Page 68 of The Billionaire's Angel

“What do you think about that?” heasked.

I picked up the paper and began to read, quickly absorbed by the subject matter. Only a few days before I'd been studying up on both the process and the company in question as Winters Inc. had been considering going into business with them. I didn't look up until a plate slid before me at thetable.

Cold oatmeal. Ugh. Why did I have cold oatmeal when I smelledbacon?

I looked around the table to see another bowl of cold oatmeal in front of Aiden. His coffee cup was empty, and mine had never beenfilled.

Both Sophie and Amelia were digging into plates of fluffy scrambled eggs, partnered with small mountains of bacon and hot bowls of creamy cheese grits. Steaming cups of coffee sat in front ofthem.

Shit. Neither of us had apologized to Mrs. W for our fight the night before. Sophie looked up and took in my plate and Aiden's, then looked back to her own and Amelia's. She shook her head and said under her breath, “Serves you right. Both ofyou.”

“You're not going to share with me?” Iasked.

Picking up a piece of bacon and taking a delicate bite from the end, Sophie shook her head again. “That wouldn't be fair,” she said. “Amelia doesn't have enough left to share with Aiden. You'll just have to take your punishment and then apologize. I can't believe you both got into a fist fight in the middle of thewedding.”

Looking a little bit ashamed of himself, Aiden said, “It wasn't in the middle of the wedding, it was at the end ofdinner.”

Both Sophie and Amelia ignored his excuse. Sophie slanted Amelia a look and said, “You deserve cold oatmeal, too. That was notfunny.”

Amelia’s shoulders began to shake. She swallowed hard to clear her throat before her laughter got the better of her, and she choked. Through her giggles, she said, “It was hysterical. The look on Gage's face? I thought he was going to explode before he even stood up. Maybe you three didn't think it was funny, but the rest of us haven't had that much fun in years. They used to go after each other like that all the time when they wereboys.”

Sophie looked from Aiden to me in fascination. “You did? What did you fightabout?”

Aiden and I both shrugged. “Nothing, really,” I said. That stuff was impossible to explain to women, especially a woman like Sophie. Sometimes we just needed to let off a little steam. Most of the time whatever had seemed important at the first punch wasn't a big deal by the time we weredone.

Sophie would've told us to sit down and talk out our differences. A good fight was more efficient. Aiden and I suffered through our cold oatmeal and went together to apologize to Mrs. W for our behavior. Just as she had when we’d been kids, she accepted our apologies with starchy formality and a warning to see it didn't happenagain.

The house was quiet the next few days. Tate, Emily, Charlie, and Lucas all left on their respective honeymoons. Annalise left abruptly after an unexpected and mysterious delivery of flowers to the gatehouse. Despite the extra security, Annalise had taken one look at the arrangement of gardenias and violets, turned bone white, and gone to pack her bags. No amount of arguing had changed hermind.

An hour after the flowers arrived, she was gone. Sophie had taken the arrangement, vase and all, and carried it to the kitchen with shaking hands, shoving it deep in the trash. She wasn't as bothered by the flowers as Annalise, but it was close. When I asked her about it, she just shook her head, lips pressed tightly together, and refused to discuss it. Things had been so good I let itgo.

Aiden had gone back to work, but for the next few weeks, he decided I would stick with him. We split our time, working from his home office in the mornings as he put me through a crash course on the company, and in the corporate headquarters every afternoon where I shadowed him, taking notes and getting up to speed. We hadn't decided what my official position would be, and I didn'tcare.

Like Aiden, I'd interned at the company through high school, learning from the ground up, earning minimum wage and working my ass off. And like Aiden, I’d loved every minute I was there. It wasn't just the business; it was all the memories tied up in the place. Knowing my grandfather had sat at Aiden's desk. Remembering the way I'd perched on my father's lap in the office that would someday bemine.

The company wasn't just about money and power; it was history and family. To Aiden and to me, Winters Inc. was just as much the heart of us as Winters House. Being back healed something inside of me that I’d damaged all those years ago when I'dleft.

A few days after Annalise took off, Aiden and I sat behind his desk in Winters House, poring over a pair of spreadsheets, when an alert sounded from the front gate. Aiden punched a finger at the screen of his phone and put the guard onspeaker.

“What is it?” heasked.

“Someone here to see Mrs. Armstrong. Says he has information and a delivery from herhusband.”

For a second, I didn't know who he was talking about. I never thought of Sophie asMrs. Armstrong. I hated hearing the title of another man's wife attached to her. The most primitive part of me bristled at thethought.

Aiden looked at me with a raised eyebrow. I nodded, and he said to the guard, “Let himthrough.”

Chapter Thirty

Gage

Without discussing it,neither of us went to tell Sophie she had a visitor. We waited as a sleek, low-slung sports car came through the inner gates and parked in front of the doors. A tall, slender man with dark hair and olive skin unfolded himself from thecar.

He was dressed with elegant precision, his suit custom tailored, his shoes shined to a high polish, not a hair out of place. With a look of cold calculation, he scanned the courtyard before he climbed the steps to the frontdoor.

Aiden opened the door at the first knock. I looked into the icy depths of the man's dark eyes, and a chill ran down my spine. I'd seen that look before. This was a man devoid of compassion. Of pity. A man without the capacity for love or simple human kindness. This was a man who knew only greed anddestruction.

He opened his mouth and said, “I'm Anthony Armstrong. I'm here to get mywife.”