Page 87 of Threaded Lies

“Exactly. You just made my point for me. If I were in love with Rowan, do you think I’d let that fuckwit anywhere near her?”

“There’s more going on there than you’re letting on though. I’ve known you long enough.”

“Then you’d know you’re about five steps too far over the line you’re not supposed to cross. Step back, Audrey, or we’re going to have a problem.”

She’s visibly shaken by the threat in my tone. She opens her mouth to say something and then stops herself before rising to her feet and moving toward the door.

She clears her throat. “Jules said she is running late. She should be here in about ten minutes.”

“Send her in when she gets here,” I say of my real estate agent. The pencil skirt Rowan was jealous of.

Maybe I should have her come back at another time when Rowan is here. Wouldn’t that help with her attachment issues?

Then again, if she’s hurt in the end—that’s supposed to be no skin off my back, right?

So why doesn’t it feel like it?

Audrey pauses and looks back at me. “Are you really having Jules look at buying up pieces of Fairmont so Rhett can’t touch it?”

“Are you going to tell me that that’s being too close too?” The comment is unfounded and immature but gets my point across.

“No.” She looks down and then back up. “I think it’s poetic justice.”

With that she strides out of the room, and I’m left with her words swirling in my head.

Poetic justice is a tricky thing. Especially when what I’m doing that seems to be virtuous is also a misdeed.

But Audrey is right on so many other levels.

How in the hell could I ever assume there could be anything more with Rowan after the plans I have for TinSpirits and her family? After I handily piecemeal her company apart, ruin her brother’s and possibly her family’s reputation, and reveal to the world just how goddamn corrupt they are?

There will be no going back from there.

I will be the monster.

I am the monster.

I will be exactly who I came here to be.

THIRTY

Rowan

“This place is a ghost town,” Caroline says as I put the car in park.

And it is. The TinSpirits parking lot is all but empty. I’m so preoccupied in my thoughts—in how Henry Williams has yet succeeded in avoiding returning any of my phone calls for yet another week—that I didn’t even take notice of just how vacant this lot is.

Too many moving parts to which that man holds the keys to. I’ll need to ask Chad, yet again, what’s going on.

“Are we going in?” Caroline prompts.

“Yes. Sorry. Just preoccupied with something.” I shake my head. “It’ll be just a second. You sure you don’t want to wait in the car?”

Caroline looks over at me and grins as she gets out of the car with me. “No. I don’t. I rarely get out beyond the country club.”

“You’re so full of shit,” I say as I use my master key on the front door of the TinSpirits office building. “You go everywhere and do everything that’s required of a good little society lady.”

“I do, don’t I?” She scrunches her nose playfully.