Hard Rules (Dirty Money #1)(52)

Shoving the contracts into my briefcase, I hook the strap over my chest and shoulder, when a knock sounds on the door. Why is she still here? “Come in, Jessica.”

The door opens and I freeze at the sight of Emily. “I need to talk to you,” she says, and before I can object she’s inside and shutting the door.

“Are you insane?” I demand, rounding the desk and stalking toward her.

“You’re angry,” she says as I stop in front of her. “I should have called or texted you after you saw me in the restaurant. Derek showed up out of the blue and just sat down. That wasn’t what it looked like.”

“I’m not angry at you,” I say, fighting the damnable urge to touch her. “And that was exactly what it looked like and it was a reality check for me. You were right. We can’t happen. My brother clearly knows, or suspects, something between us and he will ruin you to ruin me.”

“I can handle myself.”

“You already did. You shut me down when I was too selfish to know it had to be done. Don’t come into my office at this hour. It gets us attention we don’t need. And don’t come to me at all if you don’t have to.”

“No one else is here,” she says. “Your father’s sick. I thought it was just bronchitis, but now I think it’s more. I thought about calling your mother, but I’ve only met her briefly and—”

“When did you meet my mother?”

“Today, and I have no sense of how he’d react to me calling her. That’s why I’m here. He’s really sick.”

“Define ‘sick.’ Why do you think it’s more than bronchitis?”

“He’s coughing up blood, Shane.”

Blood. The word punches me in the chest. “You’re sure?”

“Very and that can’t be good.”

I run my hand through my hair. “I guess we all forgot to tell you he has cancer.” I reach for the door at the sound of her intake of air, yanking it open. “And he gets angry when he’s reminded that he does.” I leave her behind, stalking down the hallway and through the now dark lobby, not slowing until I’m at my father’s closed doors.

I’m about to knock, but my father erupting in a coughing fit sounds on the other side. Knowing how he despises seeming weak, I wait and wait some more, but he continues to hack eternally. A blade of pain slices through me and I lower my forehead to the door, telling myself This is bronchitis or something other than the cancer traveling from his brain to his lungs. Sometimes I pretend he isn’t dying. Most of the time I pretend he isn’t dying. It’s how I cope, perhaps because it’s how he copes, but there are moments of reality like this one that gut me and turn me inside out. To hell with knocking.

I open the doors to find my father sitting behind his desk in profile and hunched over. Mindful of his privacy, I shut us inside the office, rounding the desk to find he’s leaning over a trashcan. My gaze lands hard on the blood tingeing the napkin in his hand, the sight driving that proverbial blade of dread a little deeper. So does the way he avoids looking at me and the next bout of coughing that leaves his lips stained red.

Desperate to help him, though I doubt he would do much but kick me if our positions were reversed, I grab the bottle of water on his desk, and hand it to him. “Drink,” I order.

He accepts it and damn if his hands don’t shake, a sign of weakness he’s never shown, not even during chemo. I watch him tilt the bottle up, choking as he tries to swallow, but just when I’m about to take it from him, he starts gulping. Half a bottle later, he’s wiping his mouth and straightening. “This didn’t happen,” he orders.

“It did happen,” I say. “Mom—”

“It didn’t happen,” he growls, rotating to face his desk, and I can almost see that invisible wall, which he habitually slams between us, fall into place, about ten feet higher than normal.

I inhale and let it out, standing and rounding the desk, arms crossed as I stare down at him. “The cancer has spread,” I say and it’s not a question.

“I’m being treated.”

“That’s a ‘yes.’”

His gray, bloodshot eyes meet mine. “Yes. What did you want when you came in here?”

“More chemo?”

“Yes.”

“When?” I press.

“Starting Monday, which is why I’m trying to get my goddamn work done. Why are you here?”

I ignore the question. “Does Mom know?”

“No one knows. That’s why I said this didn’t happen. Keep your mouth shut.”

“She deserves to be told.”

“Why? So she can worry more than she already does?” His expression tightens, his fingers laced in front of him on the desk as he leans forward. “Back to business. What are you here for?”

The cold reserve of his tone matches the look in his eyes that tells me that wall is now a block of ice. Anger starts to form in my gut. “Why,” I say, “when you’re dying, would you help Derek take this company into deeper, darker places, rather than help me secure a different future for him, and for everyone involved? Why, Father?”

“Son, I’m on the sidelines keeping score with one agenda. This company has to survive, and thrive, in my absence. You want to restore its ethical virginity, do it. Make it happen.”