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"It's not your fault. You didn't do anything."

His eyes met mine. "And neither did you."

He walked back to the sofa, kissed my forehead, then held up his phone. "I need to call Garrison back."

"Go, I'm fine."

Alex nodded stiffly. "Valerie should be landing soon. I have a car waiting to bring her here."

"Okay."

My sister was in Chicago on business, or at least that was what she said. Based on her text, she didn't seem any more upset about what happened to our father based on the way she responded. She simply asked if I was okay and told me she loved me. When our mother passed, we were all so emotional and devastated. I frowned, thinking about how our father barely even acknowledged what happened. He was at work and told me his assistant would start working on the arrangements and would be in touch because he had a busy day and unfortunately business stopped for no one.

When the memory surfaced, it was enough to make me pull myself together. Alex was right, we were much better than our father and I refused to give him any more of myself.

twenty

Christian.

Cress: You took the jet to New York?

Me: Yes…

Cress: Relax, I’m not spying on you.

Me: Everything okay?

Cress: Yes. I have notifications set up for when the jet isn’t available.

Me: Your husband has a private jet…

Cress: He does but I can still keep track of ours. When will you be back?

Me: Late tonight. Early morning at the latest.

Scotlyn’s meeting was at two. She mentioned wanting to make a quick turnaround. It was after six and I still hadn’t heard from her, which wasn’t a good thing. As much as I wanted to support her through this board meeting, I understood her needto handle this on her own. Scotlyn had enough people in her life telling her what to do. I wouldn’t be one of them.

The only place I would ever assert my dominance over Scotlyn would be as her Dom. This wasn’t one of those situations, so I allowed her the space to navigate this shit with her father however she needed. But make no mistake about it, if he fucked her over, he would deal with me. There wouldn’t be a damn thing Scotlyn could say to keep me off his ass and I had plenty of resources to disrupt his life far worse than he was disrupting hers.

I watched while another text came through, assuming it would be some slick ass comment, but instead it was a link.

Cress: Is this why you’re in New York?

I frowned and clicked the link, scanning the words.

Gerald Whitney. Medical emergency. Potential heart attack. Unresponsive. Not confirmed.

Shit.

I dialed Scot and the call went straight to voicemail.

I tried again and dialed back to back three times and got pissed when I still didn’t get an answer.

I gave the driver explicit instructions and last I checked she hadn’t reached out to him yet. My patience had officially run out, and now, with the knowledge provided in the link Cress just sent me, I needed to make sure she was okay.

Even if she didn’t want me at the board meeting, I fully planned on being here to accompany Scotlyn back to Crescent Falls while we celebrated her victory because there wasn’t a doubt in my mind she was more than capable of handling her father.

After my jet touched down, bringing her to New York, they had instructions to return to get me, so I could be here by thetime her meeting was done. The meeting should have ended hours ago but she was still MIA. Now things made sense. This was why I hadn’t heard from her yet.