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For the first time in my life, it felt like I was really living my dream.

Chapter 17

Richard

Taking over my father’s businesses should’ve been difficult.

That was what everyone expected from me, at least. They expected a son with hollow eyes and a shaking voice, a man overwhelmed by the weight of sudden inheritance, board members, lawyers, and condolences. They expected me to sit in Leonard Kincaid’s office and feel the absence of him in every polished surface and every leather-bound ledger he left behind.

Instead, I felt ownership.

His death had made me rich.

The office suited me better than it ever suited him. My father had always treated power like something he needed to prove he deserved. He performed discipline. He performed control in front of men who already respected his name and feared his influence. Leonard Kincaid had spent decades building an empire, but even at the height of it, he carried himself like someone still waiting for permission to occupy the room.

I didn’t have that weakness.

I sat behind his mahogany desk with the city spread beyond the windows and signed my name across documents that transferred entire divisions, investment accounts, properties, and voting interests under my control. Men twice my age sat across from me and explained matters I already understood, their voices careful, their eyes moving between my face and the pen in my hand.

The Kincaid empire belonged to me now.

I leaned back in my chair, loosened my tie, and let the last meeting of the day fade from my attention. Outside the windows, evening had begun pressing against the glass. The office lights reflected faintly in the darkening view.

Then I thought of Samantha.

A few nights earlier, she had come home from lunch with her father with red eyes and a mouth she kept pressing together to stop it from trembling. She had tried to pretend she was fine. But I could tell something was wrong. I had let her perform for a few minutes.

Then I asked what Henry had said.

Her face cracked before she answered. She told me her father thought we were moving too quickly. He thought I was vulnerable after my parents’ deaths. He thought I had too much happening in my life to make permanent decisions. He thought she should wait before attaching herself to my family, my grief, my responsibilities.

He thought.

That had been his mistake.

Samantha had cried against my chest for nearly an hour, apologizing for him even while I stroked her hair and told her she had nothing to be sorry for. She loved him. She was loyal. It also made her easy to wound. Henry Whitmore understood that, and he had used it to place himself between us.

I had no patience for men who stood in my way.

I didn’t call Henry. Calling would have given him time to prepare, to armor himself behind carefully chosen words. Instead, I waited until just before midnight, when the house would be quiet and his guard would be down. I wanted him unsettled. I wanted him to feel the intrusion in his bones.

The drive was dark, the long gravel path empty. Only one light burned in the study window when I pulled up. I rang the bell once. Then I waited.

Henry answered in a silk robe thrown over trousers, his hair rumpled, irritation sharpening his features. The moment he recognized me, his expression hardened into something colder.

“Richard. What the hell are you doing here at this hour?”

I stepped inside without waiting for an invitation. “I need to speak with you about Samantha.”

He closed the door. “At midnight? You couldn’t wait until a better time?”

I walked straight into the study, the single lamp throwing long shadows across the walls lined with family photographs. Samantha smiling beside him at every perfect milestone. I poured myself a glass of his whiskey and turned to face him.

Henry stayed near the doorway, arms crossed tight. “You show up on my doorstep in the middle of the night and help yourself to my liquor. Start talking, or get the hell out.”

I took a slow sip, letting the silence press on him. “I’m in love with your daughter, Henry. Deeply. Desperately. I’ve tried to fight it, but I can’t. She’s everything to me now. I want to marry her. I’m here to ask for your blessing.”

The words tasted like ash in my mouth, but I sold them with the right amount of earnest tension. My eyes were calm, my jaw tight, the picture of a man barely holding himself together out of love.