Chapter 4
The room went completely silent.
I stared at Nathan, waiting for him to continue. He was staring at the fireplace, watching the flames dance, his face so closed off I could barely read him.
“Your father,” I said. “I don’t understand. My father and your father—did they know each other?”
“They were partners,” Nathan said. “Thirty years ago. Before Cole Hospitality was worth billions. Before Whitmore Construction had even built its first strip mall. They started a company together. Cole & Whitmore. Real estate development. Your father handled the construction side. Mine handled the money and the clients.”
He paused, like the memory tasted bad.
“It worked. For a while. They were good together. Where my father was cautious, yours was reckless. Where yours was charming, mine was solid. They built three shopping centers and two apartment complexes in five years. They were going to be rich. They were going to be legends.”
“And then what happened?” I asked.
“Then your father got greedy,” Nathan said. He turned to face me. “There was a deal. A big one. The land where the Galleria now sits. They had an opportunity to buy it for pennies on the dollar. But they needed more capital than they had. My father went to every investor he knew. He put up his house, his savings, everything he owned. Your father was supposed to do the same.”
“He didn’t, did he?”
Nathan shook his head.
“Instead, he went behind my father’s back. He made a separate deal with the sellers. He offered them slightly more than my father had promised, but only if they sold directly to him. And then he told the bank that my father had misappropriated company funds. He produced fake documents. He got three of his friends to lie under oath. By the time my father found out, it was too late. The land was in your father’s name. The company was bankrupt. And my father... my father lost everything.”
I felt sick.
This wasn’t the father I knew. Not exactly. But it was exactly the kind of thing he would do.
“What happened to your father?” I whispered.
“He had a heart attack,” Nathan said. His voice was flat now, like he had told this story so many times it no longer hurt. “Three months later. He was forty-two years old. The doctors said it was stress. I was ten years old. I watched him die in a hospital bed while your father was on the front page of the business section, smiling next to the first Whitmore Construction sign.”
Oh my God.
I sank back onto the couch.
All this time.
All this time, Nathan had been carrying this. And I had no idea.
“That’s why you never told me,” I said. “That’s why you never said anything about knowing who my father was. You were afraid I would think you were only with me to get revenge.”
“Wasn’t I?” Nathan asked bitterly. He walked away from me, toward the window. “For the first three months, yes. That’s exactly what I was doing. I saw you at that conference. I realized who you were. And I thought... this is perfect. Harold Whitmore’s daughter. The forgotten one. The one he doesn’t care about. I’ll get close to her. I’ll learn everything I can about his company. And then I’ll destroy him, and she won’t even see it coming.”
The words hit me like physical blows.
I stood up.
“So everything was a lie?” I asked. My voice was shaking. “The coffee in Dallas. The dinners. The trips to New York. The proposal? All of it was just revenge?”
Nathan turned around. His eyes were wet.
“No,” he said. “God, no. That’s the worst part. I planned to use you. I really did. But then I actually got to know you. I spent time with you. I listened to you. And somewhere around the fourth date—when you drove three hours in the rain to help a stranger whose car had broken down on the highway, and you didn’t even tell me about it until three days later—I realized I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t use you. Because I had fallen in love with you. For real. And then the revenge didn’t matter anymore. Only you mattered.”
He walked toward me, but I stepped back.
“Don’t,” I said. “Just... don’t come any closer. I need to think.”
“Emily, please,” he said. “I was going to tell you. I was going to tell you everything. I just didn’t know how. I was afraid you would leave me. And I can’t lose you. Not now. Not after I finally found something real.”
I looked at him—the man I loved, the man who had just rescued me from my family, the man who had also been planning to use me as a pawn in a thirty-year-old war.
I didn’t know what to believe.
“I need to go,” I said.
“Go where?” Nathan asked. “You have nowhere to go. Your parents just disowned you. You have no money, no clothes—”
“I have my phone,” I said. “I have a credit card with a seven-hundred-dollar limit. I’ll figure it out. I just... I can’t be here right now. Not with you. Not when I don’t know what’s real and what’s just part of some plan.”
I grabbed my purse and walked toward the door.
Nathan didn’t try to stop me.
He just stood there, watching me go.
“If you leave this room,” he said quietly. “If you walk out that door, you’re walking into a war. Your father isn’t going to wait. He’s already making calls. He’s already planning his next move. And without me... you’re just one person against the Whitmore machine.”
I put my hand on the doorknob.
“Maybe,” I said. “But at least I’ll know the machine is the enemy. I can never be sure about you.”
I walked out.
The elevator ride down was the longest sixty seconds of my life. When the doors opened in the lobby, I stepped out into a world that felt completely different from the one I had woken up in that morning.
I was homeless.
I was penniless.
And I had just walked away from the only person who had ever truly loved me—even if that love had started as a lie.
I walked through the revolving doors and out onto the sidewalk. The rain had stopped, but the air was cold. I had no coat. I had no plan.
And then I heard my name.
“Emily!”
I turned.
Claire was standing by a black town car, holding an umbrella. She was wearing her coat over her dress, her hair was perfect, and she was smiling that smile—the one that meant she wanted something.
“Go away, Claire,” I said.
“Come on, Em,” she said. “Don’t be like that. I’m here to help. Mom and Dad are... well, they’re freaking out, obviously. But I told them. I said, ‘Emily is our sister. We don’t turn our backs on family.’ So I came to find you. We can talk about this. We can fix it. All of it.”
She held the umbrella over me.
“Get in the car,” she said. “I’ll take you to my house. You can stay in the guest room. We’ll order room service—your favorite, from that Italian place you love. And tomorrow, we’ll go see Nathan together. We’ll apologize. We’ll explain that it was all just a big misunderstanding. And then everything can go back to normal.”
I stared at her.
“Normal?” I said. “You mean me going back to the kitchen? Back to working sixty hours a week for free? Back to being the invisible sister while you and Logan get everything? That’s the normal you’re offering?”
Claire’s smile tightened.
“Emily, be reasonable,” she said. “Nathan Cole is out of your league. You know that. I know that. Everyone knows that. He’s just... confused. He’s been spending too much time with you and he’s lost perspective. But if we handle this correctly—if I talk to him, explain things—he’ll come to his senses. He’ll give Dad the contract. And you can go back to being you. Everyone wins.”
And there it was.
The real reason she was there.
Not to save me.
To save the deal.
And she planned to do it by taking Nathan from me.
“Get in the car, Emily,” she said again. Her voice was harder now. “Don’t make this harder than it has to be.”
I looked at the car. I looked at her. And then I looked past her, at the dark figure leaning against the wall of the hotel parking garage, watching us.
Logan.
He wasn’t alone.
There were two other men with him. Big men. Men who didn’t look like they were there to talk.
I backed away.
“Emily,” Claire said. She reached for my arm.
“Don’t touch me,” I said.
I turned and ran.
Back into the hotel.
Through the lobby.
Toward the elevators.
I heard Claire scream my name. I heard Logan’s voice, loud and angry. I heard running footsteps behind me.
I pushed the elevator button over and over.
The doors opened.
I jumped inside and pushed the button for the top floor.
The doors started to close.
And then a hand shot through the gap.
Logan.
His face was red. His eyes were wild.
May you like
“You little bitch,” he said. “You think you can just walk out on us? You think you can ruin everything we’ve worked for? Dad’s right. We should have sent you away years ago.”
He pushed the doors open and stepped inside.
