Page 19 of Unwrapping the Billionaire

“Tell us how you did it, Nathan.”

“Tell us how you put her in her place.”

Her?

Nathan puts his wine glass down and places his hands on top of one another, like he’s the wise old prophet of family fuck-overs. “I would have sold it sooner if my father hadn't left his company to meandGrace…”

“Silly fool.”

“What the hell was he thinking?” agrees Nathan. “It was bad enough watching him indulge that Harvard dream of hers… The only encouragement any woman needs is whether to get on her back or her knees first.” My hand clenches into a fist. “It took a little, ah,ingenuity, but we got there in the end. The business world isn’t for women, boys. They’re best suited to the bedroom, if you know what I mean.”

I want to reach across the table and smash my fist into Nathan Parker’s fat, Château Margaux-stained face. “Grace Parker is smarter than any of you bastards,” I rage.

“Where does Farley Senior fit in to all this?”

I go very still.

“I made a deal with the devil,” says Nathan, looking pleased as fucking punch about it. “Turns out, we both wanted rid of Grace.”

“What the hell did you do?” I whisper.

“He saw her as a distraction,” he continues. “Thought Grace was holding his son back. He convinced himself that she was, “taming the shark,” or something equally as nonsensical. Jonas was always his father’s son, through and through.”

Not anymore...

“He told me to sharpen Jonas’ teeth, so I sent an email from his personal account to my sister—a sort ofanti love letter.” He laughs again. “In return, the old man guaranteed a sale of Parker & Fisk for a good price when the time was right.”

“But Farley died years ago… How—?”

“It was set up in advance with a couple of his associates. I needed a year or two to convince the board of Grace’s incompetence anyway, and here we are today. I now have the means to set up my own corporation, devoid of my sister’s meddling.”

Holy shit.On some level—some really, really base level—I’m impressed. It’s the kind of thing I might have done, under the circumstances… And then the full weight of his words hit me like a wrecking ball.

Nathan and my father.

They smashed up the best thing I ever had.

Icontinuedtosmash up the best thing I ever had by grinding the ruins of Grace and me into my expensive office carpet.

I should have called her.

She should have called me.

We’re both as stubborn as each other.

“What’s going to happen to your sister now?”

Nathan shrugs. “She tried to appeal Jonas Farley’s decision, but he went ahead with the sale anyway. The last I heard, she was planning on moving away from New York. Good riddance, if you ask me. She always was a pain in my ass.”

Nathan’s sibling rivalry seems to have taken a couple of hundred steroid injections along the way.

I need to put this right.

“Future!” I bellow.

“One more stop on this rollercoaster, sugar,” she hums, materializing on the other side of the table, and I brace myself as she wraps her ruby-red fingernails around the Château Margaux

A second later, a thousand-dollar bottle of wine is smashing over my head.

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