Harrison shifted his gaze to Frankie, wondering how she would handle the pressure of being a politician’s wife. Would she carry that effortless charm and composure of hers to the role as easily as she’d slipped into his life and found her way inside him? Inside his heart? Or would it drown her? Would being a Grant make her lose herself?
He didn’t blame Vanni Masseria for being wary. He was, too.
* * *
Frankie followed Salvatore into the kitchen, dishes in hand. Her brother set his stack of plates down, turned and leaned against the counter. “I like him.”
A weight lifted off her chest. She set her pile of plates down beside his, realizing how nervous she’d been bringing Harrison here for this impromptu dinner. Things were still so new between them, and her family meant everything to her. If they hadn’t liked Harrison it would have put her in a turmoil.
Even more so than she was in right now.
Salvatore eyed her, his guarded expression suggesting that liking wasn’t all that mattered. “You know what you’re doing? He’s a bit out of your league, Franks.”
She chewed on her lip. Why was it every time she was around her family, she ended up feeling insecure? Unsure of herself? She loved them, adored Salvatore, but she hated the feeling she got in the pit of her stomach when they questioned her actions.
She lifted her gaze to her brother’s. “Apparently he isn’t since we’re together.”
He shook his head. “You know it’s true. Two weeks ago you’re telling me he’s escorting you to a party but he’s not your date. Now you look like you’re head over heels for him.” He rubbed a hand over his goatee. “You work for him, Franks. He’s a Grant. A hard, ruthless businessman. It’s worth keeping your head is all.”
“I’m happy with him.”
“That doesn’t change the fact he knows his way around a woman.” His eyes lost their aggressive edge. “Look, I am happy for you, sis, I am. Nobody likes to see the sparkle in your eyes more than I do and he gives that to you. But I’m a man. I can see when a guy’s got a lot going on in his head. Just take it slow.”
Harrison did have a lot going on in his head. He was flying to Washington tomorrow to confront Anton Markovic. It made her sick thinking about him coming face-to-face with the man who’d destroyed his father.
“It’s complicated,” she told Salvatore.
He grimaced. “That’s a fancy word we men use to define unsure.”
The knot tying itself in her stomach grew tighter. And larger, as she and Harrison said their goodbyes and drove to the penthouse. He was quiet in the car, quiet as they rode the elevator up to the swish, elegant lobby. She could feel the tension gripping him, watched him retreat into his head. She’d wanted to be here for him tonight because she’d known he’d be keyed up about Markovic. And he was.
“They liked you,” she murmured when he rose, went into the kitchen and came back with coffee for him and herbal tea for her.
He gave her one of those blank looks he’d been wearing all evening. “I liked them, too. You’re lucky to have them.”
Something he didn’t have. She curled her fingers into his thigh. “What’s wrong?”
He looked down at her fingers. “I’m just distracted. A million things on my mind.”
“Are you sure you still want to do this?”
His gaze lifted to hers, fiery now. “No sermons, Frankie, I can’t take it tonight.”
She bit her lip. Tomorrow he was going to take his revenge on a man who had stolen his father from him. It wasn’t the answer to his anger, but he couldn’t see it.
“It won’t bring him back.” She dug her fingertips deeper into his thigh. “Nothing is going to bring your father back, Harrison. Nothing is going to right the wrongs Anton Markovic did. The only way forward is for you to forgive him. To move on and honor your father like you have been.”
“Forgive?” His mouth flattened into a straight line, his thigh tensing beneath her fingers. “That’s what your new-age advice would tell me to do? What exactly is that supposed to accomplish, Frankie? I’m supposed to become at peace with the world by doing it?”
She winced, but his anger no longer had the power to silence her. She knew he didn’t bite. “You’re making it sound too simplistic. You have to let go to move on. Hatred is toxic. Hatred is what gives you these black moods. They aren’t going to go away unless you get rid of the poison behind them.”
He stood up. His gaze was beyond lethal as he pinned it on her. “He is the poison. He is the toxicity. He needs to be broken.”
“And then what? You destroy him and take everything? You think you are going to miraculously feel better because you did the same thing to another man that was done to your father? Did you ever think that he might have a family, too? That he might have children who will be as broken as you and Coburn if you do this? If you take away their livelihood?”
He lifted a shoulder. “He should have thought about that before he played so cavalierly with other people’s lives. You can bet if he conducts business this way we were not the only victims. There are others, and I want him gone so he can never do it again.”
She couldn’t argue with that point. Juliana had told her what an evil man Anton Markovic was. But evil had nothing to do with this. In taking Markovic down, Harrison would give his own soul away. He was halfway there now.
“Ask yourself,” she said quietly, “if you can handle the guilt when it’s all over. Ask yourself if it’s worth it. Because I saw your face after Leonid signed that contract. You are an honorable man. But you won’t consider yourself that if you do this tomorrow.”
An expression she’d never seen before passed over his face. Shock that she’d said it? Anger that she’d dared? Fear she was right? Her blood raced in her veins, making her feel light-headed. She had gone too far. But she’d never have forgiven herself for not saying it before it was too late.
