28 — Victor Kade

VICTOR KADE POV

Eleven years is a long time to hold a grudge properly. Most men lose the thread of it somewhere around year three get distracted by a new marriage, a new venture, some fresh disappointment that crowds out the old one. I've always found that a failure of discipline more than a failure of feeling. A grudge, properly maintained, is simply a long-term investment. You water it. You wait. You do not let impatience rush a return that compounds better with time.

Sebastian Montgomery bought me out of my own company for eleven million dollars, on paper, at a valuation I agreed to under duress, convinced by three lawyers and a very persuasive threat of litigation that it was the only reasonable deal on the table. Eighteen months later, Montgomery Industries signed a distribution contract that tripled its value overnight. I watched a man wearing my idea walk into every magazine profile for the next decade, charming, humble, self-made, never once mentioning the partner he'd quietly priced out of his own success before the real money arrived.

I don't particularly enjoy being underestimated. I particularly don't enjoy watching someone else get credit for underestimating me correctly.

My associate, a sharp young woman named Priya who handled the operational details I preferred to keep my own hands clean of, set the folder down on my desk with the particular carefulness of someone delivering bad news she'd rather not be blamed for.

"The licensing document stalled. Montgomery's CFO never signed it. Our contact inside confirms it's been flagged internally."

"By whom?"

"A senior finance VP named Alaric Voss. He's been digging. Thoroughly, from what we can tell."

I turned that over for a moment, unbothered. Setbacks were simply data. "And Carlisle?"

"Confessed everything to the family. They've brought in real security. He's cooperating with them now, not us."

"Of course he is." I almost admired it, the particular desperate courage of a cornered man finally choosing the harder, honest path. It wouldn't save him from the consequences of having chosen me first, but I could admire it regardless. "And do they know who's behind the shell company?"

"They know your name, sir. It came up in their investigation this morning."

I set down my pen slowly, feeling something shift in my chest that wasn't quite anger, closer to the particular satisfaction of watching a long game finally, properly begin.

"Good," I said.

Priya blinked. "Good?"

"Subtlety has its uses, Priya, but it also has its limits. Sebastian's spent eleven years pretending I don't exist. Let him spend the next several months unable to pretend that any longer." I stood, moving to the window, looking down at a city that had made Montgomery Industries a household name while quietly forgetting the man who'd helped build its foundation. "Cancel the direct approach. We won't need Carlisle's debt as leverage anymore, not now that they're watching for exactly that kind of move."

"What's the new approach?"

"The old-fashioned one." I allowed myself a small smile. "I'm going to reintroduce myself. Properly, this time. Socially. Let Sebastian explain to his family, in real time, exactly who I am and exactly what he did to make an enemy patient enough to wait eleven years for his moment."

***

The King Foundation's annual gala was, as it always was, a gathering of exactly the sort of people who'd spent decades cultivating the comfortable belief that money insulated them from consequence. I'd attended three times over the last decade under careful, peripheral pretexts, a donation here, a seat purchased through an intermediary there, always close enough to watch, never close enough to be remembered.

Tonight, I wanted to be remembered.

I found Sebastian Montgomery near the open bar, laughing at something his wife had said, entirely unaware that the last eleven years of his carefully constructed peace were about to end in the space of a single handshake.

"Sebastian," I said, extending my hand as I approached. "It's been a long time."

I watched the exact moment recognition landed his face draining of color, his wife's hand tightening on his arm, the particular stillness of a man realizing, all at once, that a ghost he'd buried a long time ago had simply been waiting, patiently, for the right occasion to walk back into the room.

"Victor," he managed, voice carefully controlled in a way that told me he was working very hard to keep it that way. "I didn't realize you were on the guest list."

"I wasn't, not officially. I made a generous donation this year. Seemed only right to finally attend in person." I smiled, warm, easy, the exact smile I'd practiced for this moment more times than I cared to admit even to myself. "You look well. Success agrees with you. It always did, even back when it was still mostly mine."

"Victor, perhaps we should speak privately."

