Page 55 of Secret Revenge

“I’m not a greedy man, no. I worked hard, I did his bidding without question, and I pursued the same goals as your old man. What did I get in return? The poor bloke had the audacity to tell me that he didn’t want to sully the good name of his prestigious company by putting me officially on his books.

“He said that if we were to give me any shares and I became a part of the company, then the company would be associated with the mob, and that, he claimed, was bad for business. The scurvy rascal. Nothing has ever made me more upset in my life. Even now, as I think about it, I have the urge to do him over again, only if I could.

“How stupid could he be? How pretentious of him to say such a thing to me, after all the things that we did together? Fancy that it wasn’t dirty when he needed rivals to disappear in the middle of the night, but it was dirty when the time came to give me a share of the spoils.

“Suffice to say, I learned that I needed to fend for myself.”

Bryce Blackwell grinned wickedly. “So, I got rid of him, and good riddance. Best decision I ever made in my life. And the way you’ve been going, I reckon you’d join him sooner rather than later, boy.”

“What do you want?” I asked guardedly. If all he wanted were shares of the company, then getting out of this might be easier than I’d expected. “You won’t get a dime from me if you harm Emily. I promise you that. But if you release her safely…”

"Blackwell’s laugh was cold, cutting through the tension like a knife. 'Trust you, boy? After all your self-righteous crusadingagainst your father's legacy? You’re the worst kind of fool−the kind who mistakes his ego for virtue.”

“You’ve spent your time in power seeking people we dealt with decades ago, digging up old graves, in the name of giving reparations.” He spat on the floor and narrowed his eyes at me. “Your father must think you’re an absolute disgrace.”

Blackwell’s voice dropped to a menacing whisper, each word laced with venom and years of festering resentment. I could see the hate in his eyes as he spoke about my father, and I knew that everything he’d said was true. He had no reason to tell a lie that could come back to bite him.

My brothers and I already had an idea of the rot my father had left behind, but we didn’t know how bad it had been. While Bryce Blackwell had been meaning to sting, telling me that my father thought of me as a disgrace was the highest compliment he could have paid me.

I could not bring myself to regret my father’s death, but no one in the family had ever thought to check for murder. He’d had a known heart condition, and he’d died in his bed, not in a car crash or at the wrong end of a bullet.

There could only be one reason for Blackwell to own up to it so confidently, and that reason chilled my bones. He didn’t plan to let me out of this alive. He thought he stood to profit more from my death than from my ransom.

I thought about Emily and swallowed the panic that bubbled up my throat.

“And what do you plan to do with Emily?” I tried to keep my voice cool “She has nothing to do with any of this, Bryce. And it’ll look bad if she disappears after working for your little operation.”

“The journalist girl?” Blackwell chuckled. “Oh, Ross. Don’t tell me you actually care for her? Well, what do you know? You’re an even weaker bastard than I thought.

Blackwell's smirk twisted into something more sinister. 'Well, since you're so invested, let me enlighten you. The journalist has a talent for charming billionaires, doesn’t she? We intend to harness that... skill. She'll be quite the asset in our little conquests.” He leaned in closer. “She’ll play the rest of Wall Street in just the same way she’s played you. And she’ll enjoy every minute of it.

That couldn’t be true. It was a lie designed to hurt me. But…for what reason? Blackwell could do anything he wanted to me here.

It couldn’t be true.

Could it?

27

EMILY

“Why would I help you? Why not just hire someone else?”

Maybe it was stupid to ask those questions, but I knew one thing: Jonathan wouldn’t buy it if I gave in easily. He knew how stubborn I was, and he would only believe that I’d decided to work for him if I put up a good fight first.

“Do you think we haven’t tried?” His answer frightened me. “You’re the first to pull it off without our direct involvement. That's what makes youspecial.”Jonathan shook his head. “I never thought that you, of all people, would. But maybe that’s why it worked.”

I glanced around the little guardhouse. Getting out of it wouldn’t be too much of a problem, if I could just get Jonathan’s eyes off of me. His gun and piercing gaze never wavered from me, like a predator watching its prey. There was nothing I could do unless something distracted him.

Come on, Michael. Tell me you’re tracking this phone.Even if I used my burned cell to call the police, I realized that I didn’t have a clear enough understanding of where I was to be able to tell them where to go.

Short of a distraction, I could keep him talking. And try to get more information out of him.

“If I do this,” I asked cautiously, “you’ll let Travis go?”

“That’s not a very good motivation, Emily. How am I supposed to believe you’ll seduce others for us if you actually care about this one?”

“It’s part of my price,” I demanded stubbornly. “If anything happens to him−even if it’s ‘accidental’ or ‘natural causes’−you lose me as an asset.”