Chapter 9

A few days later, the fragile truce in the apartment was shattered. Arley, frantic as he prepared for his meeting at the McCarthy tower, knocked Hope's jewelry box off a console table in the foyer.

Its contents scattered across the marble floor. A single, heavy platinum cufflink with a unique, unfamiliar crest rolled to a stop by his shoe.

It wasn't his.

The "lover" Hope had taunted him with. The rage came roaring back.

He stormed into her study and slapped the cufflink down on her desk.

"Whose is this?" he demanded.

Hope froze. Her heart gave a sickening lurch; she had forgotten all about it, a foolish, dangerous oversight in her scorched-earth campaign to erase him. It was Drake's. He'd left it here once. She couldn't tell Arley it belonged to a high-class escort. So she played the hand he'd dealt her.

She calmly picked up the cufflink and closed her hand around it. "That's none of your business."

Her calmness was gasoline on his fire. "None of my business? You are my fiancée! You bring another man's things into our home?"

He raised a hand, then remembered the knee, the prenup, the non-existent recording. He dropped it, shaking with impotent fury.

Hope saw his fear and knew she had him.

"Are you sure you want to make a scene about this, Arley?" she asked softly.

"Damn right I do!"

"Okay," she said with a shrug. "Let's. Take this cufflink to your father. Tell everyone your fiancée has a lover. The press will have a field day."

She took a step closer, her voice dropping. "And they won't just write about me. They'll dig. They'll find out who this mystery man is. And in the process, they'll find everything there is to know about you and Kenia Spencer."

Arley went pale.

"Imagine the headlines, Arley. The mistress, exposed. Her name, her family, her reputation, dragged through the mud for the entire world to see." She leaned in, her voice a whisper. "Are you willing to sacrifice Kenia on the altar of your own wounded pride?"

She had found his one true weakness. It wasn't his company, or his father, or his own reputation. It was Kenia.

He looked at her, his eyes filled with a new kind of fear. A fear of her. He was defeated.

"You're a bitch," he spat, before turning and leaving the room.

Hope let out a shaky breath. She had won. But as she looked at the cufflink in her palm, a strange annoyance pricked at her. A loose end she had failed to tie up.

She had no way of knowing that the crest engraved on it was the private emblem of the McCarthy family's inner circle.

And that Arley Simmons was, at that very moment, on his way to meet its owner.

In a minimalist, brutally modern conference room on the 100th floor of the McCarthy Tower, Algernon waited. He adjusted the cuffs of his plain, unadorned shirt, having deliberately left any identifying jewelry or accessories in his private safe. He had instructed his assistant to set the meeting with one small change.

He would not be introduced as Algernon McCarthy.

He would be introduced as the Director of Project Acquisitions. A man named Mr. Alistair.