Net Worth by Amelia Wilde
2
Mason
I wonderif she’s going to show.
Wondering anything about a woman is an unfamiliar habit. There have been a few over the years who served as useful distractions, but no one has ever made such an impression that it kept me awake at night or snatched away my attention during business meetings. Keeping the family intact has taken the bulk of my focus for the past fourteen years, followed closely by building Phoenix Industries. Those two projects dovetailed. I needed money to keep us together, and to keep my siblings in school and then in college. I needed the business to prove to anyone who might come knocking that we were fine.
So that’s what I did. That’s what I’ve done.
Until Charlotte Van Kempt.
I thought of Cyrus’s wife and daughter in the abstract before. As pressure points to be manipulated.
Charlotte could not be more real.
And now all I can think about is her body in that skirt suit. Her red-faced rage at me for ruining her plans. Her curiosity. She’s twenty and sheltered, new to the world of men like me, and it is fucking intoxicating.
But I’m not here to be intoxicated. I’m here to observe the property I’m about to own. Charlotte will show. Naive as she is, she understood that she had reached a dead end. No other choices but to bend to my will. If she hates the idea, all the better.
The Cornerstone development has one positive attribute: the location. From this rise at the edge of the property I can look down into the open rib cage of what Cyrus Van Kempt tried and failed to build. Steel beams rise from a concrete slab at the bottom of the basement.
Of course, everyone with half a brain knows that location is crucial in real estate. I’m of the opinion that it’s a key part of any project, but not the only essential consideration. With enough investment any area’s desirability can be increased. Business districts and neighborhoods can be manipulated to a person’s will as long as he has enough money and drive.
Cyrus had neither. He ran out of money before the initial construction stages could be completed, and the man has only ever had enough drive to fuck people over.
I have personal experience with that.
I’m not the only one.
His daughter didn’t look so pink-cheeked and white-faced at our meetings because she has time to fix any of this. The situation at Van Kempt Industries is far less rosy than she painted it in her proposal. When she said a versatile team is already in place, she meant that the staff originally hired to work the project are down to a skeleton crew. Most of them are doing the jobs of three people or struggling to make work for themselves in the absence of any actual development to do. It’s not just the man’s family he’s let down. It’s families across the city, some of whom were no doubt counting on him to keep them employed.
They’ve made a poor assessment.
A black town car turns the corner at the edge of the site. It’s clearly struggling, the frame juddering in a way that suggests a problem with the engine, or the transmission. Things I don’t generally bother to care about, except for the fact that this town car is carrying Charlotte Van Kempt. She grips the wheel with small hands. Hanging on for dear life. The innocent heat of her mouth comes back to me in a hard push at the base of my spine.
I don’t want her hands on the wheel of that car. I want them elsewhere. Clasped and begging, for instance. Or wrapped around my cock.
It’s a slight problem, that wanting. Wanting is not strictly part of the deal. At least not want for Charlotte specifically, though it is her body that’s been on my mind. Her eyes. Her taste. The feel of her delicate bone structure underneath my palm.
It’s her body that will bear the brunt of my revenge.
I see the moment she sees me, standing next to my Escalade. Charlotte can’t or won’t meet my eyes and her teeth dig into her bottom lip. She concentrates very, very hard on parking behind my car, leaving a good twenty feet of space behind the back bumper. The curve of her neck when she leans over to take something from the front seat makes my already-hard cock harder.
Fuck.
One slim ankle out of the car, then the other, then the rest of her. Charlotte wears a black sheath dress made from the same fabric as that little skirt suit, a narrow belt around her waist and those same cardboard shoes. No sunglasses, so I have a clear view of the adorable determination in her huge blue eyes. She grips the leather folio like it’s holding her upright. The muscles around my right knee tighten, layering a more acute pain over the ever-present ache.
I’m going to wreck her.
She approaches with her head held high, though her pert chin drops as she gets closer. Charlotte Van Kempt can’t help herself. I know what I look like, towering over her next to a monument to her father’s abject failure as a business owner and a man. I know how she’d fight me if I forced her to her knees. I know how she’d secretly be relieved.
Charlotte slows a few feet off. Out of my reach. Her eyes dart over me, head to toe, in a flutter of her eyelashes. Suspicion needles at the back of my neck. That she’s seeing more than I want her to see.
Not possible.
She clears her throat. “Mr. Hill, I’ve brought—”
I take one step toward her to put her within my reach, shove my hand between her dress and that little belt, and yank her closer. Charlotte gasps. She almost goes over, tumbling off her heels and into me. It’s a disappointment when she doesn’t, and a sheer pleasure to watch her straighten up with her face blazing red.
“Now you don’t have to shout.”
Her hand comes up to her throat, to the naked hollow there, her fingertips hiding her nervous swallow from view. Charlotte brushes a single lock of hair away from her face. “I’ve brought—”
“Look at me.”
She drags her eyes up from the folio to meet mine.
“You’re free to be nervous, Ms. Van Kempt. You’re free to be angry. You’re free to be humiliated. But you’re not going to look at the ground when you speak to me. If I want your eyes lowered, I’ll tell you.”
“Okay.” It’s just above a whisper. Embarrassed, but steady.
