road, throwing the Vulcan down a gear to take a bend.
Maddy.
She’s all I’ve been able to think about since I left Spencer’s house. Gabrielle’s still there. They had a lot to talk about. A lot of arrangements to make. A lot to look forward to.
And everything he and I need to discuss is now scheduled into a meeting tomorrow morning. First thing tomorrow things will start changing.
The Riches always find a way.
I grin as I floor the gas. I called Dad the second I began to drive. The hope in his voice was tangible, tinting the air inside my car with white light, like snowflakes in a gray sky. We’re still fifteen million short. The business could still fold. But we’re closer. We’re one fucking step closer, when all I feel like I’ve done since Italy is taken steps back, further and further away from the end of this fucking tunnel we’re inside.
But now there’s a light.
A small one. But it’s growing. I don’t have to marry a woman I don’t love to find a way out.
Gabrielle was right. Spencer’s way of seeing things changed the moment she showed him the photograph on her phone. He looked shocked, excited, and somehow, at peace, all at the same time. I guess knowing your time is coming makes you see things with new perspective.
I slam to a halt outside Maddy’s apartment building and fly from my car. She’ll have finished work. I pray she’s home. I’ve not had any luck the past three days when coming here to look for her. But I’m here anyway. I couldn’t imagine going anywhere else.
She is the first person I knew I had to be face to face with when I told them the news. Not Mum. Not Dad. Her. The girl who claims to hate me. Yet everything she does says otherwise.
“Smiles,” I say as I press the intercom. “Come on, pick up, baby. Please be home.”
Nothing.
I pull out my phone and bring up my call list, hitting her name. It goes straight to voicemail. I jump back into my car and start the engine. Maybe she’s with her parents. I bring Drew’s number up. The Bluetooth picks it up and the ringing echoes inside the car as I turn around and drive.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Hey. Mads with you?” I swing around a bend and then reach up to tug my tie loose. I feel like stripping all my clothes off and doing a fucking victory lap around my car in the street. This is the closest that things have been to a solution in weeks.
“No. And if you’d called me back three hours ago, then you’d know she’s not,” Drew growls. “What the fuck did you say to her?”
“What?” I check the wing mirror as I overtake the car in front. “Nothing. I haven’t seen her. She’s still avoiding me.”
Drew curses.
“Why? What’s going on?”
“She left.”
“She’s what?”
“And she says she’s not coming back. She told me to tell you to check your emails.”
“What? Fuck!” I swerve to avoid a small fallen branch in the road. “Why?”
“I don’t know.”
“Fuck, okay. I’ll call you back.”
Unease claws its way up my spine making the back of my neck prickle as I hit the brakes and steer off the main road and into a small side street. I park at an angle, the engine still running as I pull out my phone and bring up my emails.
The latest one is from Maddy’s work account.
I click into it.
I spent so long hating you when you didn’t deserve it, Logan. Maybe it’s time you hated me for a change. Only, I will deserve it. I’m sorry. Mads.
I open the attachment and start reading the article she’s written about me.
Cold sweat gathers on my forehead, my fingers closing around my phone until my knuckles turn white.
“Logan Rich’s failed launch. How this bachelor billionaire is set to lose it all.”
My father, the marriage to Gabrielle, losing the investors, even the fucking seizure of goods at my parents’ house. Everything I ever told her, confided in her.
It’s all here in black and white.
Maddox Harper has written down just how much she’s hated me all these years.
And now she’s telling the world.
