“I know you’re a Rutherford.”
The floor drops. My pulse, which held steady through the gunfire and the burn of the graze, isn’t holding now.
“How?”
“You take me for a fool?” She waves a manicured hand at my face. “You’re a replica of Jack. And your brothers. Same eyes, same build, same”—she gestures at my jaw, my shoulders, the whole of me—“sameeverything. I walked into that gym and thought, well. There’s another one.”
“Illegitimate.”
Her eyes narrow, and she nods.
“Does anyone else know?” My voice has gravel in it. The graze on my shoulder throbs in time with my heartbeat.
“Maybe. I don’t know.” She shrugs. “I haven’t talked about it with anyone, but Vance probably knows. He’s a friend of Jack’s. You’re aware?”
She’s right. Vance would’ve clocked it the second my application hit his desk. That’s probably why he hired me.Fuck.
“So why are you here?” Her voice stays even. “I’ve known who you are from the start, but I have no ideawhy.”
I look down at my hands. The knuckles on my right are starting to scab.
“Revenge.” She doesn’t even flinch, so I continue. “My mother had a one-night stand with Jack Rutherford. Then he left, and nine months later.” I stare at the door. A saxophone is playing on the other side. “She raised me alone. Growing up, we moved from city to city, wherever the job was. And every time I turned on a television or walked past a newsstand, there they were. Him. His children.”
My hands close into fists on my thighs. The scabbed knuckles ache under the pressure.
“He knew about me. He chose not to care. So I decided I’d make him care.”
Diana is quiet for a while. Then a laugh breaks out of her, soft, but a laugh. She holds up a hand before I can react.
“I’m sorry. I don’t mean it in a bad way. It’s just… I’m not Jack’s girlfriend. Did you think I was?”
I stare at her, unbelieving.
“When he visited this branch, we had a few wild nights together. That’s all it was. Some nosy person with a camera caught us, and suddenly I’m the billionaire’s mystery woman. The media ran with it. Neither of us corrected it, because neither of us cared enough to bother.”
I sit with that. The entire foundation of my plan.
She was never his.
There was nothing to steal.
Diana reaches over and lays her fingers on my forearm.
“So he’s just one of them? One of the many.” My jaw works. “Affairs. Sex?”
“They’re not affairs. I don’t sleep with men who have girlfriends. Or wives. Or anything in between. So technically, it’s just sex.”
She pauses, considering.
“I can’t control it. Some days, if I don’t have it, the whole day feels off. You know how some people need coffee in the morning or they can’t function? Or cigarettes? It’s that. It’s exactly that.”
“Use me, then.”
She looks up.
“Use me,” I repeat it, because I want her to hear it the second time and know I meant it the first. “If that’s what you need. Use me. Every day. Every night. However you want it.”
I mean every word. Not because I’m noble. I’m saying it because I am in love with this woman, and the thought of another man’s hands on her is a knife I can’t keep swallowing.