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Looking at her now, it was clear that she was doing exactly that. That she’d taken it all to heart, locked away in the farthest reaches of the estate, where she could do all the work and remain out of sight and out of mind.
The way her uncle had always wanted it; and Atlas should have had more sympathy for her because of it.
He didn’t.
She’d grown into her beauty now, however, though she appeared to be dressed like a mouse today. Or if he was more precise, a run-of-the-mill secretary in a sensible skirt and an unobjectionable blouse. Brown hair tugged into a severe bun that looked as if it ought to have given her a headache.
She looked as if she was dressed to disappear. To fade into the wallpaper behind her. To never, ever appear to have a single thought above her station.
But still, mouse or secretary or Cinderella herself, she didn’t crumple, which made her far more brave than most of the men he’d met in prison.
“You will never know how sorry I am that my testimony put you behind bars,” she said, her eyes slick with misery as if she was as haunted by all of this as he was. Yet she kept her gaze steady on his just the same. “But Atlas. I didn’t tell a single lie. I didn’t make anything up. All I said was what I saw.”
“What you saw.” He let out a bitter laugh. “You mean what you twisted around in your fevered little teenage brain to make into some kind of—”
“It was what I saw, nothing more and nothing less.” She pressed her lips together and shook her head. Once, harshly. Then again. “What did you expect me to do? Lie?”
“Certainly not.” He moved until he was directly opposite her, only the narrow little desktop between them. This close, he could smell her. Soap, he thought, crisp and clean. And something faintly like rosemary that washed through him like heat. Better still, he could see the way her pulse went mad in the crook of her neck. “After all, what do you have if not your word? Your virtue?” He put enough emphasis on that last word that she cringed. “I understand that is a requirement for the charity you enjoy here. Your uncle has always been very clear on that score, has he not?”
She flushed again, harder this time. And Atlas shouldn’t have been fascinated at the sight. He told himself it was nothing more than the vestiges of his prison time, making him find a female, any female, attractive. It wasn’t personal.
Because it couldn’t be personal. There was too much work to do.
“My uncle has never been anything but kind to me,” she said in a low, intense voice, though there was a flicker in her gaze that made him wonder if she believed her own words.
“I know he requires you to believe it.”
Another deep, red flash. “I understand that you’re the last person in the world who could think kindly of the family. Any of them. And I don’t blame you for that.”
“I imagine I should view that as a kind of progress, that I am permitted my own bitterness. That it is no longer considered a part and parcel of my guilt, as if remorse for a crime I didn’t commit might make me a better man.”
Atlas regarded her stonily as she jerked a bit at that, though something in him...eased, almost. He’d spent all those years fuming, seething, plotting. He’d discarded more byzantine, labyrinthine plots than he cared to recall. That was what life in prison did to a man. It was fertile ground for grudges, the deeper, the better. But he’d never been entirely sure he’d get the opportunity to put all of this into motion.
“I won’t lie to you, Lexi. I expected this to be harder.”
“Your return?”
He watched, fascinated despite himself, as she pressed her lips together. As if they were dry. Or she was nervous. And Atlas was a man who had gone without female companionship for longer than he ever would have believed possible, before. No matter what else happened, he was still a man.
He could think of several ways to wet those lips.
But that was getting ahead of himself.
“I don’t expect you to believe this,” Lexi was saying with an intense earnestness that made him feel almost...restless. “But everyone feels terrible. My uncle. My cousins. All of us. Me especially. If I could change what happened, you have to believe I would.”
“You’re right,” Atlas murmured. He waited for that faint bit of hope to kindle in her gaze, because he was nothing if not the monster they’d made him. “I don’t believe it.”
And really, she was too easy. He could read her too well. He saw the way she drooped, then collected herself. He watched her straighten again, then twist her hands together again. Harder this time.
“I know why you came here,” she said after a moment. Quietly. “I expect your hatred, Atlas. I know I earned it.”
“Aren’t you the perfect little martyr?” When she shook a bit at that, he felt his mouth curve. “But it’s not going to be that easy, Lexi. Nothing about this is going to be easy at all. If you come to a place of peace with that now, perhaps you will find this all less distressing.” He shrugged. “Or perhaps not.”
She looked panicked, but to her credit, she didn’t move. She didn’t swoon or scream or do any of the things Philippa would have done. No tantrums, no drama.
But then, Lexi had never been about theatrics.
That was precisely why she’d been such an effective witness for the prosecution, all starchy and matter-of-fact until she’d turned the knife in him, one glassy-eyed half sob at a time.
