Page 18 of Worth Every Moment (Hawkston Billionaires #4)

I draw in a breath that puffs my chest. The old fucker might have a point there. I tip my chin to acknowledge it.

He clears his throat. “I won’t last forever. I’m unwell. This time, my heart nearly killed me."

I keep my face still. I’ve never felt much emotion towards my father, but to hear him speak so plainly about dying causes an unpleasant sensation to sweep through my body, as if everything beneath my ribs is being scooped out. Emptied . A reminder that one day, we’re all going to die.

“You’re like me, Sebastian. We’re made of the same cloth—”

“I’m nothing like you,” I spit, thinking of all the women he fucked when we were young, a parade of them through the house, all while Mum turned a blind eye. I might have had my fair share of casual sex, but it was all consensual and I have never cheated on anyone.

He coughs and clears his throat. “Oh, you are. You love to fuck, but you can’t love. You don’t really care about the women you’ve been with.”

“How would you know that?”

He reaches across to the side table and grabs a folder, which he throws at me. “They’re all in there. Every woman you’ve ever been seen with. I have statements from most of them.”

“What the fuck?”

“Open it.”

I do as he asks. Each entry includes multiple photos and a typed statement with the woman’s details.

Address, birth date, fucking zodiac sign.

The lot. Anger rises like a red flood. This isn’t a montage of publicly available images.

This is something else. “You’ve had me under surveillance? You approached these women? You—”

“Your time is up. I hope you’ve enjoyed sowing all those wild oats because it ends now.”

I clench my fists to curb my fury. “What are you talking about?”

He picks up a large manilla envelope from the side table. “This.” He holds it out to me, and for a second I stare at it. He jerks his chin. “Take a look.”

I snatch it and open it, taking out a sheaf of large photographs. They’re all of a beautiful young woman. She can’t be much more than twenty. A decade younger than me. I vaguely recognise her face.

“Diana Marchetti,” my father fills in. “Your future wife.”

A chill runs through me like someone filled my veins with ice. The girl sitting next to Antonio Marchetti at London Fashion Week. “Wife?”

“Yes. I’ve arranged it with her father. A business deal, as such.

I stand to make tens of millions from it.

Maybe a hundred. Antonio owns the land I want our next hotel to be built on.

He wants our family name for his daughter.

Make her a Hawkston. One of the world’s great families.

This marriage”—he reaches across and taps the picture of the girl, right on the nose—“secures it.”

The ground drops out beneath my feet and it takes a second to orient myself before the full force of my anger roars to the fore. “Absolutely not.”

He tilts his head to the side and a cracked tongue slips out to lick his dry bottom lip.

Like he’s a fucking lizard. It repulses me.

“Isn’t it about time you did something of use?

Made this family proud, instead of disgracing us constantly and publicly?

You’re not a child anymore. Can’t hide behind your older brothers. It’s time to be a man, Sebastian.”

“Seb. And the answer is no, no matter how many times you insult me. And as for doing something of use, revenue is up ten per cent since I took over the marketing and PR department. I turned that shit around. Me.” Dad gives me one resentful nod to acknowledge what I’ve done for the company. “So no. I will not do it.”

“You can’t say no.”

“I bloody well can. I don’t need anything from you. I can walk out that door and slam it, and never see your face again. It would give me pleasure to do it.”

In each hand, he grips a fistful of the blanket covering his knees. “If I have to die—and death is the one thing I can’t cheat, Sebastian—I want to make sure this deal is sealed before I do. Nico’s on board as CEO.”

“On board with this marriage?” The words explode as a sense of betrayal floods me. Surely Nico wouldn’t sign off on this, not without talking to me.

Dad chuckles, seemingly amused by my alarm.

“No. He doesn’t know about that part. He’s on board with the idea of the hotel, and unofficially, all the board members are in agreement too.

I’m this fucking close.” He raises one hand, creating a tiny gap between his thumb and index finger.

“I will go to whatever lengths necessary to ensure it happens. If you stand in the way of that, I’ll have your accounts drained.

Your trust funds emptied. You’ll have nothing but the suit you’re standing in.

We’ll call it an unfortunate fraud. Poor, idiotic Seb Hawkston, duped in a scam that emptied every bank account he has.

I’ll take everything from you and don’t think I won’t do it.

Don’t think I can’t do it, because I can. And you know it.”

He wants a new hotel this fucking much? To screw me over this badly?

I don’t know why I’m surprised. He’s always been a shitty parent and a ruthless businessman.

The most dreadful of combinations. Having a heart attack was never going to change that.

“I don’t give a fuck. I don’t need money.

I won’t let you control my life like this. ”

Dad’s ripe laughter fills the room. “You’d lose everything just to stay single?

I know you hate me, but please tell me you aren’t a complete fool.

