‘I won’t sign.’
‘Then you’ll end up losing the Delaroche Foundation, too,’ Louis warned. Though, perhaps surprisingly, he took no pleasure from it. It was simply a fact that his stubborn father needed pointing out to him. ‘If they see these papers—and they’ll have to, there’s no avoiding it—then you could lose everything.’
‘No,’ his father ground out, his composure beginning to crack. ‘Take the Delaroche Foundation from me? I’d like to see you try.’
‘I don’t want your foundation,’ Louis scorned. ‘I never did. But I want to honour the legacy my mother created. The first seven years of my life were the happiest I’ve ever had, until now. She taught me how to laugh, how to be kind, and how to feel. I recognise now what I’ve always known, and that is that the only reason she would have chosen to leave me behind is if she hadn’t been in her right mind. And that comes down to you. And you alone. We both know how cruelly you treated her.’
‘You think you can blame her death on me? You dare to threaten me? Pah, the press will never believe a playboy bastard like you.’
He’d never seen his father’s hand shake like that before.
Somehow it only helped Louis feel all the calmer.
‘I wasn’t threatening you at all.’ He straightened up, making a show of taking a step back from the table. Away from his father. ‘I have no intention of going to the media. I can’t think of anything that’s less their business. However, it will come out. The truth always does.’
‘Then I’ll destroy you,’ Jean-Baptiste roared, his anger making him miss Louis’s warning.
Wordlessly, Louis stood up straight and took a further step back from the desk. The moments ticked by as they remained motionless in their respective places. At an impasse. But Louis knew he held the key. He drew in a steadying breath, then another, and another. One image locked in his brain. Alex, in her wedding dress. And he knew with bone-deep certainty that he had to win her back. She was the one thing that made his life make sense. He could live without her if he had to, but he didn’t want to have to.
‘Sign the papers. It will return the group to me as my mother’s will had always intended, and the fact that you manipulated the documents will never have to come out. Once the tie is severed between the Delaroche Foundation and the Lefebvre Group, all documents pertaining to the latter, including these, are no longer valid. As the new chairman of the Lefebvre Group, I can file them away wherever I see fit and neither your board, nor anyone else, need ever see them. It’s your choice.’
‘And yet it isn’t really a choice at all, is it?’ sneered the older man. Still, Louis found himself holding his breath as his father, with no other choice, lifted his pen and began to sign.
Personally, he would have liked nothing better than to let the whole world know what Jean-Baptiste had done, let him get his comeuppance. But that would destroy the Delaroche Foundation and there were too many good people, too many truly charitable projects that would be irreparably damaged by such an action. It would destroy far more than it would achieve.
And that wasn’t something he could imagine Alex approving of. It was strange how much she factored into his thoughts. How, over their time together, he had begun to weigh things against what she might approve of or not.
He’d thought cutting her free was the right thing to do. The only thing to do. But now he wasn’t so sure. She’d once told him she loved him. Had that been true? Could she love him again?
‘There, you have your pound of flesh.’ The resentful tone pulled Louis back to the moment.
He leaned over to take the papers but his father gripped them all the more tightly, one final insult at the ready.
‘What would your mother think of you now?’
The insidiousness scratched at Louis, scraping away until a rage was rushing in to fill the vacuum. He twisted around and the sardonic smile on Jean-Baptiste’s face revealed the old man thought he had won.
At any other time, he might have. But Louis had a weapon now, one he’d never had before—Alex’s belief in him. He knew it was pointless but he couldn’t stop the glimmer of possibility that maybe, just maybe he could one day win her love for real.
He had to be the kind of man she deserved.
‘I don’t think you have the right to talk to me about my mother. Not now. Not ever.’ He sounded as close to the edge as he felt. But that couldn’t be helped.
The cruel twist of his father’s mouth was sharp enough to draw blood. Like a scalpel slicing him from within.
Now.
‘No wonder you weren’t enough to make her want to live.’
It was all Louis could do to swallow the bitter, acid taste in his mouth.
‘Except that she did want to live, didn’t she? She never committed suicide, she never even considered it. The day she died she was trying to save a life, not take one. But you told me otherwise simply to keep me in line. To exact some kind of revenge.’
He’d never seen that expression on his father’s face before. So hateful, so ugly.
‘So you finally know the truth. How does it feel, Louis, to know that you believed so badly of her so easily?’
‘You’re really trying to turn this onto me?’