Samara wasn’t the least bit surprised when Beckett drove them to a private hangar instead of the main airport later that morning. It stood to reason that, since Lydia had a private jet, the other side of the King family would as well. She marveled silently that this was her life—had been for several years now.
Granted, climbing the steps into the plane with Beckett’s presence behind her was a whole lot different from taking a business trip with Lydia or Journey. He hadn’t touched her since he’d talked of seduction. He’d been absorbed in his phone at her place when she showered and packed an overnight bag, and she was pathetically relieved not to have all of his attention focused solely on her.
She liked it too much.
She liked him too much.
All the careful rules she’d used to guide her life were under one grand umbrella of a rule—do not end up like her mother. She loved her mother beyond all others, but it was no secret that a bright star had been dimmed by the damage Samara’s father did when he left. There were other single mothers who had gone back to school, who had pushed through to realize the dreams they’d always had. Maybe a bit late, but what did time matter in the grand scheme of things?
Not her amma.
Amma seemed content enough with life, but Samara couldn’t help seeing what could have been—what should have been. If Devansh Patel hadn’t professed his undying love and then turned around and dropped her like yesterday’s news. If she hadn’t been pregnant with Samara when he did. If, if, if.
“You’re thinking awfully hard over there.”
“It seems to be the day for it.” She stroked a hand down the smooth leather seats. The inside of the plane could have been a posh interior room in some resort. So much money and for what? So the King families didn’t have to fly with the rest of the rabble.
Samara was the rabble. She couldn’t afford to forget that.
Beckett took her hand, his thumb absently playing along her knuckles. “I don’t think we’re as different as you like to pretend.”
Oh, this should be good. “How do you figure?”
“We’re both walking middle fingers to our fathers, aren’t we?”
She jerked back, but he kept her hand captive. She felt like he’d flayed her first layer of skin away with a few short words, leaving her one exposed nerve in the process. Words crowded against her lips, harsh and petty and guaranteed to slam the distance back between them before he could see how easily he could hurt her. “How?” Was that hoarse, wrecked thing her voice? Do better. She cleared her throat. “How did you know?”
He kept up that soothing touch, granting her the relative privacy of staring out the window as Houston dropped away beneath the plane. “Like recognizes like. I was never cold enough for my father. After my mother died, he didn’t even mourn. He just systematically erased all evidence of her from our lives—from Thistledown—and he never forgave me for not being willing to do the same.” Beckett shook his head. “When I was in college, I had this epiphany. I realized that the whole purge was his grief taking hold, and while I understand that, I didn’t know if I could forgive him. He had a choice after she died. We both did. We just ended up on different paths that never quite met no matter how hard I tried. So I stopped trying.”
“Then what happened?” The words were dragged from her by a curiosity she couldn’t quell. A recognition. She realized she already knew the answer. “You resolved to be better than he’d ever been—and to do it your way instead of his.”
“Yeah.” Beckett chuckled. “Pissed him off like you wouldn’t believe. We became the immovable object and the unstoppable force. It didn’t matter if we both wanted the same future for Morningstar—we wanted it to come about in different ways. It took all of three months of working in the office together to realize we’d bring the company down if we didn’t get some distance from each other, which is why I took over the overseas areas of the business. It worked out better that way.”
“I’m sorry, Beckett.” She’d said it before, and she suspected she’d say it again more than a few times. Samara wasn’t sure if it was better or worse that he’d recognized that his father was just a broken and angry man instead of some monster without feeling—or if he’d walked her path instead.
He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a slow kiss to her knuckles. To the ring she wore on her right hand. “No reason to be sorry. If he’d been less determined to forge me in a fire of his choosing, we would have had something resembling a normal relationship.” His tone took on a wistful note. “We both loved her. There was no damn reason that I had to be left squirreling away evidence of her existence in that house like a damn smuggler. We should have been able to remember her together—to have a bond because of shared loss.” Beckett shook his head. “But that’s a child’s plea. It doesn’t matter anymore.”
She stared at the seat in front of them. The white leather was stitched together with gold thread, a reminder that Lydia was a King, and had been raised with the same playbook Nathaniel had. There was such a thing as a bad egg, but Samara wasn’t blind enough to her boss’s faults to assume that was the case in this situation.
She very determinedly set thoughts of Lydia aside and focused on the here and now. “I never got the chance to know my father.”
“I’m sorry.”
She pressed her lips together. “Oh, he’s not dead. He lives in Dallas with his wife and three daughters.”
Beckett’s thumb paused before it resumed its path on the back of her hand. “Ah.”
