Net Worth by Amelia Wilde

19

Mason

It’s not enough.

Punching that motherfucker across his face wasn’t enough. The things he said about my family were like a hand grenade shoved down my throat with the pin already pulled, and a thousand kinds of old pain have splattered across my insides.

Scott drives me back to the penthouse in silence. I try to answer emails. I can’t read the words on the screen. I’m not done with the Van Kempts, and I’m not done with Charlotte, but if I lose my shit right now I won’t be in control of myself to take my revenge on her. That control is slipping out of reach. I need it back.

I’m the rude piece of shit stalking through the lobby without saying anything to the doormen, but it’s better that way. People are so foolish. They think silence is always less polite than speaking. They’re wrong. When I’m silent, it’s because my words would leave scars. I had to learn to bite them back years ago. I had to learn to become precise with what I said, and what I did, because any step in the wrong direction would lose what little stability we had. It’s a heavy weight. I was eighteen then, but it doesn’t seem to matter that I’m older. It’s still a relentless pressure on my shoulders.

I let myself lean against the railing in the shower. Sore knuckles from punching that prick. A knee on fire. The man in the steamy reflection looks wrecked. He looks like he needs a drink, or five.

I don’t. I need a sweet little thing named Charlotte Van Kempt.

The heat of the shower makes no impression. My knee throbs and my gut is an acid mess of rage and tension.

She’s going to know.

Last week, when she stepped off the elevator, she knew that it would be different from what came before. I saw the knowledge flicker across her eyes. I saw the nervous swallow. I saw her face flush deeper. I’ve always hated these bullshit tricks to manage the pain and the anger. All the deep breathing. All the visualization. Fucking hated it. But it’s possible to loathe something and use it to your benefit, so I do. I breathe deep.

I visualize punishing Charlotte Van Kempt for the sins of her father.

I visualize how good it will feel to finally have done it. I’ll have a sense of calm. A sense of peace. A sense that I’ve made things balanced in the world again. They’re never going back the way they were. I came to terms with that a long time ago. My parents will stay as dead as they ever were, but someone will pay for it. The world won’t have destroyed our lives without giving up some of itself, too.

When the shower is finished there’s time before Charlotte arrives. I need all my balance and all my strength to keep myself in check. I don’t want the gym—don’t want the windows, or the equipment, or the sight of myself in the mirror.

The bedroom floor is fine for what I need.

Which is to run through the routine of exercises I’ve been doing, and loathing, for a decade now. I’ve hated them from the very first day and I hate them now. I hate having to do this. I hate that they keep some of the pain at bay. I hate that if I stop doing them, it comes back with such intensity that it’s difficult to stand at work. There’s no such thing as sitting through a meeting for me. I know what the whispers say about me—that I’m a mean, power-obsessed bastard who wields it over everyone at every opportunity. That’s true. It’s just not the whole truth.

Anyway, in order to remain in control at times when I need to be on my feet, I need the goddamn exercises. They steady my breathing. Disconnect me from the pissed-off knot in my gut enough to think. Enough to wait through the rest of the minutes until Charlotte arrives.

She’s always a few minutes early. My phone buzzes with the text from the doormen exactly when I expect it to.

Derek: Ms. Van Kempt is in the lobby. She’s entering the elevator now.

Mason: Thanks.

I push my sleeves up to my elbows and go out to meet her. I’m stepping into the dim light of the foyer when the doors slide open to reveal her.

Her dress is a purple, floating thing that reminds me of flower petals. But her eyes are what demand my attention. They’re blue like topaz, shifting in the light until they’ve taken on the impression of sapphire, and they are innocent.

She doesn’t know what’s happened yet.

Charlotte’s chest rises in the shallow rhythm of her sweet nervousness, but she takes the necessary step into the foyer. The doors slide closed behind her, and it’s that sound that undoes all the care I’ve taken with the breathing and the visualizing and all those goddamn exercises.

I want her. And I want to break her. I want her to come, and I want her to cry.

I want her to understand.

I leave space between us so she can feel the distance. “I saw your father today.”

Shock makes those blue eyes fly open. Genuine—her daddy didn’t call her to tattle on me. Her hand comes up to the hollow of her throat and she doesn’t stop herself. “What do you—where?”