"Oh, I don't think that's necessary. We're old friends, aren't we? Old partners, at least. Surely there's no harm in a public conversation between old partners." I let my gaze drift, deliberately, toward the small crowd beginning to notice our exchange Kate Montgomery, I believed, watching with open curiosity from a few feet away, a young man with dark hair close beside her whose jaw had gone tight the moment he registered the tension in his father's posture.

"Victor," Sebastian said again, lower this time, something almost pleading underneath the warning.

"Relax, old friend." I patted his shoulder once, lightly, enjoying the way he flinched slightly at the contact. "I'm not here to make a scene. I'm simply here to reintroduce myself to a family I should have met properly years ago. Your son, I presume?" I turned toward the young man who'd moved closer, protective instinct radiating off him in a way I found genuinely charming, given how little he understood yet about what he was protecting his father from.

"Japheth Montgomery," he said, not extending a hand, which I respected, honestly. Smart boy.

"Victor Kade. I believe you've been looking into me recently." I smiled wider. "I do hope you found the research interesting."

"We found it illuminating," he said flatly.

"I'd expect nothing less from Sebastian's son. He was always thorough, even when he was busy cutting corners on the people who trusted him." I turned back to Sebastian, savoring the way his jaw had tightened to match his son's. "I'll let you get back to your evening. I just wanted to say hello, properly, after all this time. I do hope we'll be seeing much more of each other going forward."

I walked away before anyone could respond, satisfied, already composing in my head the exact story I'd let slip to a few well-placed society columnists about an old business partnership gone sour, a betrayal buried for over a decade, finally brought back into the light where it belonged.

Eleven years of patience, and I hadn't even needed to raise my voice.

Behind me, I could hear the particular hush of a family trying to recover its composure in front of a room full of people who'd just watched something significant happen without entirely understanding what, and I found myself, for the first time in longer than I cared to admit, genuinely enjoying an evening out.

****

JASMINE POV

"Okay, who was that, and why did Uncle Seb look like he'd seen the literal devil?" Saph asked, appearing at my elbow with two glasses of champagne, handing me one without asking if I wanted it, which was simply how Saph operated.

"That," I said grimly, "was Victor Kade. In the flesh. Apparently deciding tonight was the night to announce himself to the entire New York social calendar."

"The guy from the meeting? The grudge guy?"

"The grudge guy."

"He's got excellent tailoring for a man harboring an eleven-year vendetta," Saph observed, watching Kade's retreating back with the particular assessing look she usually reserved for evaluating potential dates. "Deeply unsettling, obviously, but credit where it's due."

"Please don't compliment the supervillain's suit, Saph."

"I contain multitudes. I can be appropriately horrified and also notice good tailoring simultaneously." She sipped her champagne, watching Kate stride toward us with the particular controlled fury I recognized from every time someone had threatened her family. "Incoming. Brace yourself."

"That man," Kate said, arriving at full speed, "just stood in the middle of the King Foundation gala and basically announced to the entire room that he's declaring war on my family while smiling the whole time. Who does that?"

"Men with eleven years of patience and apparently excellent dry cleaning," Saph offered.

"Not helping, Saph."

"I'm processing through humor. It's a documented coping mechanism."

Japheth and Seb joined us a moment later, both looking considerably more rattled than either was willing to say out loud, Seb's hand still gripping Abby's a little tighter than usual.

"He's going to leak this to the press," Seb said grimly, confirming what I'd already suspected the moment Kade walked away with that particular satisfied look on his face. "Old business partnership, buried betrayal, the whole narrative. He wants it public before we even have a chance to control it."

"Then we get ahead of it," Japheth said immediately, already pulling out his phone. "Ranjiv, legal, PR, all of it, tonight if we have to. We're not letting him write the first draft of this story."

"Agreed," Seb said, something steadying in his voice now that there was an actual plan forming instead of just the shock of the ambush. "Let's get out of here before he decides round two is in order."

As we gathered our things to leave, I caught one last glimpse of Victor Kade across the room, champagne in hand, laughing easily with some society matron like he hadn't just detonated a very precisely aimed bomb in the middle of our evening.

"He looked happy," I said quietly to Japheth as we walked out.

"He's been waiting eleven years for tonight," Japheth said, jaw tight, arm tightening around my waist. "Of course he's happy. We just have to make sure it doesn't last."