care about me and Scott having sex in an empty corner hallway, or even about me, really. But all of it, his taunting, his words . . . it was to get inside Scott’s armor. To needle him into making a mistake, exposing a weakness.
With a single punch, Scott exposed that weakness and showed that I’m a liability. I feel used, a pawn in the war between the two brothers, and somehow, that hurts more than the actual taunts themselves.
“Chase, shut the fuck up,” Olivia says. “Use your handkerchief to mop that up before something shows on your shirt. Can’t do anything about the rumpling, but the lights are low.”
“You’re a fucking dead man, Chase,” Scott seethes, but Olivia holds up a hand.
“What the hell are you two thinking, fighting like you did when you were eight? You’re both damn lucky nobody saw you.”
“Olivia—” I start, but a single glance from her cuts me off. Scott said she’s been dubbed the Ice Queen, and from the coldness in her eyes, I can see why.
“You two, get out of here,” she says to Scott and me. “Chase, you’re coming with me and leaving in five minutes after we get the blood stopped and cleaned up. Both of you had better hope I don’t tell Father.”
“You’d blab just to win?” Scott asks, and Olivia sighs in frustration.
“Not to win . . . but because you two insist on acting like this company is nothing more than pieces on a board. The people in your pitches, in your presentations tonight, they’re not marbles to fight over. They’re real people with real feelings. That you two are still acting like this means I don’t know if I can trust you not to destroy their lives in your little sibling rivalry. I won’t have that. Now get the fuck outta here.”
Chapter 21
Scott
Daily Horoscope, October 17th
Scorpio – Conflict can destroy your future. Do not allow hard feelings to prevent progress.
The elevator dings, and Maddie unlocks the door for me. I’m limping a little, probably from the way Chase and I tumbled to the ground during our fight, but I haven’t complained. Nor will I, because no good comes from whining. Once inside, she helps me take off my tuxedo jacket before hanging it up. I slump to the couch, suddenly exhausted. Looking down, I see the blood spotting my shirt. I hear Maddie’s disapproving tsk before she turns to leave.
“Where are you going?” I ask, and Madison stops, turning back to me.
“To get something to help you clean up. Just give me a moment.”
Thank God. I had a quick flash that she might be ditching me at home and bailing after that fiasco. But apparently not. She disappears, and I lean my head back, a headache threatening to pound apart my skull. Part of it, I’m sure, are the punches Chase landed. He got a good one in to my temple that will likely leave an ugly bruise. Just as much of it, though, is from being pissed at myself.
How’d I let that happen? His catching me with my cock out and the two of us about to go at it shouldn’t have led to all that. Hell, his words were damning, but normally, I’d have been able to brush them off with returned barbs of my own. But that was the first time his arrogant snark had been directed at her . . . my Madison. That was the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The object of my obsession walks back into the living room, having changed out of her fancy gown and into one of my undershirts. My necklace still hangs around her neck, though, the perfect mix of casual and fancy, both in us and in her wardrobe. A tiny smirk hints at the corner of my mouth, but I school my face as the movement cracks open my lip a bit more. “Ouch,” I grumble, snapping back to the present as Madison presses a rubbing alcohol-soaked cotton ball to my lip. “I don’t need that.”
“Shut up and let me take care of those. You two were rolling on the carpet,” Maddie says, scolding me like a school child but straddling my lap. “I’d use peroxide but you don’t have any.”
I grit my teeth as she dabs at the cuts. “You sure you’re not trying to just get some pain in?”
“If I wanted to hurt you, I’d have let you go to bed with the carpet fuzz still embedded in these,” she replies.