He turned and walked away from her, out onto the terrace. She gave him a few minutes, then followed. He stood looking at the smoky skyline of Manhattan, shrouded on a smoggy, summer night.
“You think you know me,” he rasped when he sensed her behind him. “But you don’t. You think everyone is good like you are, but they aren’t. You’re an anomaly in a world where greed and selfishness rule.”
She moved beside him so she could see him, see the torment on his face. Her blood pounded hard in her ears, warning her to stop, warning her she’d already pushed him far enough and he was letting her in slowly but surely. But she couldn’t because he needed to hear this.
“You tell yourself that because it’s easier to believe. Because it’s easier than admitting the beautiful human man that you are inside that cast-iron exterior. I can’t watch you do it, Harrison. I am beyond that.”
“Then leave.” His harsh words hit her like a slap in the face. She braved his anger and put a hand on his arm. He shook it off, his eyes cold. “It was a mistake thinking this could ever work, Frankie. I told you that in Long Island, but you wouldn’t listen.”
“Harrison—”
“Leave.” His gaze tangled with hers, like polished stone. “I don’t want you here.”
Her heart fell apart. She should be used to how brutally cold he could be but it didn’t prepare her for the way she shattered, tiny fragments of herself raining down over her until she felt as though nothing was left. Only a searing pain that seemed to transcend her body.
He had the ability to make her feel everything. And nothing.
Her hands shook as she pushed her hair out of her face and looked up at him. “You’re right. I don’t know you, then. Because I thought you were more than this.”
She turned and left the penthouse, tears threatening to penetrate her numbness. She’d thought she’d been getting through to him, that something was clicking in that closed-off brain of his. But she’d been wrong. The beast could wallow in his self-imposed misery. She was done.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THE PRIVATE CLUB in the h
eart of downtown Washington where Anton Markovic was meeting a senior government official had been described as “the closest thing to the unofficial heart of the city’s intellectual elite” that existed. Housed in an elegant Louis XVI–style townhome on Embassy Row that had once been a private residence, it had been the meeting place of presidents, Supreme Court justices and Nobel Prize winners over its history.
It was the type of place that, should he run for office, would define Harrison’s life. He entered the wood-paneled library with its refined decor and elaborately carved fireplaces and took a seat near the windows. You could almost feel the backroom conversations that had shaped a nation. It was that steeped in tradition. Prestige. He felt underdressed even in a suit.
Locating his target sitting across from a salt-and-pepper-haired bureaucrat near one of the fireplaces, he took the opportunity to study him. Anton Markovic was in his late fifties, graying at the temples, handsome by anyone’s standards. But it was the cruel edge to his mouth that drew his eye. The knowledge of how much devastation he had wreaked with a calculated move to save a failing empire.
His body went ice-cold, as if it had been February, not the last sweltering days of August in a town built on a swamp.
He was not letting him walk out of here intact.
Markovic gave him an absentminded look, as if he half recognized him but was too wrapped up in his conversation to pursue the thought. Harrison sat down in a chair beside the fireplace and waited. It was another half hour before the two men stood, shook hands and walked toward the stairwell. Harrison unfolded himself from the chair, intercepted them at the door and held his hand out to Markovic. “Harrison Grant.”
The bureaucrat looked intrigued to see him there. A wary glitter appeared in the Russian’s eyes. “A pleasure,” he said, shaking his hand.
Bile pooled in the back of his throat at the touch of the other man’s hand. He brought a practiced, easy smile to his lips. “Could I steal you for a drink? I had something I wanted to discuss with you.”
The suspicion in the Russian’s eyes intensified. “I’m afraid I have dinner plans.”
“Ten minutes.” Harrison made it rude not to accept. You’ll want to hear what I have to say, his eyes told the Russian. And not in front of your companion.
Markovic nodded and said his goodbyes to the bureaucrat. The Russian waited until the other man had cleared the landing and was walking down the lower stairs before he spoke.
“I had the feeling our paths might cross someday.”
The way he said it in an almost casual tone, the complete disregard for the tragedies he’d instigated, brought Harrison’s breath to a halt in his throat. The man was a monster. Without feeling or soul. He’d heard he was this way but it was something else to see it in the flesh.
“Sit down.” He bit out the words before he clawed the other man’s eyes from his face.
The Russian sat, his expression still that cool, controlled mask. “So?”
Harrison sat down. His disbelief overrode the speech he had rehearsed in his head hundreds of times. “You don’t care, do you? What you did to my family?”
Markovic’s eyes flashed a frigid blue. “I didn’t kill your father, Grant, he did. Things happen in business... He could have done what you did—moved past his mistake and rebuilt. Instead he was weak.”
Harrison’s rage descended to a bone-deep level that scared even him. It made it almost impossible to move, to speak. “You don’t feel the slightest bit of remorse,” he managed finally, “for what you did?”
The Russian shrugged. “I’m sorry you lost your father. I’m sorry he had a disease. But he chose to make the deal.”
“He didn’t know what deal he was making. What you did was amoral and illegal. Today you would be prosecuted.”
“Good thing yesterday isn’t today. And we all know I suffered, too, Grant. I failed. I lost everything. I was going through my own personal hell.”
“Get ready to go through it again.”