And what was wrong with him that he was tempted to forget that? For even a moment? He felt no connection to this woman. He couldn’t. She was a pawn, nothing more.
It irritated him that he seemed to need reminding of that fact.
“What exactly is to come?” she asked, her voice hardly more than a breath and her eyes much too big in her face.
“I’m so glad you asked.” He stood where he was, watching her. Studying her. Then he crooked a finger, and liked it a little too much when she jolted, as if he’d shot her through with lightning when he wasn’t even touching her. Yet. “Come here.”
She swayed on her feet and he was bastard enough to enjoy it. Hell, he more than enjoyed it. He figured it was as close as Lexi ever got to a full-on faint, and it was only a drop in the bucket next to the pain he owed her.
She swallowed, hard. He watched her throat move and braced himself for a spate of complaints. Or excuses. Anything to avoid what was coming.
But she didn’t say anything. She didn’t argue or dawdle. She straightened that blouse of hers that was already precise to a near military level, and then she stepped out from behind her desk.
“Closer,” Atlas ordered her when she only rounded the desk and stopped, leaving several feet between them.
Another hard, audible swallow. He could see her terror beat in her neck. He could see the flushed state of her skin. He could see fear and apprehension in her gaze, and the truth was, it was better than he’d imagined.
And God knew, he’d imagined this moment again and again and again. He’d imagined it so many times it was as if it had already happened. As if it was set in stone and made memory and prophecy at once.
She took one step. Then another.
“Here,” Atlas said, gruff and cruel. And nodded his head to a spot on the floor about one inch in front of him.
And she surprised him yet again. There was no denying the uneasiness in her gaze, her expression. But she didn’t carry on about it. She simply stepped forward, putting herself exactly where he’d indicated she should go.
Then he got to watch her tip her head back, way back, so she could hold his gaze with hers. And they could both spend a little moment or two recalling how much bigger and taller and more dangerous he was than she could ever dream of becoming.
He, at least, enjoyed the hell out of it.
“I think we can both agree that you owe me, can we not?” he asked.
It wasn’t really a question. He didn’t think she would confuse it for one, and he wasn’t disappointed.
Her nod was jerky. “I wish I could change the past, but I can’t.”
“Indeed, you cannot. You cannot change one moment of the past eleven years.”
“Atlas...”
He ignored her. “Your uncle has invited me to dinner tonight up at the manor house,” he told her. “Perhaps you already know this.”
“I know that was his intention, yes.”
“Your uncle believes that breaking bread with me rather than squabbling in a boardroom or court of law will make this all go away.” He could tell exactly how cruel his smile was by the way her brown eyes widened at the sight of it. “It won’t.”
“I don’t think anyone expects any of this to go away.”
“Wonderful. Then no one will be surprised by anything that happens now, I’m sure.”
“Atlas. Please. No one meant to hurt you. You have to believe that.”
It was an impassioned plea. He thought she even believed it. But he only shook his head at her.
“Let me tell you what I believe, Lexi. I believe that you were a teenager. That you saw something you didn’t understand and put a spin on it that made sense to you. On some level, I don’t even blame you for it. You were little more than a child, and of all the vultures and liars in this family, Philippa was at least the most genuine. In that I suspect she actually liked you.”
She sucked in a breath, ragged and sharp at once. “They’re my family. They all like me.”
But he doubted even she thought that sounded convincing.
His mouth twisted into something as hard as it was sardonic. “Tell yourself those lies if you must. I cannot stop you. But do not tell them to me.”
“You have a harsh view of the Worth family. I understand it and you have every right to it, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to agree with you. I don’t hate them the way you do.”
He laughed at that. “The thing is, Lexi, your uncle was not a teenager. He was not confused. He knew exactly what he was doing, and you should ask yourself why he was so eager to do it.”
“My uncle has never been anything but kind—”
“At the very least, Lexi, you must ask yourself why, when your uncle knew full well that I could not have killed his daughter, he pretended to think otherwise.” Her breath sounded strangled, and he pushed on. “Your cousins, I think we can both agree, are varying degrees of useless. They believe whatever is most convenient and likely to fill their coffers. But you should know better. Is it that you don’t—or that you won’t?”
She seemed to struggle where she stood, and he let her.
“If you hate them all so much—if you hate us so much—I don’t know what you’re doing here.” Her hands were no longer clenched in front of her. Instead, she’d curled them into fists at her sides. “You can go anywhere in the world, Atlas. Why return to a place that caused you so much pain?”
