Page 25 of Savage Elites

“They’re recently deceased,” Leopold said with iron in his voice.

The older woman turned her head and sniffed. It was the kind of dismissive gesture I’d seen people make when they’d lost an argument or made an embarrassing faux-pas. I had no idea what she might have said if Mom and Dad had been alive.

After an awkward moment, Leopold’s mom asked, “Are you a scholar at the Brittas Academy?”

“Yes, Mrs. Brunswick,” I replied.

“I hope you’re keeping my son out of trouble.”

“She is.” Leopold placed an arm around my shoulder and walked around his Mom and sister toward the door. “Now, we will take our leave, and I’ll see you in the directors’ end-of-year meeting.”

“Not so fast,” said Mrs. Brunswick from between clenched teeth.

Leopold deflated, and the lining of my stomach rumbled with dread. Was this where she would tell me to stay away from her precious son?

Mrs. Brunswick turned from Leopold and stared down her perfectly straight nose at me. Her eyes hardened into chips of aquamarine. “Understand this. Leopold is free to engage in as many dalliances as he wishes, but once he has completed his MBA in finance, he will marry an heiress of my choosing. Is that understood?”

My nostrils flared. What did she think I was? Some gold-digger waiting to get my claws into the Brunswick banking fortune? She was just like the queens from Brittas Academy but without the nighttime abductions.

Pulling my shoulders back, I said, “I came here to seek alternative advice about my headaches, not to get a lecture on your plans to tie a noose around your son’s neck.”

The sister snorted.

Mrs. Brunswick’s face remained as hard and as unmoving as stone. The woman was probably used to intimidating everyone she met, but her glowers wouldn’t work on me. Not when I had enemies bigger and badder and more murderous than a snobbish banker.

I held her gaze with a glower of my own. She’d be wasting her time if she wanted me to lower my eyes and stutter out an apology.

The older woman’s nostrils flared. “I will have words with Mrs. Benazir about the breakdown in discipline.”

“Bye, Mother.” Leopold steered me around the blonde pair, and we walked out of the reception area into the building’s burgundy-carpeted hallway.

Neither of us spoke as we took the stairs to the ground floor. Outside, our feet crunched over a thin layer of frost, and we continued along Harley Street toward the multi-story parking lot where Leopold had left Sebastian’s jeep.

My breath fogged in the cold, January air, and my memory rolled back to my encounter with Sebastian in the girls’ changing room. “Is that why you warn girls that nothing will come of sleeping with you?”

His shoulders slumped. “That’s part of it.”

“Why don’t you tell her you want to make your own choices?”

Leopold ran gloved fingers through his hair. “That woman is itching for an excuse to oust me from becoming the next leader of the bank. Its succession policies only go through the male line, and she hasn’t been able to change it so that she can take control.”

“I thought your father was the banker.”

Leopold shook his head. “Her father was the bank’s chairman, and he didn’t have any sons to take up his position. My great-uncle is serving as the interim chairman right now, and Mother holds all my votes until I’m deemed fit to take up the reins.”

“Oh.” I wrapped my arms around my middle. “That’s sexist.”

“Indeed.” He blew out a breath. “The worst part is that she would have made an excellent chair, but the board of stuffy old men won’t acknowledge all that she’s achieved from being head of the UK branch.”

We rounded a corner and crossed into a road lined of tall, Georgian townhouses with stone-faced walls covering the ground floors. From what I knew of Brunswick Bank, it was a global, family-owned institution that operated from a small number of branches. I supposed that being relegated to a lower position for being female had turned her bitterness toward her son.

“That explains their sour faces,” I muttered.

He shrugged. “Mother wants my sister to become the next heir, but that’s never going to happen with the succession policies that favor men. Now, she’s doing everything she can to secure both their positions when I become the chairman.”

“When’s that?”

“At the age of thirty.” He grimaced and opened the door to the parking lot. “If I marry earlier, twenty-five.”