Your behaviour is obtuse. It’s not as if you’d be leaving anyone behind.

I know you don’t give a shit about any of those women, and I doubt they care about you either.

Not really. Not on any level that counts .

” He indicates the folder containing my sexual history.

“Trust me, I know what that’s like. The hollow, empty feeling inside.

Never really caring and wondering why not.

At least this way, you’ll have a woman who’ll stick around for longer than a couple of weeks. ”

His barbs are well aimed, and I have to exert control over my features not to show he’s hit the target. No one has stuck around. Not for long, anyway. “I am not like you. We are not the same.”

His lips thin, mouth tightening as though he’s stifling a knowing smile.

Bastard . “I’m not asking too much,” he continues.

“Say a few words, wear the ring, fuck the girl, have a couple of kids, and live happily ever after. Fuck it, you can get divorced after the hotel is built. Mr Marchetti will be happy with a few Hawkston grandsons. Give them your name and your DNA and have done with it.”

Enough . I leap to my feet, sending the photographs flying to the floor. Pointing a finger in his face, I growl, “You cannot fucking pimp me out like that.”

He laughs. “No. You do that well enough yourself. Besides, you didn’t seem to mind when you were sixteen.”

I glare at him, recalling the brothel he took me to on my sixteenth birthday.

The woman he bought me as a ‘coming-of-age present.’ The way he patted me on the back and said, “It’s time to be a man, Sebastian.

You can’t sit at home with your mother forever.

She doesn’t want you there.” And then he gave me a look that demanded gratitude.

As if he expected me to run and tell my friends, so they’d think he was a great dad.

The only acceptable response was to get on my knees and thank him for even thinking of me, when really, on some unspeakable energetic level, we both knew that wasn’t it at all.

None of it was for me. It was deep, and dark, and cloaked in shame that settled in my fucking bones.

At the time, I tried to convince myself it was a good thing.

That it meant he finally saw me as a man, and that maybe, if I did this for him, then he’d treat me the way he did my brothers.

But really, it was terrifying. The woman barely spoke to me for the few minutes it lasted.

She did her job and asked for her cash, which I didn’t have, so we had to traipse out into the corridor together to find Dad.

He stood there with his wallet out, counting out the notes like he was giving me pocket money.

He was the boss, and I was just another kid on the payroll.

And then he looked me up and down, checked his watch with a disdainful sneer on his face, said, ‘ You’ll have to do better than that if you want to call yourself a man ’, which made it feel like the whole fucking world crumbled beneath my feet.

Everything changed from that moment. My whole fucking trajectory.

I've been trying to ‘ do better ’, whatever the fuck that really means, every single time I've taken a woman to bed.

Silence sinks between us, raw and full of anger on my side. Full of an unbearable indifference on his.

“All this, for a hotel?” I ask, bitter resentment rumbling through my words.

“More than a hotel. A legacy. Like I said, I could die at any moment. I want to leave the biggest mark on this planet I can.”

“And fuck your family in the process.”

He quirks a brow. “I’m not fucking you, Sebastian. I’m edging you.”

I drag a hand over my eyes, but I can’t shut him out because his filthy chuckle penetrates the temporary darkness. I let my hand fall, straining to keep the emotion out of my voice. “You’re sacrificing my life to your agenda. For this so-called legacy.”

“Nothing so-called about it. Our name is one of the most famous in the world, and I’ve sacrificed a hell of a lot to make it happen.

You have no idea what it takes to build this sort of business.

” His words stab right into the wound Erica created at the gallery.

To be reminded of her now, when my father is tearing strips off me, is an agony I never could have anticipated.

“None of you do. Nico might be CEO, but this will always be my company. It took sweat and blood to build this business, to give you all the life you’ve become accustomed to.

The women. The boats. The jets. The fast cars.

Could any of you boys have done what I did?

Nico? Maybe. Matt? Possibly. But you? Never.

Not in a million years. You’re the joker in the pack.

The little cunt who does nothing but smile and fuck, and crack a joke that’s occasionally funny, but most of the time is just fucking stupid. ”

His comments land like blows across my back, designed to make me fall. Inside, I’m buckling, but I don’t move. I refuse to offer him any confirmation that it hurts. “That pep talk supposed to get me to do what you want? Because it didn’t work. I won’t do it. Fuck you, and fuck your legacy.”

I take steps to leave the room when he calls me back. “I’m expecting you at dinner with Diana. My PA will contact you with the details.”

“And if I don’t show?”

“I will make your life hell. And those flames will burn, Sebastian. I’ll take every penny you have, and there’s no way you could earn it back.” He laughs again. “You don’t have the balls to make that kind of fortune.”

I stare at him. “How the fuck does a man without a heart have a heart attack?”

I don’t give him the chance to reply before I leave, slamming the door on my way out.