Chapter 2

It hit every client in the room.

They looked at each other, and the look changed.

Victor stared at the pages on the floor while the color came and went in his face.

But he'd spent forty years owning every room he walked into, and his pride wouldn't let go.

"What kind of nonsense is this?

"So you're allergic. One drink isn't going to kill you.

"You're useless, and now you're making excuses for it."

That was when whatever was left in him for these people went cold.

He looked at the two of them, at the parents who hadn't asked once whether I was breathing.

Every board member and every major client was watching.

He got both hands under the edge of the table and drove upward.

The crash was enormous.

The whole rosewood banquet table went over.

Scalding soup went everywhere.

Glass and china broke across the floor.

Two of the biggest clients backed away with grease down the front of their suits.

"If you want a killer for a son that badly, keep him."

He stood in the wreckage and said it so the whole room heard.

"As of today, Victor Ashmore isn't my father.

"And I don't want a dollar of his money. It's filthy."

Then he walked out without looking back.

Nothing in the set of his shoulders wanted to stay.

Behind him, Victor was still shouting at the door.

My soul went with him.

Watching him walk out with his head up, I felt something I'd never felt before. It felt like breathing.

Outside the hotel he didn't go find a corner to be miserable in, the way I always had.

He knew exactly where he was going. He checked into a small hotel that didn't ask questions.

The second the door shut, he had the laptop open.

His fingers moved fast.

He started mapping it out: who held what, who owed whom, where the pressure points were.

I understood by then. He knew the whole story, every scheme in it, including the ones nobody had found yet.

Out at the Ashmore estate, the air had gone thin.

Tristan had washed his face, but his eyes were still swollen and red.

He was sobbing into Daphne's shoulder, playing the wounded child for all it was worth.

Victor smashed the most expensive antique in the living room.

"Ungrateful little animal.

"Kill every card, every account, anything with his name on it.

"I want him out there with nothing until he crawls back and begs."

Tristan lifted his head off Daphne's shoulder, and for a second the look on his face was pure poison.

He tugged quietly at her sleeve and dropped his voice.

"Mom, he's not the way he used to be.

"What if he goes to Grandfather?

"Grandfather already can't stand me. If he believes any of it..."

Daphne made a small cold sound, and what was in her eyes wasn't anger anymore.

"Don't worry. He won't get the chance."