Page 182 of Twisted Knight

Isn’t that all I need to know for now?

And isn’t that why I’m here, making a quick stop before I head to the airport for my meetings with the GWA representatives at their site?

To give him something back—a little token of my appreciation—for all the effort (and money) that he put into this weekend.

I bypass my personal parking spot and pull right up to the front doors. It’s a Sunday so the place is a ghost town, which is exactly what I was hoping for. I grab my master key and head inside.

My cell rings when I’m in the elevator. It’s Chad. Again.

I sigh and roll my eyes. We need to put a moratorium on our mothers getting together—which lately seems like it’s every fucking weekend. Because them spending time together means more plotting, more planning, more pushing Chad to win me over.

I haven’t returned his calls—or even listened to his voicemails—from the last few days, and that’s why.

Our floor is empty as I make my way through it, detouring at my office for my spare set of keys that will open Holden’s office.

There’s no way he’d mind me being in here for the sole purpose of dropping off a surprise.

I unlock and open his door and set my purse down, pulling my present out of it. I open the velvet box and smile at the cuff links nestled inside. They’re brushed platinum, round with a sunburst design engraved in their centers like rays of sunshine. I saw them nestled in a jeweler’s case when I was shopping in New York and I had to have them. I had to thank him in some way other than words—and really good sex—and I thought these were perfect.

But rather than have them delivered by courier as he did mine, I figured I’d beat him at his own game. He went into my drawer and got my sapphires. I’m going to go into his drawer and leave his cuff links.

I close the lid and move behind the desk, opening the top drawer without really thinking. It didn’t bug me that he went into my top drawer, so I really don’t think twice about doing the same to his. But when I open it up and am greeted by a stack of papers, I simply stand there and stare, my brain working to register what I’m seeing.

Why does the top of this contract look different from the one he showed me?

It’s the old contract. The one without my seat on the board.

It has to be.

But then why is the date on the top of its cover page from this past Thursday?

I hate the unsteady way my pulse beats and my breath rasps as I try to rationalize away my sudden, irrational fear.

Curiosity piqued and privacy be damned, I pick up the binder-clipped stack of papers, cuff links forgotten.

I flip through to the section I’d memorized. The addendum that added a transfer of shares over to me, Rowan Olivia Rothschild, upon the completion of the sale. But that page, which was in the papers Holden gave me, isn’t in this set. There is no Addendum A on page thirty-three.

“It’s an old contract,” I mutter, but my heart thunders in my chest as I flip to the last page. As I see inked signatures by Holden Knight of Knight Holdings, LLC, and Rhett Rothschild, CEO of Rothschild Enterprises, aka TinSpirits. As I take in the date signed.

My hands tremble as adrenaline surges through my body. As disbelief courses through me faster than my pulse pounds.

He lied to me.

I put my faith in Holden Knight, and he fucking lied to me.

He never intended to give me the board seat or the ownership. He never planned on having me be on equal footing with him. He simply conned me into thinking I was so he could keep an eye on me.

So he could control me.

So he could ensure the safety of his precious fucking deal.

And then he slid into my bed when he realized he couldn’t.

He slid into it and made me feel when I didn’t want to feel. He made me believe when I’d never thought to before. He made me hope when I had never put much faith in that emotion to begin with.

He used me in every sense of the word.

And when all was said and done, when the deal was signed and I’d been thoroughly screwed, he gave me the most thoughtful gift anyone had ever given me solely as a means of distraction.