Ruthless Rival (Cruel Castaways)

Present

I’d recognized her instantly.

The swanlike neck. The ethereal Ava Gardner gaze and feline green eyes. Arya wore every passing year with grace and elegance. At thirteen, she’d been pretty. At thirty-one—a real knockout. Even her innocent halo, the sense of something wholesome and unreachable, was cracked but still intact. She glowed from miles away, and I wanted to douse her magnificence. Dim her light and drag her to the shadows with me.

When I spotted her at the building’s reception, I couldn’t believe my luck. She’d decided to tag along and get a front seat to her father’s downfall. I had no idea what she was doing there. My immediate response was to talk to her. To see if she, too, recognized me. If I’d ever mattered. Or if I’d just been the help, who’d stolen her first kiss and paid for it with interest.

She had no idea who I was. No surprises there. I’d always been a blip in her world. An unimportant anecdote. The need to punish her, to show her this new version of me could not be overlooked or tucked away in an establishment no one could see or reach, slammed into me. I hadn’t been able to stop myself.

Not from dropping profanity in the middle of a mediation meeting like a D-grade rapper.

Not from rejecting any defrayal offered, including a mouthwatering eight-figure deal.

Not from drinking in her face thirstily. Like I was still the same fourteen-year-old boy with a stiffie, vying for crumbs of her attention, consuming her in any shape or form she’d throw my way.

I took a swig of my whiskey, watching the Manhattan skyline from my Park Avenue apartment. It was a one-bedroom, but it was all mine, fully paid. I’d always preferred quality over quantity.

“Are you coming to bed?” Claire asked behind me. I could see her reflection in the glass of my floor-to-ceiling window, leaning against the doorframe of my bedroom, wearing nothing but my white dress shirt, her bare legs on full display.

“In a minute.”

“I’m here if you need to talk,” she suggested. But there was no point in talking to Claire. She wouldn’t understand me. She never did.

I hate you, Arya had told me this afternoon in my office, and by the way her lower lip had trembled like it had all those years ago when she’d talked about Aaron, I knew she’d meant it.

The good news was that I hated her, too, and was all too pleased to show her just how much.

You’re a vile man.

With that, I had to agree. Especially after I’d taken this case.

With a low growl, I tossed the tumbler of whiskey onto the double-glazed window, watching the golden liquid slosh along the glass and crawl to the floor, where twinkling shards of crystal waited to be picked up by whoever cleaned up this place.

This was the person I’d become.

A man who didn’t even know the names of the people who worked at his apartment.

So detached from the reality I’d grown up in that sometimes I wondered if my early childhood had been real after all.

Then I remembered the only thing separating me from Nicholai was money.

Arya Roth was going to pay in the currency that was the dearest to her.

Her father.

Days later, it was everywhere. The filing of Amanda Gispen’s complaint in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York. As soon as the EEOC had given us our notice of right to sue, I’d had the complaint hand delivered to the clerk’s office. The national newspapers were all over it. News channels broke the story, making it the first headline. I had to take an Uber home and slip through the garage to avoid the press. Claire and I had been paired together for the case. Claire’s parents sent a huge bouquet of flowers to the office to celebrate, as if she’d gotten engaged.

“They really want to meet you when Dad visits from DC.” Claire dropped the bomb when I complimented her on the flowers. “That’s next week. I know you have depositions on Wednesday and Thursday . . .”

“Sorry, Claire. Not gonna happen.”

Amanda was under strict warning not to talk to anyone about this. She went off the grid, moving to her sister’s place. I didn’t want Conrad Roth or his toxic daughter to pull any strings. That night, for the first time in almost twenty years, I slept like a baby.