Page 6 of Vows in Name Only
“Thank you, Mr. Cole.” He nodded at Charlene who quietly closed the office door behind her. “My assistant said this had to do with my father,” he said, sliding his hands into the front pockets of his pants.
No, he didn’t invite Gregory Cole to sit down in one of the visitors chairs or on the dark brown leather couch in his sitting area. Call it intuition or plain old superstition, something about the man unnerved him.
“Please, call me Gregory. May I?” He didn’t wait for Cain’s agreement, but settled into the wingback chair in front of the desk. Crossing one leg over the other, the older man smiled. And superstitious or not, Cain couldn’t suppress the shudder that rippled down his spine. “I have a matter regarding my...relationship with your father but decided to wait in deference to your mourning before approaching you.”
A whole week. Yes, he was a saint. But given most journalists had been camped out on Cain’s doorstep the night of Barron’s death, maybe Gregory had been magnanimous.
“Did you have a business relationship with him, Mr. Cole?” Cain questioned, deliberately using the man’s surname.
If the slight irritated Gregory, he didn’t reveal it. If anything, his smile deepened slightly, and a gleam brightened his gaze.
“I would call it more of an understanding,” he drawled, brushing an imaginary speck of lint off his immaculate suit. The gesture was contrived. Deliberate. And annoying. Impatience hummed inside Cain even as Gregory continued, “Mr. Farrell, or Cain. Can I call you Cain?”
“No.”
This time the other man couldn’t control the brief tightening around his mouth or the flash of anger in his eyes. The telltale signs were there and gone in seconds, but Cain caught them. From the way this man had strolled into his offices with a sense of entitlement, he obviously didn’t like hearing the wordno. Too fucking bad.
“As I was saying... I am a self-made man. I grew a chain of successful electronics stores on my own before selling them and investing the profit in even more lucrative projects. Now I own an exclusive financial and investment firm that has earned my clients and myself millions for the last few years,” he bragged.
“Your hard work and determination are very admirable. But I fail to see what that has to do with me or my father. Mr. Cole, I don’t want to appear rude and rush you, but I have meetings, so if we could conclude this one...?”
Actually, he didn’t give a damn about appearing rude or rushing him.
Again, he caught a glimmer of irritation before something else replaced it. Satisfaction.
Cain’s stomach tightened, and though it defied explanation, he braced himself. Because something was coming. And whatever put that gloating shine in Gregory Cole’s eyes couldn’t mean anything good for Cain.
“By all means,” Gregory purred, linking his fingers across his torso. “Before your father died, he entered into a contractual agreement with me. Now that he’s gone, it’s your responsibility to honor it.”
Cain frowned. “That’s what we have a legal department for,” he said. “If you want to leave the contract with my assistant, she’ll make sure it’s forwarded to the correct channels—”
“I can do that,Cain,” he continued, emphasizing the usage of Cain’s first name with no small amount of delight. “I thought you might want to keep this particular piece of business private. But if you don’t mind your company’s attorneys reviewing a wedding contract, I don’t either.”
Cain blinked. Stared at the man wearing the mocking grin. Shock buffeted him, momentarily rendering him deaf except for two blaring words—wedding contract.
What thefuck?
That sense of unease exploded into panic and a strangling sensation of claustrophobia. His fingers curled inside his pocket. But ingrained, brutally taught lessons kept him still. Maintained his stoic composure. Betrayed nothing of the fear ricocheting against his rib cage.
Revealed nothing of the weakness.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, voice calm.
“I’m talking about you, Cain Farrell, marrying my daughter. Your father promised you to me. Signed you over to me, actually.”
Gregory chuckled as if the thought of a father selling his son like medieval chattel amused him. Hell, since the bastard was doing the same to his own daughter, he probably did find it funny. He opened his jacket and reached inside, withdrawing folded up sheets of paper. Rising, he extended them toward Cain. “I took the precaution of bringing a copy of the contract with me. Please take your time and review it. I assure you it’s all binding.”
Numb, Cain retrieved the papers and circled his desk. Unfolding the contract, he laid it out and studied it. Silence ticked by in thunderous pulses, echoing the pounding in his veins. And the longer he read, the more consuming his fury became. As he flipped to the last page of the three-page agreement and spied his father’s bold scrawl next to Gregory’s more elegant signature, Cain’s body ached with the force he wielded to restrain himself. To not roar his outrage to the ceiling. To not flip his fucking desk. To not lunge across the space separating him from the smirking bastard across from him and wrap his hands around his scheming neck.
“You call yourself a businessman,” Cain ground out, his voice the consistency of gravel. “You forgot to add a couple more names. Extortionist. Blackmailer.”
Gregory didn’t even possess the decency to appear ashamed of his actions. Lifting a shoulder in a Gallic shrug, he arched an eyebrow. “No need to get insulting, Cain. One thing I learned during my climb up in this world, no one is going to offer handouts to a poor man with a high school education. I made my own success. Forged my own paths when people ofyour worldclosed them. And I did that by any means necessary. So if you expect me to apologize or feel ashamed for how I got here, then you’re in for a long wait that will only end in disappointment.”
“Save me that self-serving drivel,” Cain snapped, uncaring if Gregory glared at him in return. “There are plenty of people who start from the bottom, who put in the work, the sacrifice to claw their way to the top without resorting to criminal behavior. So you weren’t born with a trust fund. Over ninety percent of people aren’t. But you denigrate their efforts and shame them by justifying this—” he jabbed a finger at the offensive contract “—with where you started from.”
“Spoken like a man who’s never gone a day without in his life,” Gregory sneered, a ruddy color flooding his sharp cheekbones. A cold rage glinted in his green eyes, and Cain correctly deciphered the disgust there. For him.
“You don’t know a goddamn thing about me, Cole,” Cain growled, planting his fists on the desktop and leaning forward. “Because if you did, you would’ve never walked into my office this morning. Take this.” He flicked the three sheets of paper, and they slid across the furniture, teetering on the edge before fluttering to the floor. “And get the hell out.”
