Chapter 97

Richard's eyes narrowed slightly.

Elena immediately realized what she had just said.

"Ahem." She reached up and patted his chest as if soothing a dangerous animal. "Look on the bright side. I have an incredibly cool boyfriend."

Richard hadn't actually been angry, but he kept his expression stern.

"That's it?"

Elena leaned over and kissed him.

"...And an incredibly cool husband?"

That did it.

Richard laughed, caught the back of her neck, and kissed her thoroughly enough that by the time he let her go, Elena was flushed and hiding against his chest.

"All right!" She gave him a light shove. "Back to the important part. So Victoria really disliked having you around just because you were... an unusually noticeable parent?"

Richard caught her hand before she could pull it away.

"Kids that age care a lot about fitting in. Their whole social world is small, so anything that makes them stand out can feel much bigger than it actually is."

He glanced down at her.

"If your father is much taller than everyone else's and obviously younger than most of the other parents, people notice. Some kids don't care. Others hate being noticed. Victoria was probably the second kind."

Elena considered that.

"I get what you mean. Although I still think it would've been cool."

She shifted comfortably against him.

"My grandparents used to come to school events for me sometimes. They stood out among all the middle-aged parents too, but I loved it. I couldn't wait for them to watch me dance."

It was one of those memories that fit both her old life and Elena Hayes's well enough that she didn't have to worry about saying too much.

"But that was probably only part of it," Richard continued. "We were never close to begin with. Even when I tried to be friendly, I doubt I came across as particularly warm."

"That I can believe."

Richard looked at her.

Elena immediately smiled sweetly.

He ignored it.

"And her mother may have influenced her."

Elena's expression changed.

"Victoria's mother didn't like you?"

"I spent very little time here when I was young, so I rarely saw her. Whenever we did meet, she was polite. She even gave me gifts."

Richard paused, as though searching through a memory he hadn't thought about in years.

"I was fourteen when I came back to the family estate during a school break. I was walking through the main house when I heard her talking to some of my brother's caregivers around the corner."

"What did she say?"

"That I was ugly and frightening."

Elena stared at him.

Richard continued with a perfectly straight face.

"She also questioned whether I was actually my father's biological son. There was more, but that was the general theme."

Elena shot upright.

"What?"

She grabbed Richard's face in both hands and turned it toward her, studying him with absurd seriousness.

Strong brow, deep-set dark eyes, straight nose, sharp jaw. Even expressionless, the man was ridiculously handsome.

"Did you get plastic surgery?"

Richard stared at her.

"No."

"Braces? Veneers? Anything?"

"No."

"Then she might've been bli—"

Elena stopped herself.

Victoria's mother had been dead for years.

She cleared her throat.

"I'm not going to insult a dead woman. I'm just saying I'm struggling to understand her conclusion."

Richard laughed.

"Do you want to see pictures?"

Elena's eyes lit up.

"Of you as a kid?"

"Yes."

"Can I?"

Richard stood, lifting her with him.

"I'll show you when we go to bed. Right now, I actually do have a meeting."

The next few hours were unusually difficult for Elena.

Part of her desperately wanted to see what Richard had looked like as a child.

The other part kept circling back to the bizarre history of the Sterling family.

She sat on the sofa in their bedroom with a book open across her lap. The radiant heating kept the winter cold firmly outside, while pages of economic terminology, charts, and macroeconomic models stared back at her.

After their conversation about the estates earlier, she still remembered the amusement in Richard's eyes when she had tried to come up with ways to make them profitable.

It made her competitive.

Elena bit her lower lip and forced herself through another few pages.

When she finally got tired of reading, she picked up her phone and started scrolling through financial coverage of Sterling Consortium.

There was plenty of it.

The Consortium's recent restructuring of its clean-energy supply chain across Southeast Asia had generated extensive analysis. So had a new paper from Sterling Consortium's research institute examining the changing regulatory environment for cross-border capital flows.

Then Elena noticed a financial brief published less than half an hour earlier.

Two startup technology companies had reportedly begun major restructuring of their Series B financing after changes in compliance and background-review requirements.

Elena stared at the screen.

Were these the same companies Victoria had been considering?

If they were, the timing was brutal.

Elena had no idea whether Richard had anything to do with it. With investors, regulators, lenders, and compliance teams all moving independently, there were too many possibilities.

Still, one thing was clear.

Victoria's carefully prepared investment plans were already beginning to unravel.

A soft click came from the door.

Elena looked up.

Richard had finished his meeting.

The tailored suit from earlier was gone. He had changed into a dark gray robe, the collar loose at his chest.

But Elena barely noticed that.

Her attention went straight to the old black leather photo album in his hand.

Her eyes lit up.

She scrambled off the sofa without even bothering to put on her slippers and hurried toward him.

"Slow down."

Richard caught her easily and guided her toward the bed.

Then he pulled the comforter over her bare feet.

A faint rustling sound came from outside.

Elena turned toward the enormous windows.

Snow had begun falling sometime during the evening, drifting through the darkness beneath the courtyard lights. Beyond the glass, the grounds were slowly disappearing beneath a soft veil of white.

"It's snowing."

Elena tugged lightly at his sleeve.

Richard sat beside her and drew her against him, placing the heavy album across his lap.

"You were the one demanding childhood pictures."

"Open it!"

He did.

The first photograph showed a boy of perhaps twelve or thirteen standing on the lawn of an estate.

Elena stared at it.

Then stared a little longer.

"...Huh."

Richard was nearly six-five as an adult.

Apparently, adolescence had not been kind enough to let the rest of him catch up all at once.

The boy in the photograph had a large frame and surprisingly broad shoulders, but almost no weight on him. His limbs seemed too long, his hands and feet too large, and the slightly oversized school blazer only emphasized how lean he was.

He didn't look much like a pampered heir.

He looked more like a young wolf halfway through growing into itself.

Without the fullness of childhood softening his features, his brow, deep-set eyes, high nose, and sharp jaw stood out almost too strongly. The same features that made the adult Richard striking had looked harsher on a thin thirteen-year-old who hadn't yet grown into them.

Elena touched the edge of the photograph.

"Damn."

Richard glanced at her.

"You were actually really handsome."

One eyebrow rose.

"I mean it." She tapped the photograph. "If we'd gone to school together, I absolutely would've had a crush on you."

Richard looked at his younger self.

Elena studied the photograph again.

"Although..."

"Although what?"

"You don't exactly look like you were interested in dating anyone."

Richard raised an eyebrow.

"What do I look interested in?"

Elena studied the photograph with exaggerated seriousness.

"Trouble."

"Trouble?"

"The expensive kind."

Richard stared at her.

Elena nodded solemnly.

"Definitely the kind with lawyers involved."

"..."

She looked down at the photograph again.

"Still handsome, though."

Richard said nothing.

Elena smiled and quietly pulled the comforter a little higher.