Samara had expected his sympathy to sting, to feel like pity, but there was a deep understanding in that single word. A kinship. It was enough to keep her talking, digging into the past and that soul wound she’d never quite gotten to the other side of despite so many years of trying. “He and my amma met in college. He was handsome and rich and from a prominent Indian family with a long and honorable history. It was love, at least on her side of things.” She glanced down at the ring on her right hand. “Maybe it was even love on his side as well. He proposed—a secret engagement that they didn’t tell either of their families about. But love has never been enough. I don’t know which version of the story is more tragic—that he played my amma and as soon as she got pregnant he lost interest in the game and moved on. Or that he really loved her, but was too weak to stand up to his family when they demanded he break off the engagement.”
“Shit, Samara.”
She kept going because to stop now was to leave the story unfinished. If she didn’t keep talking, she might never start again. “Her family disowned her when they found out she was pregnant. Spurned by the blessed Patel family and pregnant with a bastard child? Unacceptable.” Some days she put serious thought into tracking down her amma’s parents just to prove to them what horrible people they were for leaving their daughter to hang in the wind. Ultimately, though, they didn’t matter any more than her sperm donor did.
She laced her fingers through Beckett’s, not looking at him because even if he understood, she couldn’t risk seeing pity in his eyes. “She gave up her future so that I could have one. She worked her ass off under god-awful conditions to make sure I never went without. This…” She motioned at everything and nothing. “I can’t fail, because if I fail then I’m failing her.”
“And the ring?”
Of course he’d noticed the ring. She stared at it, at the simple gold band and the shiny emerald that she’d always loved as much as she’d hated. “My amma kept the ring he proposed with. She let me take it when I graduated. I think she wanted it to be an apology of sorts, even if it wasn’t my father doing the apologizing. I wear it because it’s a reminder of what’s at stake.”
“Have you ever thought about trying to meet him?”
She shook her head even as her stomach dropped. “No. He hasn’t shown any interest in my life up to this point. Even if I could forgive him for what he did to my amma—and I can’t—then what respect do I have for a man who hasn’t been there for thirty-two years? No.” She shook her head again, more firmly this time. “He’s not worth the time we took for this conversation, let alone the effort it would require to attempt a meeting.”
“Monster fathers and saintly mothers.” He squeezed her hand. “See, I told you we had plenty in common.”
Samara loved him, just a little, in that moment. For dispelling the tension, for taking her messy past without pointing out all the holes in her ambition. For just…being there. If she didn’t think too hard about it, she could lean on this man when the world became too heavy to bear.
They could lean on each other.
Dangerous, tempting thoughts.
For the first time, she didn’t shove them away as soon as they entered her mind. Instead, she turned them over, examining them from every angle. Beckett wasn’t her father—he wasn’t his father, either. Samara was most definitely not a college student with no power of her own. Were they equals in the world’s eyes? No. Definitely not.
But if they were equals—really equals—when they were together, then who cared what anyone else’s opinion was?
“Take me out tonight, Beckett.”
He shifted to face her, still holding her hand. “Anywhere you want to go.”
“I don’t want to pick. Surprise me. A real date.”
His slow grin had her stomach doing a somersault. “Consider it done—on one condition.”
Give him the benefit of the doubt. She took a steadying breath. “Okay. What condition?”
“For the night, we’re not Samara Mallick and Beckett King. It’s you and me as we are—none of the other bullshit.”
It wasn’t as easy as that, but the picture he presented was still so incredibly attractive. She leaned forward and ran a single finger down the center of his chest. “Deal.” She stopped at the top of the band of his slacks. “How much time left in this flight?”
His gaze went white hot. “Long enough.”
“Good answer.”
Beckett didn’t stop grinning all the way from the airport to the hotel. Every time he’d get himself under control, he’d take in Samara’s swollen lips and the satisfied look in her eye and know he’d put it there. Then he’d start grinning again.
“Get control of yourself.” But she was smiling, too.
The car pulled up to the curb outside the hotel, and Beckett moved quickly to climb out and open the door for Samara. She raised her eyebrows at him, but she didn’t comment. He got their bags and guided her through the doors into the lobby. “I’ll get you set up with the room and then I have to head to my meeting.” He glanced at his watch. Plenty of time.
She looked around as they walked into the main lobby. “Do you usually book five-star hotels for a twenty-four-hour business trip?”
“Fuck no.” He slipped an arm around her waist. “I usually use one of the Morningstar condos.” Beckett kissed her temple. “But this trip isn’t all about business.”
“I see.”
He let her process that while he checked them in. Next stop was the suite. They took the elevator up, and he caught her watching him. “What?”
“Are you trying to impress me?”
He grinned. “Nope. We both know you could book this place as easily as I could.” He leaned down and kissed her bare shoulder. “Want to know a secret?”
“Always.”
