Chapter 209
Felix
The whiskey burned going down, but I barely felt it anymore. Three glasses deep, and the bite had dulled to something almost pleasant—almost enough to distract me from the fact that I was sitting alone in a corner booth at some dive bar in Hell's Kitchen, celebrating the fact that I wasn't currently freezing my ass off in Greenland.
Well, I thought, raising the glass in a mock toast to absolutely no one, I suppose this counts as a victory. No ice. No exile. Just good old-fashioned humiliation and disinheritance.
Funny how bitter that victory tasted.
My phone buzzed against the scarred wood of the table. I glanced down, already knowing who it would be. Father had been texting me variations of the same message for the past week, each one more pathetic than the last.
From: Thomas
Son. The tide has turned against us. You need to stop thinking about going after Lance.
I stared at the screen, my jaw tightening. The whiskey suddenly felt like acid in my stomach. Stop thinking about it? As if I could just flip a switch and turn off years of resentment, years of being second-best to my perfect fucking cousin. As if I could just forget that he'd stripped me of everything—my name, my position, my future—and I was supposed to what? Be grateful he didn't ship me off to the Arctic?
The phone buzzed again.
From: Thomas
The New York underworld has changed hands. Our Italian friends are all dead. And in finance, Lance controls everything. There's no point fighting him anymore. If you're truly unhappy here... come back to Europe with me. We can start over.
I let out a long breath, the kind that feels like it's been trapped in your chest for hours. Start over. In Europe. Where Father still had connections, where the Lawson name might not carry the same weight of failure and disgrace. Where Lance's shadow didn't stretch quite as far.
Where I wouldn't have to see him every day, golden and untouchable, the embodiment of everything I should have been.
Even Wesley had turned on me. Wesley, who I'd spent years cultivating, shaping, molding into the perfect weapon against Lance. All that work, all those carefully planted seeds of resentment and doubt, and in the end, the little bastard had stood up in front of the entire family and defended his uncle. Defended them. Lance and that gold-digging Vance girl who'd somehow wormed her way into the center of everything.
What leverage did I have left? What cards could I possibly play?
Europe was looking better by the second.
I picked up my phone, my fingers moving almost of their own accord.
To: Thomas
Well, Dad. Maybe you're right. Looks like I don't have much of a choice.
My thumb hovered over the send button. One tap, and it would be over. I'd slink off to Europe with my tail between my legs, live off whatever scraps of Father's fortune remained, and spend the rest of my life being the cautionary tale at Lawson family gatherings. Remember Felix? Poor bastard tried to take on Lance and got destroyed. Serves him right.
I was about to press send when movement near the bar caught my eye.
A woman. Disheveled, her designer dress rumpled and stained, her carefully styled hair coming loose from its pins. She was arguing with the manager, her voice rising to a pitch that was attracting stares from the other patrons. Even from across the room, I could see her hands shaking as she fumbled through her purse, clearly unable to find whatever payment method she was looking for.
The manager's expression was one of barely concealed contempt. "Ma'am, if you can't settle your tab, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to leave the premises."
"I can absolutely pay!" she snapped, her voice cracking on the edges. "Just give me a goddamn minute to—"
And that's when I recognized her.
Vanessa Holland.
Or rather, former Holland. The golden girl who'd had everything—family, fortune, status—and had managed to lose it all in spectacular fashion. I'd heard about her fall from grace, of course. The whole city had. Her father had publicly disowned her after she'd somehow managed to piss off Lance badly enough that he'd torpedoed several major Holland Media contracts. The details were hazy, but the result was crystal clear: Vanessa was persona non grata, cut off from family money and social connections, reduced to this—a hysterical woman who couldn't pay for her drinks.
She looked... broken. Lost. Like someone teetering on the edge of a very high cliff, one strong gust away from falling.
And just like that, the fire I'd thought was dead flared back to life.
I looked down at my phone, at the message I'd been about to send. Well, Dad. Maybe you're right. Looks like I don't have much of a choice.
Slowly, deliberately, I deleted everything except the last sentence. Looks like I don't have much of a choice. Then I hit send.