Temporarily His Princess - By Olivia Gates Page 0,10

someone who had total access to Glory. Only her family had that. Needing to settle this without her knowledge, only thinking of her heartache if she found out, he’d confronted them. They’d broken under his threats, begged his leniency. He’d already decided to show them that, for Glory, but he’d said he’d only consider it if they gave him the details of their plan, their recruiters and any accomplices. If they didn’t, he’d show no mercy. And they’d given him proof that it had been Glory. She’d been their only hope of getting to him.

And how she’d gotten to him.

She’d played him like a virtuoso. It hadn’t even occurred to him to guard himself against her like he did with everyone else.

But a lengthy, highly publicized court case would have harmed more than helped him. Worse, it would have kept her in his life. So he’d groped for the lesser mutilation of cutting her off from his life abruptly, so the sordid mess wouldn’t get any bigger.

Then something totally unexpected had happened. Also because of her.

As he’d struggled to put her out of his mind, he’d restarted his work from scratch, soon becoming thankful he had. What he’d thought was a breakthrough had actually been fundamentally flawed. If he hadn’t lost the whole thing, he would have cost his sponsors untold billions of wasted development financing. But the real catastrophe would have been if the magnitude of confidence in his research had minimized testing before its applications hit the market. Lives could have been lost.

So her betrayal had been a blessing in disguise, forcing him to correct his mistakes and devise a safe, more cost-effective and streamlined method. After that, he’d been catapulted to the top of his field. Not that he was about to thank Glory for the betrayal that had led to all that.

Glory’s choking words brought him out of the darkness of the past. “But they had nothing to do with your leaked research. And according to you, there was no leaked research.”

“Not for lack of trying on the culprits’ part. That I placed false results for them to steal doesn’t exonerate them from the crime of industrial espionage and patent theft.”

Her sluggish nod conceded that point. “But if you didn’t pursue them then, they must have checked out. So why did you keep them under a microscope all this time?”

So she was still playing the innocence card. Fine. He’d play it her way. He had a more important goal now than exhuming past corpses. He’d get closure in a different way, which wouldn’t involve exposing the truth. If she still believed she’d failed in her mission, he’d let her keep thinking that.

His lips twisted on ever-present bitterness. “What can I say? I follow my gut. And it told me they were shifty, and to keep an eye on them. Since I could easily afford to, I did. And because I was already following their every move, I found out each instance when they stepped out of line, even when others couldn’t. I also learned their methods, so I could anticipate them. They didn’t stand a chance.”

A long moment of silence passed, filled with the world of hurt and disillusion roiling in her eyes.

Then she rasped, “Why haven’t you reported them?”

Because they’re your family.

There. He’d finally admitted it to himself.

Something that felt like a boulder sitting on his chest suddenly lifted. He felt as if he could breathe fully again, after years of only snatching in enough air to survive.

So this was how it felt to be free of self-deceptions.

It had sat heavily on his conscience, that he’d known of her family’s habitual crimes and not done anything about it. He’d tried to rationalize why he hadn’t, but it had boiled down to this: after all she’d done to him, he still hadn’t been able to bring himself to damage her to that extent. He had been unable to cause her the loss of her family, as shoddy as they were. But even more, he couldn’t have risked that they might have implicated her.

In spite of everything, he hadn’t been able to contemplate sending her to prison.

Not that he was about to let her realize that she’d always had control over every irrational cell in his body.

He gave her one of the explanations he’d placated himself with. “I didn’t see any benefit to myself or to my business in doing so.” At her widening stare, he huffed. “I’m not just a mad scientist, not anymore. And then,