“The reason I chose this place specifically is because I love the ocean. It feels different than the Gulf. Wilder. Less contained. The views from this room are amazing, and the last time I decided to take a break from work and spend some time here, I sat on the balcony for hours and watched the tide come in.”
She reached up and touched his face. “A secret for a secret?”
“Always,” he said, echoing her earlier response.
“The ocean scares the shit out of me. All open water does. I could live in a swimming pool, but the second I can’t see the entirety of the body of water I’m in, I’m out of there.”
He liked this game, liked this careful peeling away of their defenses as they shared little details. The conversation in the plane had been heavy, and that was important, too. But this was something special. Something they did only with each other.
Beckett shifted closer. “Did you watch a lot of Jaws as a kid?”
“When I was eleven, my amma decided I was old enough to fend for myself while she worked Saturdays, and one of those weekends, there was a monster marathon. Jaws, Piranha, Anaconda. Back to back.”
He barked out a laugh. “I could see how that would leave a mark.”
The elevator doors dinged and opened. They walked out arm in arm, turning as one down the hallway to the suite he’d booked. This is how it could be with us. The small moments and the big. Facing down each obstacle as a single unit.
He couldn’t offer her a job again. She wouldn’t say yes now any more than she’d said yes up to this point, but at least now he understood why. In Samara’s mind, taking a job with him while they were sleeping together put her at his mercy the same way her mother had been at her father’s mercy when she got pregnant. It wasn’t even close to the same situation, but he understood why it felt similar.
The suite was similar to ones he’d used in the past—a very high-end airy feel with large windows overlooking the beach. The ocean stretched as far as the eye could see, and even that one glimpse settled something inside him. He felt Samara’s gaze and spoke without looking over. “Some days, I really consider leaving it all, buying a little house on a beach somewhere, and starting over.”
She came up behind him and slipped her arms around his waist. Samara propped her chin on his shoulder. “What’s stopping you?”
“It’s the coward’s way out. I didn’t choose this life, but it’s mine. I’m uniquely qualified to make changes within Morningstar, and it’s my responsibility to see it done.” He could sell the company—had threatened to do exactly that once in a fight with his father—but it wasn’t the right call. Most days, Beckett even loved his job.
He didn’t love what would come next in this conflict with Lydia, though.
With a sigh, he turned and took Samara’s hands, dropping a kiss to first one and then the other. “I have to go if I’m going to make my meeting.” He paused. “Why don’t you take advantage of the superior spa they have onsite? It’ll be a real vacation.” It was the least he could do after the insanity of the last few days.
“I might just do that.” She gave him a playful push. “Text me when you’re done and we’ll go somewhere for dinner.”
“Deal.” He forced himself to release her and headed for the door. The car was waiting for him, as requested, and he took a short drive parallel to the beach to Marina del Rey. Following the instructions he’d been given, Beckett made his way to a massive yacht tied to the end of one of the docks. Its name was written across the side in classy blue font. The Queen Bitch.
This is the place.
Movement on the top deck caught his attention. A thin man in a pair of swim trunks and boat shoes leaned over the railing. Judging from his tanned skin, he spent most of his time on the yacht. Silver seeded through his hair, peppering the dark brown, and though his eyes were hidden by sunglasses, Beckett knew they were blue. Elliott Bancroft, Lydia’s husband.
“Beckett King.”
“Uncle Elliott.”
The man burst out laughing. “Don’t start with that family bullshit. Come on up.”
Beckett studied the interior of the yacht as he made his way up three floors to where his uncle waited. He’d only ever been on one once, years ago, and everything had been gold plated and decorated within an inch of its life. In such a small space, it left Beckett feeling claustrophobic and wanting to put as much distance between himself and the yacht as possible.
This wasn’t the same at all. Everything from the floor beneath his seat to the trim lining the windows to the furniture in the rooms he passed were all top of the line. Their understated luxury screamed money, but only if one knew where to look. Part of the inside joke in the perpetual bullshit between new money and old.
Elliott had acquired a cocktail—a Manhattan from the look of it—and he toasted Beckett. “What do you think of the old bitch?”
“Nice place. You live here?” He already knew the answer, but lording his knowledge of the man over Elliott wasn’t going to win him any favors. He needed his uncle on his side, and from the research he’d done on the man, all evidence indicated that Elliott Bancroft liked to consider himself the smartest person in the room at all times.
“For now.” Elliott took him in. “You have the look of your old man. Same stubborn expression and that jaw that makes the ladies weak in the knees. Shame to hear he died.” The sheer glee in his voice gave lie to the words.
There isn’t a damn person in this world actually sad to see Nathaniel King gone.
“He left Lydia Thistledown Villa.”
