Chapter 26 I’d do anything to win

Chapter 26 I’d do anything to win
NICHOLAS

It was past midnight when Nicholas called his driver, ready to go home.

Silas was at his side when he hung up and nodded at him, indicating that he had managed to get a taxi to drop a very drunk Iris home.

“Do you think she’d make a good Ceo?” Nicholas had asked Silas later while they were in the car. 

“According to the media outlet—”

“I’m asking you about your opinion,” Nicholas simply said. “If I hone her, do you think she can make it?”

Silas paused. Nicholas could tell that Silas had found his question strange. He hardly asked his workers for their opinion. He only gave instructions and expected a perfect follow up.  

“Perhaps,” Silas started tentatively. “But she is a wild card unlike her sister. Scarlett has the right connection and training. She is a better bet and a more likely winner.”

“Maybe, but I’m rich enough,” Nicholas finally said, “I can afford to lose.”

Later that night, before Nicholas slept, he couldn’t help but remember Iris drunken slur before he had called for Silas.

She had leaned into him and stared at his eyes. “What happened to you?” She asked cupping his jaw with both of her hands while she swayed on her feet. “You’re so cold.” She had tilted her head and looked at him confused. “Doesn’t it hurt?” She had asked and then had started sobbing. 

Yes, he thought. It hurt and then it stopped.

He’d never hurt again. Although he believed it to be one of his strengths, for the first time when Iris had started sobbing after staring at his eyes, it felt like a curse.



I’m fighting again underneath the pool, the familiar smell of chlorine cloying.

This time Camden was absent. It was just me and the demon.

“Say it,” he ordered.

“Fuck. You,” I enunciated.

He pushed my face into the water, shoving me under.

I fought, my legs scratching against the floor, my hands digging into his arms, struggling to break his hold around my throat.

When my vision started blacking out, he yanked me up allowing me a lungful of air.

“Say it,” his eyes were red and furious, his nose flaring.

“I’d rather die,” I said through gritted teeth.

He shoved me back in but didn’t let up at the usual interval.

Seconds turned to minutes, my splashing struggle became weaker, my hold on his arms loosening…

And just when I think the demon would let me join my Mamushka, he pulls me out again.

I coughed and hacked, furiously trying to dispel the water on my lungs.

“I could kill you,” he threatened.“What will it be?” He demanded, his voice calm and lethal. “Say it. Call me dad.”

I spat in his face, my lips pressed together. He was no father of mine. He was nothing but a demon, a beast…

A coward.

He shoved me back under the current and the fight continued, but he was bigger and stronger than me. His muscles bulged as he kept me in as if it was nothing. 

He had picked his target well, a fourteen year old, not his mountain of debt or the corporate raider after his company.

Or the cancer slowly killing his wife.

I realized it when my movements became jerkier and slower again. 

But this time the demon kept me in until I grew more sluggish, until water was rushing into every pore in my body, until I was choking…

Until my arms became unmoving and air bubbles stopped breaching the surface of the water where my face was submerged.

Nicholas woke up. The dream where he died was back, the pool scenario had always been his favorite.

His phone buzzed, with his eyes still closed, he stretched out an arm, fishing around blindly on his nightstand until he found it. 

It was 3am and it was a message from an unsaved number but Nicholas knew it was Iris, because of its contents:

I will do anything to win.

He smirked. Another prey had been caught, hook, line and sinker.

He sat up and immediately called Silas,

As usual, his nocturnal assistant picked up at the second ring.

Nicholas had been asked how he was able to find an assistant that was so in sync with him so often over the years, he had lost count. The truth was that he had just got lucky.

What were the odds that the first person he interviewed was obsessively compelled to perfection and paid attention to the tiniest of detail?

Silas was irreplaceable.

“Cancel everything I’d scheduled this morning and call Blake, I need to see him first thing today. Iris is in.”

There was a pause. “Congratulations sir, I guess you’re a step closer to your goal.”

“Don’t congratulate me for an event that was merely inevitable.” Nicholas said.

Then after a pause, he added, “Go to bed, Silas.” He was beginning to doubt if the young man ever did.

“Goodnight, sir.”

“Night.”