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Wrath & Ruin
Alice La Roux
Chapter One
Delphine
“Explain to me again, Charlie, how that little cunt has acquired shares in my company…” Tapping my crimson nails on the desk, I give the small man sitting opposite me a tight smile.
The sun had set a while ago, but here we were, still in my office. Glancing out the huge floor to ceiling windows, I watch people on the streets below going about their evenings, little specks of color lit by the glow of the city.
He swallows anxiously as I inhale slowly, trying to calm myself. His pale throat bobs as he attempts to find some words to appease me, but nothing he says right now will dampen the anger simmering away inside like a pot, preparing to bubble over.
“It appears that Jacobson may have sold his stock to the subsidiary ICA Investments.” Charlie coughs and glances down at the tablet in his hand as he scrolls through the report. The same report I received fifteen minutes ago. The same report that had me seeing red.
Arching my brow at my assistant, I urge him to continue. “And who owns ICA Investments?”
Charlie’s chestnut brown eyes dart to the side as he chews on his bottom lip. “That would be…West Holdings.”
“How. The. Fuck. Did. This. Happen?” Rubbing my temples, I try to ignore the pounding headache that seems to be building in intensity. Grabbing the hairpin that had been holding back my honey-colored hair, I yank it free and shake out my loose curls, hoping to ease some of the pressure on my skull. The urge to hurt someone builds the longer I sit here.
My assistant trembles, knuckles white as he clutches the tablet like it’s going to save his life. It won’t. But it might save him if I decide to throw the stapler.
My second in command and closest friend, Hugo, leans back in his chair and taps his chin. His hair is shades of salt and pepper, matching the neatly trimmed beard he’s been growing out recently. His Tom Ford suit is immaculate, like always, and as he brushes some
Imaginary lint from his lapel, I suppress the urge to snort. I’d never met a man quite as vain as Hugo Chadwick.
When he speaks, it’s directed at me and I can see the cogs turning inside his head as we think about how to handle the drama surely coming our way. Hugo knew all about my family scandals. “Do we have any information on why Jacobson sold up?”
“His family have been stakeholders since my great-grandfather created this company.” Tap. Tap. Tap. This makes no sense. I keep drumming my nails on the mahogany surface. My grandfather had brought this desk over with him from France when he first started his business. He claimed to have fallen in love with it when he spotted it in an antique shop near Brantôme, my grandmother being the shop assistant clearly had nothing to do with it.
I wasn’t supposed to be the Harrington sitting in the Chief Executive Officer chair, but I hadn’t exactly been given a choice. No, that was taken from me almost thirty years ago when my brother ran away.
Ran from the family.
From his responsibilities.
From me.
I was barely ten years old, and like all little girls with older brothers, obsessed with him. My brother. My Leon. But his obsession had taken him away from us.
Now proof of his infatuation and reckless youth was haunting me, trying to take everything I’d worked so hard to build.
That wasn’t going to happen.
Some bastard child, born out of wedlock to my disowned and estranged brother, was worth nothing, and certainly not the million-dollar business entrusted to me. I’d given everything to Nexus Enterprises. Everything.
Charlie tugs on his collar, his nervousness feeding the rage inside me. How hard was it to find an assistant who didn’t flinch and shake like a doe caught in my headlights?
“There have been reports of Jacobson’s…debt.”
“He’s always in debt. What’s so different now?” I wave my hand, irritated. That information wasn’t new. Harold Jacobson had been surviving on credit and goodwill since the eighties. His money was always vanishing up his nose, in poor investments or being sucked out of his dick by his latest wife. Yet his shares in Nexus had always been constant.
The tip of Charlie’s tongue darts out, and he swipes it across his bottom lip. “I tried to contact his office, Delphine. But they said…they said…”
Pushing to my feet, I walk over to the drinks trolley I keep in my office for when I have important guests and pour myself and Hugo each a glass of Penderyn. “Spit it out Charlie, or I swear to God I’m going to wring that neck of yours.”
“They said he’s in hospital. Recovering from an accident.”
