Page 107 of How to Belong with a Billionaire

“I don’t understand,” he wept, “why this is happening. I don’t know what I’ve done. All I wanted was to find my son and—”

“Sign the papers, Mr. Jackson.” Finesilver delivered the words with a trace of impatience—his first since we’d entered the room—although it could have been as much performance as my father’s tears.

Jonas turned to me, taking off his glasses to reveal his naked eyes, red and wet and hurt. “Arden, please. I don’t know what you’ve been told about me but you’re making a mistake. I’ve been searching for you since you were taken from me. I’ve done nothing but try to know you. And look what you’re doing to me.”

“You used me.” It came out as a wild howl, full of anger and pain and this helpless exasperation that he hadn’t stopped fucking with me for a single second I’d spent in his company. “You’re still trying to use me. You—”

Finesilver squeezed my elbow even harder, maybe hitting some kind of pressure point, because it sent a bolt of clicky lightning all the way to my shoulder. “Shall I inform my client that you do not, in fact, intend to comply with their requests.”

Jonas sat. Stared at us. Said nothing. Tears still falling, easy as April showers. And then, at last, “Give me the papers.”

Finesilver pulled an envelope from an interior pocket along with a pen and handed both to my father. Who made a brief show of scrutinizing everything carefully before turning to the final page so violently it almost tore the staple out. Resting against the edge of his suitcase, he jabbed the pen against the dotted line. His hand trembled.

“She’s my wife.” There was a note in Jonas’s voice I’d never heard before. I think it was something he thought was truth, and it was terrifying. “I can’t let you take her from me.”

Something cold was slithering round my heart. Squeezing so tight I couldn’t breathe.

But Finesilver only lifted one shoulder in the suggestion of a shrug. “Once again, the choice is entirely yours. Although I would remind you also that placing any person in immediate fear for their safety, even your wife and even in the absence of physical contact, fits the definition of common assault. So should you be so reckless as to risk the civil suit my client will bring against you for breach of contract in the event of your going back on these agreements, do be assured that Ms. St. Ives would have my client’s full support in any criminal case she wished to bring against you. And while law enforcement sometimes lack the resources to pursue such matters as diligently as they might, my client suffers no such restriction.”

“What the fuck is this?” snarled Jonas, anger breaking through him like some horrible fish from the deepest, squoogliest oceans. “I love her. I’ve never laid a hand on her.”

He sounded so sincere that, for a disgusting, treacherous heartbeat, I almost forgot I’d seen him do it.

“I’m merely providing information.” Finesilver’s voice brought me back to the moment. “Sign the papers.”

Jonas signed. He was breathing hard and the rasp of the pen against the paper was too loud, almost human-sounding, like it was scraping over skin. But at the same time, it was all super anticlimactic: a few seconds of ink. It didn’t seem enough to change a world.

Without a word, my father passed the documents back to Finesilver, and he tucked them back into his jacket. “Thank you, Mr. Jackson. You’ve made the correct choice. My client will, of course, be monitoring the situation in order to ensure you continue to make correct choices.”

Jonas stared at us. Still said nothing. The tears had gone and so had the rage. But behind his eyes I could see the shadows of seething things.

“Goodbye, Mr. Jackson.”

A nudge from Finesilver got me moving, jerky as run-down clockwork. I didn’t look back.

Chapter 36

Imade it to the car before I turned into squidge, sweating and trembling in the front seat. Finesilver pulled a bottle of water from the footwell and passed it to me.

“Sorry,” I said, when I could get the words out. “That was…that was…”

He gave me a look which I chose to interpret as genuinely sympathetic. “Please don’t worry. I understand how charged such situations can be.”

“I…I talked when I wasn’t supposed to.”

“I was not, in all honesty, expecting otherwise.”

I took another gulp of water. “You were amazing.”

“Thank you.”

“No, but…like. That was like proper superhero lawyer shit.”

“At the risk of repeating that most obvious of clichés, I was just doing my job.”

“For which”—I mustered a soggy smile—“you are more than proportionally compensated.”

He laughed. “Exactly.”