Page 100 of Lennox Lane

Cold. Amused. Poison dressed in a tailored suit.

“You think you’re better than me because you’ve learned to hide your arrogance behind a cause?”

Lennox’s hand stilled on Lane’s back.

The last time he’d seen Jason Jackson, rain had been hitting the windows of a private members’ club in D.C., the kind of place that made old money feel young and new money feel insecure. The room had been all dark wood, leather chairs, expensive silence, and men who believed secrets were just another asset class.

Jason had called the meeting.

Of course he had.

His father loved a stage, especially one where he thought the audience already belonged to him.

Lennox had walked in alone, though Jalen and two guards waited outside. Jason had been seated at the far end of the table with a drink in front of him. Even with gray at his temples, he was still handsome in the way arrogant men preserved themselves through money and cruelty. He wore wealth like a second skeleton. His tailored suit and expensive watch were meant to exude his wealth. That easy posture of a man who’d spent his whole life believing every room was built to accommodate him.

“Sit down,” Jason had said.

Lennox hadn’t.

Jason’s mouth had curved. “Still dramatic.”

“Still pretending control is the same thing as respect.”

That had dimmed his father’s smile. Lennox remembered the heat in his own chest that day. Not loud anger. Not reckless. Something colder. Older. Years of watching Jason treat people like tools, debts, favors, leverage. Years of watching Mielle Jackson stand in rooms built from her husband’s money and shrink inside the life he’d bought her. Years of hearing other women’s names whispered, seeing outside children become rumors at family gatherings, watching his father call humiliation provision because the house was big enough to echo.

Jason had swirled the liquor in his glass. “You’ve gotten sentimental.”

“And you’ve gotten sloppy.”

His father laughed once. “Careful.”

“No.” Lennox had stepped closer to the table. “You don’t get careful from me anymore.”

Jason’s eyes sharpened.

There it was.

The predator noticing another predator didn’t lower his head anymore.

“You built your power on people’s weakness,” Lennox said. “You found wounds, secrets, addictions, affairs, debts, shame, grief, and fear, then you fed on them. You called it strategy because calling it what it was would’ve made you too common.”

Jason set his glass down slowly. “And what was it?”

“You’re a user.” Lennox’s voice had stayed calm, but every word carried blood under the surface. “A leech. You built a myth around yourself because without desperate people to drain, there’s nothing impressive about you.”

Jason stood then.

The men near the wall shifted.

Lennox didn’t.

“By proxy,” Lennox continued, “you’re weak.”

For a second, the room nearly came apart.

Jason moved around the table fast enough that two security men stepped forward, but Lennox lifted one hand, stopping them. He wanted his father close enough to see the truth land.

“You ungrateful little bastard,” Jason hissed.