Page 144 of Boss of the Year

“Missing?” Winnifred’s tone suggested she found the entire concept absurd. “Well, I’m sure she’s just off somewhere licking her wounds.”

“Wounds from what?” Lucas’s voice dropped dangerously low. If Winnifred had done anything to hurt Marie…

“Oh, who knows? Maybe she saw some pictures of Daniel. Or maybe she realized that a future with either of you was pointless. Maybe she got a rude text. You know how dramatic these working-class girls can be.”

Lucas only barely stopped himself from pointing out that Winnifred herself had been a “working-class girl” when she had met his father.

“Give her a day or two, and she’ll come crawling back when she needs her next paycheck. They always do.”

The casual cruelty in his stepmother’s voice made Lucas see red. The idea of Marie “crawling back” to people who clearly sawher as nothing more than an inconvenience, a problem to be managed, was obscene.

“Daniel needs you to be his brother right now,” Winnifred rattled on. “Not chasing after some chit who’s clearly gotten ideas above her station.”

“He needs rehab,” Lucas shot back. “Again. Because apparently the last three times didn’t take.”

“That never works with him, and you know it. He needs support from his family, not judgment. Now, your little mission with the girl hasn’t turned out, so if she wants to run away, let her. Come home and help your brother if that’s what you care about so much.”

The idea of Marie out there alone, possibly hurt or scared, burned through Lucas like acid.

“I can’t just throw her to the wolves,” he said through his teeth.

“Why ever not?” Winnifred sounded genuinely puzzled. “It’s not as if you care for the girl. There are thousands like her. She’s just a cook, for God’s sake. ”

“SHE’S NOT A FUCKING COOK!”

In the silence that followed, Lucas could hear his own tattered breath alongside the cutting truth buried in his shout.

He was in love with Marie Zola.

Not just attracted to her, not just fond of her, but completely, irrevocably in love.

When had that happened? In Brazil, when he’d seen the delight and shy pride when she’d walked through the park with him at night?

In the ryokan, when he’d peeled away her layers, little by little, until he discovered the hidden depths of her?

In London, when she’d knocked on his door, as stunning for her bravery as for her lucious, mind-melting body?

If he were being honest, it might have been in the conservatory, when the courage that lurked below her calm, sometimes petrified surface had literally slapped him across the face.

He closed his eyes, but then she was there, smiling in jest, crying beneath him, arching in ecstasy, or just falling asleep in his arms.

He was completely and truly fucked.

“I see.” Winnifred’s voice yanked him back to the present. “Well, regardless of your…feelings, we have a situation. Senator Hubbard has demanded that Daniel marry his daughter before she starts to show. He won’t do it unless you come home, Lucas. You know he won’t. And if that bill isn’t passed?—”

“You don’t have to tell me what happens,” Lucas cut her off, his voice flat. “Our lobbyists practically wrote the fucking thing.”

“Then I also don’t have to tell you how much of our personal assets are wrapped up in the investments depending on this bill,” Winnifred said.

Lucas had to roll his eyes. Winnifred had known nothing about their family’s problems until one of her accountants whispered in her ear.

Still, she wasn’t wrong.

The truth was, the company had been overleveraged for years, since his father made his last terrible deal in the chip sector before leaving Lyons Corp completely. Six months later, they’d gotten the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, but not before he had overcommitted their investments in ways that had taken Lucas years to mend. His family would never know the personal sacrifices he had made to rebuild their fortune. Bills like this one were a hassle, but better than some of the backroom deals, blackmail, and other blackhearted tactics he’d used over the last twenty years.

People said men like him were morally grey. He was morally black.

And at what cost?He could easily imagine one of Marie’s slender brows arched in her wry way. Daring him to look at the situation from the other side of the lens, challenging him to be better.At what cost to you?she might ask.Or people everywhere?