Page 53 of Beauty and the Billionaire

“I’m curious. Do you have any regrets?” I asked tactlessly.

He shot me a hateful look. “Regrets?” Something softened in him a little. It was barely noticeable. “Some, perhaps.”

I hated how hopeful it made me.Say it, I heard myself pleading internally.Say you’re sorry.

We eyed one another carefully, the standoff seeming almost ridiculous and unimportant as Julian licked his lips and hesitated. This couldn’t be easy for him. I didn’t want it to be easy, but I could almost sympathize. Asking for forgiveness was the hardest thing there was.

Julian tilted his head a little in thought. “I regret…” He lifted his shoulders and let them fall back resignedly. “I suppose my biggest regret is putting my trust in that moron gambler, Max. I should have known you’re the sort of person who would find a way to use someone’s vice against them.”

His cruel and cold look after uttering those words strengthened my determination. Had I really hoped for an apology? Hoped? What a fucking fool I was. “Use against him?” I demanded. “Do you not understand the nature of vices, Hale? He did it to himself. All three of you did.”

“What does it matter?” he asked in a resigned tone. “It’s over now. You’re forcing the sale of the remaining shares—making Voss and me very rich, I might add—and you win. Is that why I’m here? To say it to your face? You win, Blackthorne.”

“If it were only that simple, you could have sent me a card, and I’d let you go,” I said in a darkening voice.

“You can’t stop me,” Julian said thoughtlessly.

“I can do whatever the hell I want to you,” I said. “You have no idea of the sort of power I have over you, Hale. But I’m going to make all this very clear to you soon.”

“Power? I doubt it,” Julian said. He didn’t care. Here was a man who had played a game and lost. That was all this was to him. We might as well have been playing Monopoly. It was all so clear to me now. He couldn’t care about losing his precious company when he had never lifted a finger to build it. He was a man who walked the Earth believing it was his God-given right to be precisely who he was. Anything else was unfathomable to him. Losing one company only meant he needed to tap into his endless coffers of wealth to create another. He belonged to a club that was hard to be expelled from. Nearly impossible, I would say, except that I held Julian’s ticket to exile and infamy.

I hated that he was able to make his peace with it so quickly. Just over a month ago, he had raved like a madman at the realization that he had been fooled.

“Do you remember our freshman year?” I asked.

“What’s that got to do with anything?” he retorted quickly.

“Everything.” I stared into his eyes as he slowly neared the armchair opposite mine and sat uninvited.

“Are you still butt-hurt about that? Is that why you’re doing this?” He was incredulous, but he kept a check on his temper. Perhaps he did realize I had the upper ground in this battle.

I thought about the old days for a few heartbeats. It was so hard to turn my gaze to the past and skip over the most recent history of my life. When I looked, the path I had walked was littered with heartbreak and disappointments.

“I thought you were so charming,” I admitted carefully. “When I first saw you, you made my pulse quicken. Did you know that?” He stared at me guardedly and said nothing. “You must have. Why else would you have told everyone I was gay?”

His upper lip curled, and he bared his teeth. “You remember it wrong. You never liked me.”

“Fuck off. I did.”

Julian shook his head. “You wanna squabble over some teenage grievances? Fine. All you ever did was sulk and bristle.”

“You made my life hell,” I threw back at him. “And you didn’t stop there. Every door in the city was shut in my face because of you and your friends. You were so full of yourself. It’s pathetic.”

“You’re wrong,” he said simply. “You were the one who was full of himself. You and your little scholarship that made you better than everyone else. Like I was dirty just because we had money. Screw you, Blackthorne. And to say youlikedme, now that it’s been fifteen years, is bullshit. I never wanted you to like me. I never wanted to know you.”

“We can agree on that,” I said. “But you had the misfortune of picking on me. All this is your doing.”

Julian leaned back in the armchair and crossed his arms protectively around himself. “Cut to the chase, Blackthorne. What do you have on me? And what do you want?”

So, he knew there was more. There was something so terrified in his eyes when he asked the question despite his best effort to keep it casual.

I had spent more than a decade meeting with people who saw me as less than what I was. All my adult life, I had to watch and understand what went on behind the most minute twitches of people’s facial muscles or the beads of sweat gently breaking on their brows. Without that, I never would have climbed the ladder as swiftly as I had.

I knew people. That was my curse. I saw into their souls and found every vile intention laid bare. But Julian…

Julian was scared.

To me, he looked like a terrified kitten who was about to hiss as his last resort, but we both knew it was a harmless act. Hecouldn’t do anything to me. All he could hope for was to appear brave.

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