The Bastard (Filthy Trilogy 1)

Harper

I’ve barely sat down at my desk when Gigi walks into my office and shuts the door, her red hair a mess she never allows it to be. “You told him?” she demands. “Did you tell him?”

I stand up and lean on my desk. “Why didn’t you tell me? Wires into your account that you pulled out and gave Isaac. It looks like you’re helping them and setting him up. You made it look like I was setting him up.”

“I did what I had to do!” she shouts, shocking me with her outburst. “He wouldn’t have come here to help if I told you because you wouldn’t have helped me and gone to him.”

“Why would you pull cash and give Isaac that money? What is really going on here?”

She charges toward my desk but I don’t miss how unsteady she is as she does. She presses her hands on the opposite side of the desk. “I thought I was helping my grandson.”

“Like you tried to get rid of your other grandson? You hurt Eric. Now you want him to help you without knowing the facts?”

“I can’t undo the past. I can’t. I told you. I regret what a bitch I was to him and his mother. I have nightmares about her suicide. I know what I did to her.” She starts crying, deep sobs. “I don’t know how to fix any of this.”

“Start by walking up to him and telling him you’re sorry.”

“That won’t matter to him.”

“That doesn’t mean he doesn’t deserve it. He deserves it.”

“And when looking at me disgusts him so much he leaves?” she demands. “Then what? He’s going to take me down with them, isn’t he?”

I could tell her no, I could tell her how honorable he is, and how much his mother inspired his actions. How much the Bennett family grounds him, but I don’t. She doesn’t deserve that security and I don’t trust her not to repeat it anyway. “Holding back information from him certainly isn’t the way to inspire his kindness.”

“You’re the only one who can inspire his kindness. I know you’re seeing him. I know you were with him years ago at the party. I saw you go to his cottage. Protect me. Please.”

I feel manipulated. I feel used. “Tell him everything. That’s how you protect yourself. I can’t. I won’t. He deserves more than me using our relationship as a tool or a weapon.”

She stares at me for several long beats and then walks toward the door. She pauses there and then exits without another word. The door shuts and I pray I’ve done my job right. My cellphone buzzes with a message from Eric: I was watching and A) you scared her. That’s good. What she does next could tell a story, but most importantly B) I really want to come in there and fuck you right there on your desk but there would be too many perverts watching. That doesn’t work for me. I don’t share. Not you. Ever.

I smile and reply with: Then I guess we’ll have to use your desk in New York City when I go there with you.

> His reply is instant: Yes, fucking yes, and if you keep talking like that I’ll fire up a private jet and take you there now, tonight.

Warmth fills me and for the first time, I really let myself believe that maybe, just maybe, we have a future and I’m willing to walk away from my past to make it happen. I’m willing to walk away for him. I want to walk away before this family does something to ruin us.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO

Harper

It’s nearly lunchtime and I’ve avoided any more encounters with the Kingston family. I spend the quiet time digging through every record I can find that might hold that fourteen-digit identifier we were given last night. It’s noon when Eric appears in my doorway. “Want to grab lunch?”

“Yes, please. I’m suffocating in this place.” I grab my purse and cross the office to greet him. He grabs my coat from the coat rack right inside my doorway, helps me into it, and then uses the lapels to pull me to him, kissing me soundly on the lips.

“How the hell does it feel like a year since I did that?” he murmurs against my mouth, his hand a warm branding on my lower back under my coat.

“Because it has been, right?” I ask sounding and feeling breathless. I live breathlessly with this man.

He laughs a low, sexy laugh that I feel from head to toe before he takes my hand and leads me toward the front desk. We enter the lobby at the same moment that Isaac walks in the front door. “Aren’t they cute,” he says dryly. “Fuck break or lunch break?” he asks in front of the receptionist.

Eric looks at me and arches a brow. “Lunch, right?”

His nonchalant, unruffled reply guides my equally unruffled reply. “Can we decide in the car?”

“Whatever you want, sweetheart,” he says, leaning in to kiss me before he lifts a chin at Isaac. “Later, brother,” he says, and we step outside into a gust of wind.

Eric pulls me under his arm. “Sorry about that in there,” he says, glancing down at me. “He was looking for a reaction I didn’t want to give.”