“Because I intend to cause pain in turn,” Atlas told her, his voice hard. And he held her gaze in the same way, as if the look he was directing her way was a blow.
Good. It was.
“Surely there’s been enough pain...” she whispered.
“You will be at that dinner tonight.”
“I wasn’t invited.”
“I’m aware. Doesn’t it fascinate you that while they were happy to trot you out as a witness for the prosecution, they are less interested in having you attend my glorious return?”
“It’s not that they’re not interested, it’s that I’m not the same as the rest of them. I don’t have an interest in the estate’s trust, for one thing.”
“Though of all the Worth family blood relations, you are the only one who actually works for the trust. Does that not strike you as odd?”
She blinked and he thought he’d hit upon a sore spot. “Whether I do or don’t doesn’t matter. This is how things work here and everyone is perfectly happy with that. Except you, apparently. And I still wasn’t asked to join your reunion dinner.”
“I’m inviting you,” he said, and watched her as she didn’t react to that. As she very deliberately didn’t react to that. “I told your uncle that I expected the entire family to be at that table and he’s not inclined to cross me. Not this soon. Not while paparazzi still follow me around, desperate to record my every utterance.”
“I don’t know why you’d want me there. Surely you need to have a conversation with Uncle Richard, and my cousins, to discuss what is to become—”
“The first thing you need to learn, Lexi, is that I run this show.” Atlas smiled at her, all fangs. “I will tell you when to speak and what to say, and if I do not, your job is to remain silent. After all, we both know you’re very good at that, don’t we?”
She went pale. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“I think you do. You’ve spent your entire life learning how to blend in with the scenery here.” He raised his brows. “Do that.”
She didn’t like that. He could see it in the way her jaw moved, but she didn’t rail at him the way he’d expected she might. Atlas was certain there was fire in her—temper and turmoil—but she never let it loose. Not even here, now, when it could be chalked up to the drama of this reunion.
“Whether I blend or don’t blend,” she said very carefully, as if she was weighing each word, “what does that have to do with you?”
He was far more comfortable with this part than with the unexpected perfection of the turn of her cheek. That he even noticed such a thing was a distraction and he couldn’t afford distractions. Not now.
“At this dinner, I expect your uncle to offer me compensation for my years in prison. Money. A job. Whatever. It won’t be enough.”
“Can anything be enough?”
“I’m glad you asked. No.”
“Then what do you hope—”
“I spent years trying to decide what would best serve my needs and also be the least palatable to your uncle,” Atlas told her softly, in the tone that had kept more than one cell mate at bay. “And I could only think of one thing. I will reclaim my position, of course. I will take all the money that is owed me and then some. I will once again have all the things I worked so hard to achieve before they were stripped from me. But that will not return a decade of my life, will it?”
“Nothing will.”
“Nothing,” he agreed. “So you see, I have no choice but to make certain that this can never happen to me again. I will not be your uncle’s patsy. I will not be a target. I will be something much, much worse.” He smiled wider at that, dark and grim. “Family.”
She didn’t understand. He could see the confusion on her face, and like everything else about this meeting, it pleased him. Because he had never been a good man, he’d only ever been an ambitious one. He’d fought his way out of the slums with absolutely no help from anyone because he’d refused to accept that he should stay there. While Lexi had been coltish and silly at eighteen, Atlas had been focused. Determined.
There had never been another option.
He’d taken over his first company when he’d been barely twenty and turned it into a global contender. He’d gone from that to a boutique hotel chain in Europe that had been on the verge of collapse and had turned all seven locations into paragons of luxury, destinations in and of themselves, and in so doing had made himself the most sought after businessman in the world. The transformation of Worth Manor and its grounds from tottery old heap of family stones into a recreational destination in London, a city packed with such things, had been supposed to send him straight into the stratosphere.
Instead, he’d gone to prison. And he’d spent the past eleven years learning that really, all he truly was beneath all of that was furious.
As if furious was in his bones. As if furious was who he was and ever would be.
Atlas was fine with that.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Lexi said, and he had the sense she was fighting to remain calm. He hoped it was a struggle.
“Your uncle will offer me a great many things tonight,” Atlas told her, because he knew the old man. He knew exactly how this would go. He was depending on Richard Xavier Worth being exactly who he’d always been. That was the trouble with doing what Richard had done to a man like Atlas, who had worked for him. Atlas had studied his boss. Richard should have taken better care to do the same to the man he’d sent to prison. “And I will take them all. Then I will take one more thing. You.”
He supposed it was a measure of her confusion that she only blinked at him. “Me?”
