Forbidden Fate (Crowne Point 3)

GRAY

* * *

I stared down at my grandfather and his bleeding nose.

“If you ever threaten her again, if you even look at her again, I will kill you.”

He dabbed cotton at his bloody nose, looking slightly annoyed, as though I’d just let a fly into his office. “Your father—”

“I’m not my fucking father. My father was too chickenshit to do anything.”

I heard the stampede of footfalls, of my mother and others who’d no doubt seen my grandfather fall, rushing over. I didn’t have much time left to get this out.

“You asked me what I was willing to lose. So, I thought about it. I’m willing to lose everything—my nice life and the name it came with, the family I’ve been keeping afloat, my freedom, my wife, you. I’m willing to lose it all, but I’m not willing to lose her.”

He pressed the silk cloth to his nose, but his eyes were shrewd as ever.

“So if you try to take her from me, if you even fuck with her, I won’t have anything left to lose. But you….” I looked around with a deep exhale. “You will have so much to lose, Grandpa.”

He smiled. “There’s nothing you can do to me, Grayson. You keep making the same mistake.”

I quirked my head to the side, finding Lottie watching me with her parents near the stairway. That was when it hit me.

Strings.

Strings I could tie on my grandfather.

“I’m going to divorce Charlotte. If you try and stop me, I’ve had a postnup drawn up, and Lottie has signed it,”

I bluffed, still watching Lottie.

For the first time in my life, my grandfather was speechless.

Slowly my eyes traveled back to his.

“I’ll come out and say that video was me. If you so much as look at Story, I’ll come out and say that video was me. We’ll lose the company. We’ll lose everything. This divorce can be painless…or not. I know you had planned on dragging us back into the boardroom after a year of photoshoots while you and the du Lacs worked out the borders on your new kingdom. It would be a shame if it all went to them before then.”

“That’s insane,” Grandfather finally sputtered. “You’ll go down with the ship you sink.”

I grinned. “But so will you.”

“I’m trying to save this family—”

“At the rate you’re saving this family, we won’t have any family left to save!” I yelled.

My mother landed next to my grandfather. “Have you lost your mind?”

A little bit. Maybe.

“Grayson?” Lottie grasped my wrist.

“What happened, Grayson?” my grandfather asked, standing and adjusting his tie. My mother stood with him, and soon everyone looked at me, waiting. Adrenaline pounded in my skull.

“I’ll go get you ice,” I gritted.

A chorus of disbelief rang out at my back as I went inside. I tangled my hands in my hair. It could work. This could work. A way out not just for me, but for Lottie—

I stopped short at the sight of wild, curly hair.