her way was a blow.
Good. It was.
“Surely there’s been enough pain...” she whispered.
“You will be at that dinner tonight.”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“I’m aware. Doesn’t it fascinate you that while they were happy to trot you out as a witness for the prosecution, they are less interested in having you attend my glorious return?”
“It’s not that they’re not interested, it’s that I’m not the same as the rest of them. I don’t have an interest in the estate’s trust, for one thing.”
“Though of all the Worth family blood relations, you are the only one who actually works for the trust. Does that not strike you as odd?”
She blinked and he thought he’d hit upon a sore spot. “Whether I do or don’t doesn’t matter. This is how things work here and everyone is perfectly happy with that. Except you, apparently. And I still wasn’t asked to join your reunion dinner.”
“I’m inviting you,” he said, and watched her as she didn’t react to that. As she very deliberately didn’t react to that. “I told your uncle that I expected the entire family to be at that table and he’s not inclined to cross me. Not this soon. Not while paparazzi still follow me around, desperate to record my every utterance.”
“I don’t know why you’d want me there. Surely you need to have a conversation with Uncle Richard, and my cousins, to discuss what is to become—”
“The first thing you need to learn, Lexi, is that I run this show.” Atlas smiled at her, all fangs. “I will tell you when to speak and what to say, and if I do not, your job is to remain silent. After all, we both know you’re very good at that, don’t we?”
She went pale. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. You’ve spent your entire life learning how to blend in with the scenery here.” He raised his brows. “Do that.”
She didn’t like that. He could see it in the way her jaw moved, but she didn’t rail at him the way he’d expected she might. Atlas was certain there was fire in her—temper and turmoil—but she never let it loose. Not even here, now, when it could be chalked up to the drama of this reunion.
“Whether I blend or don’t blend,” she said very carefully, as if she was weighing each word, “what does that have to do with you?”
He was far more comfortable with this part than with the unexpected perfection of the turn of her cheek. That he even noticed such a thing was a distraction and he couldn’t afford distractions. Not now.
“At this dinner, I expect your uncle to offer me compensation for my years in prison. Money. A job. Whatever. It won’t be enough.”
“Can anything be enough?”
“I’m glad you asked. No.”
“Then what do you hope—”
“I spent years trying to decide what would best serve my needs and also be the least palatable to your uncle,” Atlas told her softly, in the tone that had kept more than one cell mate at bay. “And I could only think of one thing. I will reclaim my position, of course. I will take all the money that is owed me and then some. I will once again have all the things I worked so hard to achieve before they were stripped from me. But that will not return a decade of my life, will it?”
“Nothing will.”
“Nothing,” he agreed. “So you see, I have no choice but to make certain that this can never happen to me again. I will not be your uncle’s patsy. I will not be a target. I will be something much, much worse.” He smiled wider at that, dark and grim. “Family.”
She didn’t understand. He could see the confusion on her face, and like everything else about this meeting, it pleased him. Because he had never been a good man, he’d only ever been an ambitious one. He’d fought his way out of the slums with absolutely no help from anyone because he’d refused to accept that he should stay there. While Lexi had been coltish and silly at eighteen, Atlas had been focused. Determined.
There had never been another option.
He’d taken over his first company when he’d been barely twenty and turned it into a global contender. He’d gone from that to a boutique hotel chain in Europe that had been on the verge of collapse and had turned all seven locations into paragons of luxury, destinations in and of themselves, and in so doing had made himself the most sought after businessman in the world. The transformation of Worth Manor and its grounds from tottery old heap of family stones into a recreational destination in London, a city packed with such things, had been supposed to send him straight into the stratosphere.
Instead, he’d gone to prison. And he’d spent the past eleven years learning that really, all he truly was beneath all of that was furious.
As if furious was in his bones. As if furious was who he was and ever would be.
Atlas was fine with that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lexi said, and he had the sense she was fighting to remain calm. He hoped it was a struggle.
“Your uncle will offer me a great many things tonight,” Atlas told her, because he knew the old man. He knew exactly how this would go. He was depending on Richard Xavier Worth being exactly who he’d always been. That was the trouble with doing what Richard had done to a man like Atlas, who had worked for him. Atlas had studied his boss. Richard should have taken better care to do the same to the man he’d sent to prison. “And I will take them all. Then I will take one more thing. You.”
He supposed it was a measure of her confusion that she only blinked at him. “Me?”
“Has it never occurred to you to wonder why it is your uncle goes to such great lengths to hide you away?” he asked, forcing himself to remain cool and calm even though this was the part he’d been looking forward to the most. “He treats you like the hired help, and you never think to question why that is, do you?”
“It’s because that’s essentially what I am,” Lexi said briskly. If there was some emotion in her gaze, she blinked and it was gone. She even stood taller—likely because this was familiar ground for her. “And I’m grateful for that. I’m grateful for any shred of grace the Worths deign to throw my way. Because it’s more than I ever would have gotten if my uncle had left me where I grew up.”
He shouldn’t have been surprised how deeply invested she was in that story. After all, he’d believed the old man, too, and he’d known better. How could a little girl have managed to hold out against a liar like Richard when Atlas had never seen any of this coming?
Not that he forgave her. Not even close.
“Yes, about that. Did you never think to question how it was your uncle found you so quickly?”
“I don’t know what any of this has to do with what’s happening here,” Lexi burst out, with more emotion than he’d heard from her yet. She was more comfortable taking the blame than in spreading it around, Atlas thought. He needed to explore that—but only once he got his unruly
