Chapter 8 GOODBYE IRIS

Chapter 8 GOODBYE IRIS
SCARLETT
2 DAYS BEFORE THE ACCIDENT 

“Your wife didn’t come back home yesterday either.” It wasn’t a question.

Collin was a hot mess. His wrinkled shirt, crooked tie and he had been late. There were also dark circles under his eyes that almost made me want to scoff. 

I knew scullery maids that were treated better than he treated his wife and yet he was worried about her? Ever since her little display after discovering that I was selling my father’s company, my little sister had seemed to grow a spine and had not come back home after leaving hand in hand with one of the most powerful men in the city. 

It was her association with Nicholas that made me the slightest bit curious about her whereabouts. It was too late for Iris to do anything to save Astor Cosmetics. I’d meticulously plotted its downfall from the moment I realized my father’s intent to hand it over to his bastard daughter.

I hated to say that it had been almost too easy because I still share half a DNA with her thanks to the old man who I hope is watching and rolling in his grave when his life’s work is sold part for part. Firstly, I’d gotten my boytoy at the time to get involved with her.

At first the plan had been for him to plant him as a spy beside her but I doubted he’d succeed. 

Collin had been smart enough—A very rare occurence— to notice that I was beginning to outlive my use of him so in order to make sure I couldn’t cast his clingy ass aside, he made quick work of making Iris fall for him. It had been a breeze the moment he discovered what a desperate little slut she was for affection and he thrived in manipulating her need for him. 

I thought he was pushing his luck when he had made her drop out of school mere weeks before their wedding and after she signed over the company to him effective immediately they were married, I’d made several contingency plan sure that nobody could be that stupid. But Ivy had been that stupid. She had handed everything over to Collins and had even rolled over like his dog if he as much as batted his eyes.

I smirked. She became my puppet’s puppet. But she was alive. That was the deal with Collin. He controls her and she keeps her life because like every man that found themselves in proximity with Iris, he also grew fond of her.

But I couldn’t keep on guaranteeing her life after the look I’d seen in her eyes and the fact that she seemed to have some sort of relationship with Nicholas Ashford. I’ve known of him for almost a decade after that humiliating attempt to match us by his mother and my father and at first I’d taken Iris' word for it when she said she didn’t know him when he had turned me down and asked for her instead.

But after what had happened mere days ago, I knew the little tramp had lied. Ever since I met Nicholas almost a decade ago, stalked and had been obsessed over him for longer, I’d never noticed any sort of emotion flicker over his face and yet the rage I’d seen in his face when Collin had put his hand on Iris? For a man that I was sure felt almost nothing except when he was talking about his old fart of a mother, it was making me lose sleep.

After meeting Iris, Nicholas had gone no contact with us, with his assistant coming up with the most uncreative lies whenever I reached out to finalize the buyout contract of Astor Cosmetics.

I hate to lose sleep over Iris' actions but I couldn’t help but wonder if that means she had acted out the way she did because she had his backing?

I knew that she had nothing to offer him while I was practically giving him my father’s company on a platter yet I couldn’t help the insecurity and worry plaguing me. I couldn't risk Iris somehow, saving this company.

This was my revenge. I’d worked at this for almost a decade.

But I knew that Nicholas didn’t make emotional moves when it comes to business so that pacified me.

Yet, it wouldn’t be the first time Iris made a man act out of character. 

I mean she made a husband out of a criminal with more than four fraud convictions, two domestic violence convictions and a drug addict.

I spared the coked up idiot beside me a disgusted glance as he snorted a line off his oak table beside his CEO name plate. I fisted my hands hating that I shared a bed with him occasionally in order to keep him in check. Although I had a lot of dirt on the bastard, who I’m also planning on getting rid of once his wife is out of the way, seduction works like a charm on the lunatic.

“She knows better than to come back after her blatant disrespect,” he stated. “I told you I still have her under control. Any day now and she would be on her knees begging me to forgive her.”

“Are you sure?” I mockingly asked. “She didn’t seem to be begging when she left with another man without as much as a backward glance.” 

He snorted yet another line loosening his tie and I know that the thought of where his little wife was and what she might be getting up to after leaving him for another man must be making him go crazy regardless of what he said. 

“She’d come back.” he said and I couldn’t tell if he was trying to convince himself or me at that point.

“She is pregnant. We’re going to be having this one. She’d have to come back.” 

I bit my lips to refrain from telling him that there was more tendency of Iris having this one if she didn’t come back but thought better than pushing a man who was already down. 

I stood up from where I sat watching him make a mess of himself, aware that I didn’t have the time to waste on him. He’d outlived his purposes a long time ago and I’d only made him feel important only because I needed his wife’s compliance. But not anymore.

Now, I’d just erase the problem. Like I should have done a long time ago.

Carl was outside the door waiting the moment I stepped out. He fell into step behind him, the same blank look on his face. Carl was my muscle. Just like Collin he had been a convict but while I had hid Collin’s history, I’d gotten someone to serve Carl’s term making him indebted to me for the rest of his life. He had been a serial murderer and rapist. 

“Good morning,” he said grumpily.

I silently handed him Iris’ picture. “Clean and untraceable.”

“Short and painless or long and as drawn out as possible,” I could almost hear the smile on his face. The closest that the man would come to feeling anything.

I shrugged. “I’d let you handle that,” I turned to eye him, aware of his sadistic creativity when it comes to murder. “I need it as eventless as possible. I think my little sister after her little stunt the other day has had a lot of events for a lifetime.”

He bared a feral grin at me, flashing his teeth and I subdued my urge to recoil from his eyes that remained dead and empty. “I could manage that.”

“Good.” I said.

Goodbye Iris. In your next life stay away from whatever is mine.

My father. My company. Even my trash of an ex.