“I appreciate that. But you have no idea the kind of situation you’ve put me in,” she said.
“It was always going to be impossible. I can’t turn my back on my family,” he said after a long minute had passed.
“I’m not asking you to. I’m asking you to think of our son.”
“I am thinking of him, so don’t try to blackmail me with that. He’s on my mind as much as he’s on yours.”
“Yes, but your side of the family comes out looking like the victors. Do you think we can be happy when my sisters are angry? I’m mad, too.”
“Be realistic. It’s a better outcome than you could have hoped for.”
“No,” she said. “I showed you how we could keep working as we have been. I showed you how Infinity Games needs to stay as it is. I showed you everything I had and it seems to mean nothing to you.”
“Infinity Games is no longer yours to decide. You’re lucky we’re even thinking of keeping any of the staff.”
She shook her head as anger and hurt coalesced inside of her. “Of course you’d say that. You don’t know how to stick around and see the devastation you leave behind you.”
“I’m not running away this time,” he said.
“Well, you might as well be,” Cari said.
“Stop acting like this. It’s business, not the end of the world. You can’t operate a business based on emotion.”
“You can’t because you’re the Tin Man and you have no heart. But I’m not like you, Dec. I love you. But I bet that doesn’t even matter to you. You don’t understand how love changes everything. How it makes you aware of all the people around you and the consequences of your actions. You said this won’t affect me or DJ but it will.
“I’ve been a fool thinking you could change. I believed you were someone who would stay and build a future with me and our son, but I see now you were never interested in that. And as much as I appreciate you keeping my job, if my sisters go, then so do I.”
She turned to step away from him and became aware of the others staring over at them. She saw the faces of her sisters, who had no doubt heard her talk about her son’s parentage. Their eyes were wide, their mouths agape. She took a deep breath and blurted, “Yes, you heard right. Dec and I have a son together. Even though he abandoned us, I welcomed him back into our lives thinking he was a changed man, though I see now he is still consumed with an old family feud that has nothing to do with the present.”
“I knew it,” Jessi said.
“You knew it? Why didn’t you say something?” Allan asked her. “Seems like that’s the kind of information you’d run with.”
“I just got the report from my P.I. this morning. I should have said I suspected it.” She turned to Kell. “You can’t fire your own nephew’s aunts.”
“The baby changes nothing,” Kell said.
“It changes everything,” Emma interjected. “We’re all related now and we can’t keep trying to tear each other apart. It’s time to settle the feud.”
“No,” Kell said. “I’m not giving up on anything because Dec and Cari had a one-night stand. That’s not a commitment. That’s a mistake.”
Cari cringed at his remark. “Was it a mistake, Dec?” Cari asked him.
Dec glanced at her, and the look in his eyes reminded her of an animal caught in a trap. He turned his back to her and faced his cousin. “Kell, enough of this nonsense.”
“It’s not nonsense. It’s good business sense,” Kell said.
“Good business sense doesn’t rely on revenge,” Emma said, walking over to Cari and putting her arm around her.
As her sisters led her out of the conference room, Cari looked back at Dec. He looked stone-cold, as if he didn’t feel anything. So different from the man whose arms she’d slept in last night. She felt her heart breaking into a thousand pieces and knew this moment was the worst of her life.
She started to cry as they walked down the corridors of Playtone Games to the elevator, and she couldn’t stop. She felt Jessi patting her shoulder and she knew she should try to compose herself, but it was impossible.
She’d let herself be fooled by Declan Montrose again. It was bad enough when he’d physically abandoned her after their night together, but nothing was as bad as this emotional abandonment. After he’d spent weeks pretending to care for her, letting her believe that there was some hope for them… Well, it was just cruel, and it cut her so deep she didn’t feel like she’d ever recover from it.