Markovic’s eyes flickered. “How do you figure that?”
Harrison leaned forward and rested his forearms on his thighs. “I’ve bought up every single one of your key suppliers. Through offshore entities, subsidiaries, friends. When I flick a switch tomorrow morning, you will be missing one part, then another. Production will be delayed, then delayed some more. Until one morning you wake up and your entire operations have ground to a halt and you are paralyzed. And then I don’t care if you feel remorse. I only want you to experience the hell.”
The Russian’s face went gray. “It’s a global economy, Grant. There are any number of other suppliers I can turn to.”
Satisfaction lanced through the numbness blanketing Harrison. “Try it.” He nodded in the direction the bureaucrat had taken. “But I advise you do it before you sign your contract. You might find yourself unable to deliver.”
A sick realization spread across Markovic’s face. Harrison stood up. His skin felt too tight to be in the presence of such ugliness any longer.
Not one more second would he let this man rule his life.
“Enjoy your dinner.”
He walked past the tapestries, the paintings three presidents had considered while they had changed a nation. Away from his past. Toward his future. And wondered why it still didn’t feel right.
* * *
A whisper-quick flight later, the Grant jet deposited him back in Mahattan just before eight. Standing on his terrace with a whiskey in his hand, watching the lights from the skyscrapers cast the city in a glow of prosperity versus the history of Washington, New York seemed a lifetime away from Anton Markovic. From his past.
Someday you’re going to realize that cold heart of yours has left you alone in this big empty world, H. And when you do, nobody is going to care anymore.
The empty feeling in his gut so perfectly matched Coburn’s prediction it was like a knife twisting a particularly painful path through him. How his brother and Frankie had both known so clearly that vengeance was never going to give him the satisfaction he craved made him wonder how well he knew himself. Avenging his father’s honor was the phantom, the mirage that had kept him going all these years, but when it came down to it, Markovic had been right: his father had been sick; the Russian had not been responsible for his death.
The whiskey burned as he took a long slug of it, but not enough to ease the self-knowledge that seared him. He had wanted to hate Anton Markovic rather than acknowledge the disease that had ravaged his all-powerful father. Because if it could happen to a force like Clifford Grant, it could happen to him.
He cradled the crystal tumbler in his palm and watched the light bounce off its carefully crafted edges. Funnily enough, what was hurting him most wasn’t the past, which he knew now he needed to let go. It was Frankie. He was afraid he was that cold-hearted monster Coburn had painted who had driven away the woman he loved for good.
That he loved her his heart had acknowledged weeks ago. His head had simply refused to follow. The question now was whether he deserved a chance at happiness. Was he enough to make her happy? Would the darkness continue to move away with her in his life or would he destroy her?
His fingers tightened around the glass. He wished he had a crystal ball that would give him the answers he needed. He was terrified instead that putting his heart on the line was the only thing that might save him.
Something latent but still alive stirred inside him. He had to try.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“I’M BANKING ON the fact you have beer in this bachelor pad.”
If Coburn found it odd that his older brother, who rarely drank beer and even more infrequently dropped by for a chat on a Wednesday evening, was standing on his doorstep, he refrained from commenting. His expression, though, as he stepped back and Harrison walked in, was wry. “You’re going to have to let me finish up. Carole is here.”
“Finish up?” Coburn glanced in the direction of the bedroom. Harrison ran a hand through his hair. “Good God
, Coburn.” He turned around and headed for the door, but his brother stopped him with a hand on his arm.
“She’s getting dressed. She has an early yoga class. Stay.”
Harrison went to the kitchen, grabbed two beers from the fridge and headed for the patio. He tipped the beer back and drank a long swallow while he watched what appeared to be a raucous party on the patio opposite Coburn’s in the trendy Chelsea neighborhood.
His brother came out, pulling a T-shirt over his head. Harrison handed him his beer and nodded toward the door. “You know you’re going to have to get rid of that.”
“When I’m seventy, maybe yes.”
“Sooner than that. That type will get far too attached to the idea of bedding a CEO. Of being the one beside all that power.”
The bottle stopped halfway to Coburn’s mouth. “You’re going to run.”
He nodded. “You think you can take over without driving us into the ground?”
His brother put the bottle down. Iron determination filled his face. “You know I can.”
“I do.” Harrison tilted the bottle at him. “The press conference is tomorrow to announce my candidacy. I’d like you to be there with me.”
To any other brother, the command would have sounded arrogant. But Coburn knew what it took for him to ask for support. His brother’s eyes glimmered with an emotion he hadn’t seen him exhibit in a very long time. “I’ll be there.”
They drank in silence for a while. An ache filled Harrison’s chest. He’d missed this. More than he’d known. “How do you even sleep with that racket going on?”
“I don’t...much.” Coburn turned to him, resting his hip against the railing. “What happened with Markovic?”
“I took away enough of his suppliers to hamstring him but not kill him. He’s going to spend the rest of his days remembering what he did.” He shrugged. “Or maybe not. The man has no conscience.”
“Why didn’t you do it? Why didn’t you annihilate him?”
Tempted by Her Billionaire Boss (The Tenacious Tycoons) Page 16