I let my smile come slowly. Let it turn into the expression that brings meeting rooms to dead silence.
The hollow of Charlotte’s throat dips. She needs a diamond there. So fucking badly. Is that what used to be there? Is that what she keeps reaching for?
“Okay, Mr. Hill.” A breath of a pause. When I don’t interrupt, her shoulders relax. “I’ve brought the signed contract.”
She offers the folio to me and I take it. Look her up and down one more time, then flip it open to double-check the signature. Her chin comes out so she can look over the folio with me. Make sure it’s still there. I want to put my hand around her neck and feel her pulse. I want to stop it for a few brief seconds so she knows I can. I want to make her understand the sins she’s going to pay for.
But I won’t do it yet. Patience.
I snap the folio shut and she blinks, startled. Curiosity ignites all down my spine. It’s not particularly loud, or particularly violent. It’s leather on leather. Something happened with it while it was out of my sight—while she was out of my sight—or else it’s me she’s reacting to. This is how I want her. Wide-eyed. Innocent. Breakable.
There’s another folio, identical except for the papers inside, balanced on the trunk of my car. Charlotte’s eyes follow my hands as I switch them out. Open the second one in front of her. “Now it’s time for your signature.”
A deep breath. “I never sign anything without reading it first.”
“Did your daddy teach you that?”
“Yes.” Defiance sparks in her eyes. “No matter what you think of him, it’s good advice.”
“You don’t think there are ever occasions when it’s better not to know?”
“I think it’s always better to know.” Uncertainty in that big blue gaze. Another swallow.
“Read, then.”
Charlotte doesn’t reach for the folio, and I don’t offer it to her. I hold it in front of me so she has to step a little closer to read the print on the page. One big, deep breath, like she’s getting ready to jump into the ocean, and she begins with the first paragraph.
Her face gets redder. This is a game that’s going to be difficult to give up when I’m finished with her. I want to know, down to the shade, exactly how hard I can make her blush.
On the third paragraph she presses her lips together in a thin line.
On the fourth, her hand comes up to her throat. I’m intensely jealous of those fingertips on that fine flesh, but it’s fascinating to watch. This is the paragraph that undid her. That made her forget I was watching. She’s given herself away.
One more paragraph.
I’ve kept the document concise. It will be simpler, contract-wise, to trade her body for her father’s debt than it is for me to take charge of Cornerstone. Cyrus Van Kempt’s signature essentially gives me the power, as a partner in the venture, to modify existing building contracts to ensure the completion of the project. Doing those things requires hundreds of other decisions and signatures. An electronic forest of legal documents signed and stamped by my lawyers.
Charlotte’s signature gives me—
“This is everything.” Barely above a whisper. She remembers what I told her about not staring at the ground and looks back into my eyes. “This says—” Charlotte glances around, like she’s worried someone might have crept up to peer over her shoulder. “This says you can do anything.”
“I won’t accept less.”
Another glance down at the page. This is the moment Charlotte Van Kempt could come to her senses. She could realize that her asshole father isn’t worth putting herself in my hands for.
She could understand that there are larger forces in play than the building. Than the deal.
That I have a deeper motive than simple cruelty.
“I don’t—” Charlotte’s hand splays out at her throat like it’s possible to protect herself, and my knee tenses again. It aches. It hurts. On the verge of locking up completely. If she walks away from me now, I won’t chase her. I won’t have to. I will make my presence known everywhere she goes even if I never step foot in those buildings. I’ll haunt every meeting. I’ll be the death of any business deal she tries to make before it has a chance to breathe. I’ll do all this despite the fact that I’m here at the end of fourteen years of excruciating patience, waiting to get back at her father, and she’s still fresh and sunny and—
“Finish the sentence, Ms. Van Kempt.”
“I don’t have a pen,” she whispers.
There should be no sense of relief at this, but I feel it anyway. I take the pen from my pocket and hand it to her, the folio balanced in my other palm.
The weight of her pen on the paper is so light. The meaning of her signature is so heavy. Charlotte gives me the pen with a shaking hand. She straightens her back. “What now?”
“What do you think? That I’ll put you on your knees here in the street?”
Oh, that shade of red. I want it captured in a painting. It’s burned into my memory instead. “You could do that,” she admits, and I hear it in her voice—reality setting in.
“My team will be visiting the property in an hour to make assessments.” I close the folio and toss it on top of the car. It lands neatly on top of the one she brought with her, freeing my hands to reach for my phone. “You’ll be at my apartment on Friday at sunset.” I send the address in a text message. “The address is waiting on your phone.”
“Okay.” She glances at the concrete and steel beams. “And right now—”
“Right now you’ll turn around, get back into your car, and drive away.”
“Shouldn’t we talk about Cornerstone?”
Charlotte stands so close that it’s nothing to take her by her ridiculous little belt and haul her closer to me. She panics, trying to pull away, trying not to fall into me, but I have her by her clothes. I hold her there until she stops struggling. It doesn’t take long.
“A piece of advice, Ms. Van Kempt.”
“What? What?” Breathless. I fucking love it.
“If I give you the choice to walk away from me, take it. This is the last time I’ll give you a second chance.”
I release her, though I don’t want to, and Charlotte turns on her heel and runs.
