks back in his chair and even the unflappable Doyle’s eyes widen in shock. The hum of the restaurant from the other side of the wall feels very far away.

My hands are fisted so tightly my knuckles have gone white. My jaw aches. I didn’t realize I’d been clenching it.

I breathe out.

“We’re done today,” I continue, my voice calmer but still ragged. I’m not Connor’s heir being professional. Instead, I’m barely holding it together, talking to two men who are looking at me like they’ve never seen this before. “Doyle, reach out to reschedule.”

Doyle’s mouth is a flat line of disapproval, but he knows he can’t dispute me. He nods.

I look at Kristoff.

Kristoff does not say anything for possibly the first time in my experience of him.

I leave.

I’m in a cab within four minutes and I spend the entire ride staring out the window at the city going past, my mind racing as my leg jiggles anxiously. What does Valentina know? How long has Claire been there?

The cab stops at a red light on 57th.

I look at my phone, my fingers hovering above Valentina’s name. Should I call her back? Try to explain myself? I shake my head and push my phone back into my pocket. No. There’s nothing I can say on a phone that is going to help this situation.

I don’t think there’s anything I can say in person that’ll help, but dammit I’m going to try.

Twelve minutes.

The elevator up to the apartment is the longest elevator ride of my life, including the ones I’ve taken in buildings where I was fairly confident I wasn’t coming back down.

Valentina’s ice-cold voice plays through my head.

She barely said anything, but what I heard was bad.

I know what she looks like when she’s furious. I know what she looks like when she’s hurt. I don’t know what she looks like when she’s both at the same time and I’m unfortunately about to find out.

The doors open and I speed walk down the hall, looking around for my wife.

The first thing I see is Finn.

He’s on the far end of the sofa, a backpack at his feet and a tablet in his hands. He looks up the second I come in, and his eyes immediately widen before he shrinks back into the cushions with a wary expression. He has brown hair and brown eyes with a small serious face.

Fucking hell, this is a disaster.

Claire is in the middle of the sofa, sitting close to her son. She notices her son shift and she looks up. Her face tightens around a faint, controlled smile—a half-apology that doesn’t reach her eyes, the kind of look someone gives when they’ve made a choice and are fully standing behind it, fallout be damned. There’s a quality to it I’ve hated since the second meeting: the particular set of her chin, tilting just enough to signal defiance and calculation. It makes my stomach tighten, and my pulse spike.

Every instinct I have wants to assert control, to anticipate the next move, but this small gesture tells me I’m already behind. She’s playing a game I don’t fully understand yet, and that thought unsettles me more than any argument or raised voice ever could.

Valentina is on the other armchair.

Not on it. Perched on the armrest, spine locked straight, legs crossed at the ankle, hands folded neatly in her lap.

Every inch of her body is still but the air around her is heavy and impossible to ignore. Her face is expressionless except for her eyes. Dark, blazing, focused like molten metal.

They burn into me, and I can feel it in my chest, in the sudden tautness of my shoulders, the way my stomach knots. I’ve made Valentina furious before, plenty of times, but never like this. This is pressure.