Julian scoffed, stepping forward and snatching the phone directly from my hand.
“Who are you calling? Your mechanic father?” Julian laughed, a dark, mocking sound that vibrated in his chest. He pressed the speakerphone button, his eyes wild with arrogant cruelty. “Let’s tell your pathetic old man exactly how worthless his daughter is.”
The phone rang exactly half a time before the line clicked open.
Julian leaned down toward the phone. “Listen to me, old man. Your daughter is a barren, useless—”
“Julian Croft.”
The voice that echoed out of the small speaker was not the hesitant, confused tone of a working-class mechanic. It was a deep, resonant, impossibly powerful baritone. It was a voice Julian had spent his entire life idolizing. It was the voice he listened to on CNBC every morning.
Julian froze. The blood drained from his face.
“You have just made the final, fatal mistake of your pathetic, subsidized life,” the voice of Richard Sterling, the legendary billionaire titan of Sterling International, declared with lethal calmness. “Look at my daughter again, and I will erase you from the face of the earth.”
“Very funny,” Julian stammered, though his hands had begun to tremble visibly. He stared at the phone as if it had turned into a venomous snake. “Who is this? Is this some kind of joke, Victoria? Did you hire an actor?”
Chloe frowned, stepping away from the bar, forgetting to hold her supposedly aching, pregnant stomach. “Julian, what is going on?”
Minute One.
I stayed on the cold marble, looking at the bloody fingerprint I had left on his ridiculous non-disclosure agreement. I didn’t try to stand. I simply kept my eyes locked on Julian’s face, watching the fragile architecture of his ego begin to splinter. He had absolutely no idea. He was entirely, blissfully oblivious to the invisible, catastrophic financial guillotine that was currently in freefall toward his neck.
Minute Two.
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