“At Cornerstone.” Out there in all that sunlight. I saw every twitch of that fucker’s mouth, every glimmer of satisfaction in that bastard’s eyes. “He came to see me.”

“No. There’s no reason for that. I told him I would handle everything.”

She doesn’t believe me. The struggle is written in her features. Charlotte Van Kempt is still trying to make her father into a good man. She’s still trying to believe the best of him.

“What else did you tell him? That I licked your cunt until you came on my tongue?”

A gasp. “No. I didn’t—no.”

I advance on her, eating up the distance in two strides, and make a collar of my hand on her throat. Force her head up and back so she has to look into my eyes. So she can see what she’s walked into.

See that there’s no escape.

“He had a lot to say about you.” Her neck tenses under my hand. I’m squeezing too hard. Let up a little, Mason. Don’t make her run. “He thought we’d been fucking. A lot to say about my parents, too, which is about when I punched him.”

Her mouth drops open. Charlotte doesn’t know what to say.

“He’s wrong about that. But not for long.” I take a deep breath. “Now that you’re here, I think it’s time you made yourself useful. All this aggression has to go somewhere.” I run my thumb up and down the side of her neck. “It’s not healthy to keep it bottled up.”

She’s trembling now. “I can’t believe you punched him.”

I laugh at her and she blinks like it hurts, like this humiliation causes her physical pain. “The black eye I gave him could have been a lot worse. I wanted to pummel him into the ground. But I knew I’d have you later, wouldn’t I?”

“Yes.” Her lips form the word, but it doesn’t make any sound. It doesn’t have to. She’s been mine to use in just this way since she first let my office door close behind her. Charlotte would try to insist that it was when she signed the contract, but she would be wrong about that. I owned her as soon as she took the meeting with me.

“It will be significantly more entertaining to beat your pretty little ass until you’re red.”

Charlotte jerks backward, trying to free herself from my hand. Cute. I use her own movement against her to back her against the doors of the elevator. Her chest heaves. “Because of him? You’re doing this because of him?”

“Not only because of him, you sweet little thing. I’ve been a patient man. I’m done waiting.”

Her eyes fill with tears. “You don’t have to do this.”

“I don’t have to do anything. I’m not sure how many times I have to explain it to you. This is what I want.”

“To hurt me?”

I lean down and press a kiss to the side of her neck. “Yes. You’ll be sitting at the dinner table with Mommy and Daddy tomorrow, and they won’t have any idea that you’re bruised beneath your dress.”

Charlotte makes a sound that’s closer to a moan than a protest, and I pull back so I can look into her eyes. “But how will you—how will you—”

“Punish you? Go ahead and say it.”

“How will you punish me?”

“However I fucking want.”

She’s trembling. “Oh, no—no. Please. I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Is that what you think?”

“I didn’t,” she whispers.

“You’re fighting me right now.”

“I think—” A swallow that I feel in my palm. “I think you like that.”

I’ve never been harder for anything in my life. I love the way she can’t help herself. Charlotte likes what I’m doing to her—loves it even. But she hasn’t been broken.

I’ll continue with that tonight.

“Oh, you sweet thing.”

I want to hurt her so badly. I need to hurt her. And Charlotte needs me to hurt her. She needs that because that’s the way to save her father’s company and her family’s lives. Submitting to me in any way I want is her only guarantee for pulling Van Kempt out of a bankruptcy tailspin.

But she also needs it for another reason.

It makes her hot. It makes her wet. And she can’t stop thinking about it. I can’t stop watching the reality of me and the fantasy of what she wants collide in her eyes, over and over and over until I’m forced to lean down and kiss her. Lick her. Taste her tongue, and drink in the little whimpers she makes when I bite her bottom lip.

She sags forward when I let her go, almost as if she’s going to go to her knees in the foyer. Charlotte catches herself at the last moment and holds tight to her purse. Determination flares in her eyes. The subtle lift of her chin tells me she’s already working on a story to tell herself about tonight—that it was necessary in order to save her family. That she had no choice but to put herself in my hands every Friday like clockwork. Even after I made her cry. Even after she ran from me.

There’s no more running now.