Chapter 8
Lance
I woke to sunlight slicing through the floor-to-ceiling windows of my bedroom—the east-facing master suite of the Lawson estate on Long Island, where three generations of my family's successes and failures had calcified into marble floors and oil paintings worth more than most people's lives.
Six forty-seven AM. Thirteen minutes before my alarm.
My hand reached for my phone automatically. No missed calls. Three emails flagged urgent by my assistant, none actually urgent.
The message was long—Vincent's messages were never long. A detailed breakdown of the evening...
I stared at the message.
Original plan compromised. Family residence determined unsuitable.
Physical threat imminent.
Front door structural compromise necessary.
...
Vincent's clinical language couldn't quite hide what had happened. He'd had to break down a door because someone was about to hurt her.
My first instinct was to throw the phone across the room. My second was to read it again. I did neither. Just sat there holding the device like it might explode, feeling something uncomfortable twist in my chest.
I typed: I didn't authorize you to overstep.
Sent it before I could reconsider.
The response came within seconds: Understood, sir.
I set the phone down. Picked it up again. Put it face-down on the nightstand.
Ten years. In ten years, Vincent had never once misread a situation. Never once acted without cause. If he'd had to kick down a door, there had been a reason.
And the fact that I'd sent him back at all—that I'd given a damn whether she made it home safely, that I'd told him to wait outside after dropping her off—
Christ.
The man knew me too well. That was the problem.
I forced myself out of bed. The silk sheets—Egyptian cotton, 1000 thread count, changed daily whether I slept in them or not—slid off like water. My reflection stared back from the mirror spanning the walk-in closet: thirty-four years old, six-foot-two, the kind of build that came from punishing early-morning workouts designed to exhaust the body into compliance when the mind refused to cooperate.
Gray-blue eyes. My mother's eyes, though I tried not to think about that.
My father's jawline. Sharper now than his had ever been, carved down by years of twelve-hour days and dinners I forgot to eat.
I selected a three-piece suit—Huntsman, charcoal gray, the kind of armor that made boardroom opponents instinctively step back. White shirt. Navy tie with a Windsor knot precise enough to pass military inspection. The signet ring on my left pinkie—white gold, engraved with the Lawson crest—went on last.
The face staring back at me looked exactly like it had yesterday. And the day before. And every day for the past ten years.
Controlled. Calculating. Cold.
No evidence whatsoever that twelve hours ago, I'd been thirty seconds away from fucking my nephew's girlfriend in a bathtub while she looked at me with wine-drunk eyes and zero fear, like I was just another man instead of someone who could destroy her entire world with a single phone call.
No evidence that for the first time in a decade, I'd felt something other than the perpetual low-grade anger that fueled every acquisition, every hostile takeover, every precisely orchestrated destruction of whatever competitor had been stupid enough to challenge Lawson Capital that quarter.
I straightened my tie one final time.
The machine was back online.
---
The formal dining room could seat forty. This morning, it seated four.
My grandfather occupied the head of the table—Arthur Lawson, eighty years old and mean as a snake, his spine still ramrod-straight in his custom wheelchair. The stroke two years ago had taken his legs but left his mind sharp enough to cut glass.
To his right: Eleanor Lloyd, my father's widow. Fifty-three years old and still beautiful in that brittle, carefully maintained way of women who'd learned early that their appearance was their only negotiable asset. She was picking at a croissant with the mechanical precision of someone who'd forgotten what hunger felt like.
To his left: Wesley.
My nephew looked like he'd been hit by a truck, then backed over for good measure. His eyes were bloodshot, his normally perfect hair sticking up at odd angles, and his tie—Jesus, his tie wasn't even straight. The golden boy of the Lawson family looked like he'd spent the night crying into his cocaine.
Good.
"Lance!" My grandfather's voice boomed across the room with the same authority he'd used to run board meetings before the stroke. "Decided to grace us with your presence, did you? What time did you get in last night? Three? Four?"
I took my seat at the opposite end of the table—the traditional position of the heir, though Arthur still couldn't quite accept that the title had passed to me instead of remaining in his direct line. "Good morning, Grandfather."
"Don't 'good morning' me." But his eyes were twinkling with something that made my jaw tighten. "You're usually back by ten, eleven at the latest. Even when you work late, you're here for breakfast. What kept you out so late on a Wednesday?"