Page 94 of Gray Area

I close my eyes, because looking at him hurts, and I can’t say what I need to if I am. “I can’t go through this again, Declan.”

“I promise—”

“No,” I stop him, my eyes opening wide. “No promises. Please. Please let me go.”

Declan’s face falls, and he steps back, freeing me and the door, and I open it and leave without looking back. Again.

Chapter 58

DECLAN

“Well, this is a mess.”

I open one eye and see Slade before me, surveying the hotel room. He looks to me on the floor of the suite and cocks his head. “Oh, sorry, did I wake you?” he asks with false concern.

I close my eye. “Go away,” I say, my voice—raw from the whiskey and shouting I had done the hours before—coming out more gravelly than usual.

I hear the sound of Slade’s footsteps, and then of upholstery being sat on and I know my brother has in factnotgone away as I requested.

I heave out a breath. “Just say what the fuck you want to say, Slade, and then get the fuck out.”

“I was just thinking that this is a very familiar scene,” he says, gesturing to the room. “You, on the floor with a bottle and surrounded by destruction. At least your taste in alcohol has improved,” he points out.

“If that’s all you want to say then get the fuck out.” I roll onto my back and realize that is a bad idea as I lie on broken glass, so I immediately roll back onto my side.

“Oh, I got a lot fucking more to say, but I don’t think you want to hear it.”

“Just say it, then get out,” I grind out to him, pinching the bridge of my nose to try and stem the headache that’s ebbing there just behind my eyes.

“Okay,” Slade says, “I think that Vivian leaving you ten years ago was the best thing that ever happened to you.”

The words hit me quick, like a sucker punch, and I immediately react, ready to fight back. My eyes fly open and I lurch toward him, but I’m still under the influence, the alcohol dulling my precision and I stumble, falling to the right of him, on a pile of what had been a side table.

Slade looks down at me, his face showing boredom from the armchair he sits in. “Disagree?” he taunts.

“You are so fucking wrong,” I fire at him, growling the words out, sending them in warning. The more he speaks the more I sober. And the more I sober, the more ready I am to kill him.

“Am I?” he asks with his eyebrows raised. “You were a fucking mess when she left, Declan. You were destroyed. Any other man would have rotted where he was, but not you. You used that anger, that rage, and you built a fucking empire. God!” he shouts in frustration, slapping his thighs and standing to pace around. “You took all the madness and you used it where it was needed, and you skyrocketed us up. You made Dad’s dreams come true, you continued on what he started, on what you promised to do for him.”

“I would have done that anyway!” I counter with a shout, struggling to get to my feet.

“No, Declan, you wouldn’t have,” Slade says softly. He stops pacing and rests his hands on the back of the chair he’s just vacated. “I saw you with her back then. You were happy and there was nothing you wanted more than to be with her and run the businesses we had and live happily ever after. And that would have been fine. It was going to be great. But her leaving… well, that pushed you. It tunneled your vision and pushed you to build and create and become.”

I take in what Slade says, desperately trying to ignore the pounding headache, my sour gut, and my anger at his words. “That’s your opinion, Slade.”

“Nah, Dec, that’s the facts. A hard fucking truth. Some people break when their heart is destroyed, but not you. No, you rose from the ashes and led us to become the top grossing corporation in the country. You took us from small business nothings and made us a household name. And you destroyed the villain in the process. And then think about Vivian. Would she have even gone and done the school thing? Would she have gone and changed her major and made a difference with the kids like she is doing?”

I give up on my struggle to get myself up, and instead brace my elbows on my knees and drop my head into my hands.But I’ve been dead inside every day since she left, I silently retort. I was a man with no purpose, dead on my feet, and I pushed through to fulfill what my father wanted, what he had always strived for. Built something to be proud of, to make her proud of me too. I clung to it—far stronger was the passion than it had been before her—and I cleared the way like a man on a mission, because that’s what I was. I was on a mission for purpose. And building up Falco Enterprises was what I had to do. The only thing I had. I tried to think about any happiness all the success we had mighthave brought me, and I had nothing. The last happiness I had, the last time was when I had been with her, and I’d been an angry motherfucker ever since.

“Hey Dec?”

I roll my head up to look at my brother.

“You’ve done all the hard things. Getting her back will be no big deal,” he says. Then he stands and crosses the room to the door. “We have a meeting in an hour. Get ready,” he says on his way out.

Get her back?

Hell, Slade must have been drunker than I was.

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