“I know that was his intention, yes.”
“Your uncle believes that breaking bread with me rather than squabbling in a boardroom or court of law will make this all go away.” He could tell exactly how cruel his smile was by the way her brown eyes widened at the sight of it. “It won’t.”
“I don’t think anyone expects any of this to go away.”
“Wonderful. Then no one will be surprised by anything that happens now, I’m sure.”
“Atlas. Please. No one meant to hurt you. You have to believe that.”
It was an impassioned plea. He thought she even believed it. But he only shook his head at her.
“Let me tell you what I believe, Lexi. I believe that you were a teenager. That you saw something you didn’t understand and put a spin on it that made sense to you. On some level, I don’t even blame you for it. You were little more than a child, and of all the vultures and liars in this family, Philippa was at least the most genuine. In that I suspect she actually liked you.”
She sucked in a breath, ragged and sharp at once. “They’re my family. They all like me.”
But he doubted even she thought that sounded convincing.
His mouth twisted into something as hard as it was sardonic. “Tell yourself those lies if you must. I cannot stop you. But do not tell them to me.”
“You have a harsh view of the Worth family. I understand it and you have every right to it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you. I don’t hate them the way you do.”
He laughed at that. “The thing is, Lexi, your uncle was not a teenager. He was not confused. He knew exactly what he was doing, and you should ask yourself why he was so eager to do it.”
“My uncle has never been anything but kind—”
“At the very least, Lexi, you must ask yourself why, when your uncle knew full well that I could not have killed his daughter, he pretended to think otherwise.” Her breath sounded strangled, and he pushed on. “Your cousins, I think we can both agree, are varying degrees of useless. They believe whatever is most convenient and likely to fill their coffers. But you should know better. Is it that you don’t—or that you won’t?”
She seemed to struggle where she stood, and he let her.
“If you hate them all so much—if you hate us so much—I don’t know what you’re doing here.” Her hands were no longer clenched in front of her. Instead, she’d curled them into fists at her sides. “You can go anywhere in the world, Atlas. Why return to a place that caused you so much pain?”
“Because I intend to cause pain in turn,” Atlas told her, his voice hard. And he held her gaze in the same way, as if the look he was directing 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