mouth dry is so dry, parched. Whatever he used to knock me out has left me with a terrible taste in my mouth. ‘You said I looked like a fish out of water.’
‘That’s right.’ He seems please that I remember, his hand retracting from my jaw. ‘I didn’t even know who you were then, but I wanted you. It’s just a shame I was already off my head when I saw you.’ His eyes fall to my chest as he readjusts my jacket by the lapels. ‘I think I frightened you off a little.’
‘No, that’s not it—’
His sharp gaze rises, his expression sardonic. ‘You don’t have to lie to me, Rose. After I behaved the way I did, there was no turning the clock back. You were never going to see me in a favourable light. I could tell you were already smitten with him. Before my error, I could’ve courted you. You might have fallen in love with me. But he hid you from the start. He acted unfairly. He always did, even when we were kids.’
I bite my tongue from yelling that’s not true—that the brute in front of me is just a pale facsimile of the man I love. That he’s crazy if he thinks for one solitary minute he ever had a chance. ‘You weren’t interested in me. Not really.’ I almost choke on my words.
‘Oh, you’re wrong.’ I screw my eyes tight shut as his lips brush my head. ‘But I blew my chance thanks to a little too much cocaine. So, I didn’t bother trying afterwards. At least, not romantically.’ His voice turns cold and I stiffen as his hands feather my shoulder, brushing the sides of my breasts, the touch testing yet blatant.
And sickening.
‘You told me about Amelie—why would you tell me the engagement was fake if you didn’t want me to fall in love with Remy?’
Disappointment ripples across his face, a look quickly replaced by distaste as he drops to the chair, his legs wide and relaxed, his arms dropped negligently to his thighs.
‘You really aren’t very bright, are you? Staying with him after he lied to you, still defending him after the proof I showed this afternoon? The way he’s lied to you again and again and yet you still would go back to him?’
‘I thought you were sincere when you didn’t hit on me. When you didn’t hang him out to dry.’ I try to remember what he showed me in the café; the photographs, documents, but my brain feels like an Etch A Sketch that’s been shaken to the max.
‘I believe you Americans call it playing the long game. Though I did think about fucking you, about getting you so drunk that afternoon that you couldn’t say no. But driving you farther way wouldn’t have helped my cause. And you might’ve told Remy, and excuse me for saying so, but one fuck wasn’t worth spoiling my plans. You’re not worth dying over.’
‘Then why am I here, Ben?’ I ask plaintively. My bottom lip begins to wobble. This is like something you see on TV, not something that happens to me.
‘Because I thought you’d be smarter. But you’re not. You’re just a dumb bitch sucked in by a rich man. And also because of bad luck.’ He suddenly stands. ‘The announcement of your engagement on top of his mother pledging her shares of Loup Industries to charity. My plans had to be accelerated. Your shares would become his,’ he snaps, pointing both hands left, then right. ‘His mother’s shares going to an outside party. Where did that leave me?’ he asks manically, pointing at himself this time. ‘I’ll tell you where. Farther away from controlling the company than ever.’ The echo of his low-pitched anger reverberates around the dank space.
‘I don’t understand. Josephine’s shares were never going to be yours. She would’ve left them to Remy if she left them to anyone.’
‘Josephine’s shares are not the issue. The issue is Remy getting his hands on your stake through marriage, making him more powerful. The issue is, that in killing him, his shares would then go to you.’
‘But we’re not even married yet.’
‘Ah, not so nice now Rose, huh? But I know what you’re thinking. Why not kill him before you’re married? Why not do so before you’d even met him, because then you’d just be a small stakeholder and his shares would be mine. Well, let me tell you, I. Have. Fucking. Tried!’