Elliott straightened and whistled. “Well, shit. She actually pulled it off.” He grabbed a pack of cigarettes from a little cubby next to the captain’s chair. “You mind?”
“Go ahead.” Beckett waited for him to light up. “What do you mean she pulled it off?”
“Lydia always said she’d get that damn house back.” He inhaled deeply, held the smoke for a few moments, and exhaled through his nose. “She couldn’t handle being cut off all those years ago. It drove her out of her mind, and she wasn’t completely sane to begin with.”
Beckett could think of a few choice words to describe his aunt, but crazy didn’t come into the equation. There was nothing uncontrolled or insane about her actions—she was cold and calculating and perfectly aware of what was at stake every step of the way. “How do you think she managed it? The will was changed right around the time my father died.” It was one thing he couldn’t make fit in the rest of the puzzle. Lydia wanted Morningstar or, barring that, she wanted to bring it down brick by brick. Every single one of her moves up to this point had been inching them toward that goal. But if she’d somehow managed to manipulate Nathaniel into handing over his family home, why not go for the company as well?
“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Elliott dragged in more cigarette smoke. He tipped his sunglasses back onto the top of his head and stared at Beckett. “Let me paint you a scenario and you tell me how far off I am.”
He bit back his frustration. He hadn’t come there for more games. He’d come because Elliott Bancroft had a bone to pick with his wife, and even with their spending more time apart than together, they’d been married thirty-two years. If there was anyone who knew Lydia, it was her husband.
Beckett dropped into the seat across from the man. “I’m listening.”
“I imagine she’s been seeding malcontent with someone within your company for years, dropping little bits of poison in their ears until they’re sure night is day and day is night. She’s good at playing roles to get what she wants.” Something dark flickered over his face, and he tapped the cigarette into an ashtray. “This man—and ten-to-one it was a man—slips something into Nathaniel’s drink during a meeting. Nothing serious. Just something to make him a little more agreeable. Then they change the will and make it official with two witnesses, both of whom she owns.”
Beckett went cold. He pictured Walter Trissel’s stammering, red-flushed face when he read the will. No point to contest it. I stood as witness. Fast-forward to two days later when Walter left the company for Kingdom Corp. He’d known the man was disloyal, but drugging Nathaniel crossed so many lines. There hadn’t been anything in his system but alcohol the night he died, but this would have happened up to a week beforehand. Plenty of time for any evidence to disappear. “Why not just take the whole company at that point?”
“She only fights when she knows she can win. It would be logical for Nathaniel to will her that damn house, but if he gave her everything, that would raise too many red flags. I’m sure she’s got some kind of backup plan in place.”
A backup plan like convincing Beckett to sell the company.
He sat back. “That’s quite the story, but it doesn’t mean a damn thing without proof.” He had theories for days, but a theory wasn’t enough to help him at this point. The photos Frank provided didn’t mean anything in the long run now that Lydia had changed her story. He could—and would—put pressure on Walter, but that meant he had to get the man alone first.
“It’s how she operates. If you look back through her history, there are a trail of people—again, mostly men—who have been at her mercy because of events she orchestrated. I was always surprised she didn’t try the same song and dance on her father, but maybe he was on to her games.” Elliott shrugged. “Or maybe passing over her for CEO was punishment for the shit she’d stirred up with my family.”
He frowned. “What do you mean? I was under the impression the Bancrofts and Lydia were on good terms.” Except for Elliott’s near-constant affairs.
“Who do you think her first victim was, Beckett?” Elliott snubbed out his cigarette. “We were friends, once upon a time, but she wanted more and I didn’t. She took matters into her own hands, and when it came out that she was pregnant, there was nothing to do but marry her.”
Beckett stared. What he was saying…what he was accusing Lydia of? “But you stayed married.”
“Bancrofts aren’t quitters, nephew. If I walked out on her, I stood to lose everything. Over the years, we fell into what passed for a comfortable arrangement, but I still can’t stand to be in the same room as that woman.”
There were two sides to every story. Beckett might think his aunt was damn near evil, but he seriously doubted that Elliott was some babe in the woods who’d fallen prey to her. It was far more likely that he’d always been a philanderer and his family had jumped at the chance to make him someone else’s problem. But if even part of what he said was true, Beckett needed to have a conversation with Walter Trissel—sooner rather than later. His former attorney might be brilliant in court, but he was a weak man with weak impulses. If Beckett found something to leverage against him, he could get the man to talk. He was sure of it.
“Thanks for your time.” Beckett stood and considered his uncle. “If you were going to hit Lydia where it hurt, where would you aim?”
Elliott threw back his head and laughed. “Good luck, nephew. That would require Lydia to have a fucking heart.”