The Bastard (Filthy Trilogy 1)

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

Harper

I’m burning alive under Eric’s scorching attention, melting right here in the center of Isaac’s office with the message in his burning blue-eyed stare: he came here for me. He also promised to finish this family off if he returned. Maybe that means he intends to fuck me in every possible way this time. I don’t know. I just know that as seconds tick by, our present company of Isaac and Gigi fades away and there is just the two of us and a challenge that I don’t understand, but I’m certain I will soon.

“I’ll leave you three to get this done,” Gigi says, snapping me back to the room just in time to find her exiting the office.

“Go do your job, Harper,” Isaac snaps at me. “Eric and I need to have a conversation alone.”

Eric’s lips twitch, his eyes never leaving mine, nor mine his. “I’ll find you when we’re done,” he says, and there is this heady possessive undertone to those words that is anything but professional. This is a promise that we still have unfinished business, that we are far from done, and I have never felt so owned in my life. Considering this place, this family has made me feel pretty darn owned, that’s saying a lot. It’s different with Eric, though. He owns everything around him. He owns me. He’s different from Isaac and the rest of them in ways that connect with me on every level. I crave this man’s confidence. I need this man’s touch. I understand this man’s hunger for revenge in ways that he can’t know, and yet, I fear that very need in him is why he’s here, is why he’s now dangerous.

“You can leave the door open,” he adds, his tone sharpening with a swift change in mood as he refocuses on his brother. “Isaac and I won’t be long.”

The air crackles and this time it’s not about me and Eric. It’s about him and Isaac and that snaps me out of my lusty haze and shoots me straight into fight mode. My gaze shoots to Isaac. “He’s here because Gigi wants answers. I tried to tell you that. I asked and asked you to help me give them to her. You dismissed her as an old lady and forgot how much power she has. So, suck it up and just give Eric what he needs. Give Gigi what she wants.” I look at Eric. “As for you. You aren’t a bastard because he calls you one. You’re a bastard if you choose to be one.” I look between them. “We’re family whether you two like it or not. You need to figure this out.”

I march for the door and exit, Eric’s voice following me as he says, “She has no idea what kind of bastard I really am, now does she, Isaac?”

That statement, layered with history, halts my steps and I lean on the wall waiting for more. What does that even mean? I need to know what that means and I wait for an explanation, but the door shuts. I’m shut out. Damn it. I push off the wall and hurry down the hallway, reaching the elevator just as it closes, no doubt missing Gigi by seconds. I cut right and take the stairs, rushing down the winding path until I reach the bottom level just as the elevator doors open.

Gigi steps out and pauses to smooth the red dress she’s wearing, oblivious to how the color clashes with her hair, which is more orange than red. “I expected you before I made it to the elevator,” she says, cutting me a look, her blue eyes so like Eric’s in this moment that I shiver. “You’re late,” she adds and starts walking toward her office, which is the only office down here by her design.

“That wasn’t exactly neutral territory you left me in,” I say, easily catching up to her despite the fact that she’s remarkably spry for her age. “And you know I don’t like you down here. You don’t even keep a secretary. What if something happened to you?”

She waves me off the way Isaac tried to wave off Eric and with the same failed results. “I’m fine down here. This is the cave, no men allowed.” She glances at me before entering her office, “Eric’s quite the looker these days, isn’t he?”

My cheeks heat and she laughs. “You noticed.” She disappears through the doorway. “And I noticed the spark between you two.”

Of course, she did. “And you,” I say, swiftly changing the subject and following her inside what is more a small executive apartment than an office, “should have warned me about what just happened.”

“And you,” she counters, “should have told me when you left New York City. He called me.”

“And you offered him how much money?”

“Enough to get him here.”

“He’s a billionaire now,” I say. “He doesn’t need your money.”

“He damn sure took it,” she says, pointing at the chair next to her. “Sit.”

I ignore the order, stopping in front of her, my hands on my hips. “He didn’t need that money,” I repeat. “He took it because he could make you pay him. Because he hates you that much. He’s now got stock. He came here to destroy us.”

“And you really think that if he would have come without the payday, he would have had another motive?”

“He’s here to take over,” I say because it sounds better than his promise that his return would be to “finish us off.”

“Better him than someone else,” she shocks me by saying. “At least then I’ll die with this place in the hands of someone who’s blood, someone who will make it thrive. We don’t know what is going on, but we know it’s bad. This is my legacy. I don’t want it to end in jail.”

“Gigi—”

She holds up a hand. “He’s brilliant. He’ll save your father’s legacy along with mine. Go. Work. Get him what he needs. This is what we both wanted. Eric here, finding out what’s wrong. We got it. Now he’s here.”

“For the wrong reasons,” I say.

She purses her lips. “We’ll see. He wanted to be a part of this family from the day he met his father. We didn’t make him feel like he belonged. And understandably after that, he needed a reason other than that need to be here now. Money, and even revenge, serve that purpose. Now go. Keep an ear to what’s happening.”

I could fight with her, but that achieves nothing obviously and I really do feel a need to be back upstairs, but she’s dismissed my stepfather in all of this. “Your son—”

“Jeff will suck it up and deal with it, just like you. Go.”