"You're a real piece of work, Samuel. Lois treated you like her own brother when she was a kid. She trusted you with everything she had. She grew up and married you, gave you her whole heart. But she could never have imagined — not in her wildest nightmares — that the person who destroyed her mother's life's work, the person who drove her mother to her death, was you all along."
I clenched my fists so hard my nails cut into my palms. The pain was blinding, but it was nothing — not even a fraction — compared to the agony ripping through my chest. Inside the room, Grayson's voice rose again, dripping with insinuation:
"Think about it. This poor, clueless woman runs your household every day, helps you manage the jewelry business, gives you everything she's got. She'd hand you the whole world if she could. If she ever found out that you were the one who sold her mother's core patents to a competitor — that you personally drove her mother to her grave — do you think she'd skin you alive?"
"Shut your mouth."
Samuel's voice cut through like a blade of ice, low and tightly controlled, laced with barely restrained agitation.
"Oh, would you look at that. The great godfather of Sicily's jewelry world, playing the devoted saint." Grayson let out a scornful laugh. "Her mother treated you like her own son. And you repaid her by selling her out to keep Selene happy, to hand Selene the keys to the jewelry world's inner circle. You pushed that woman straight into her grave. How do you sleep at night?"
A bottle slammed against the table, the sharp crack of shattering glass cutting through the air. Samuel's voice came through the door, his teeth grinding around every syllable, raw with an obsessive edge:
"What I owe Lois and her mother — I'll never be able to repay it, not in this lifetime. Everything I did back then was to keep Selene safe, to help her gain a foothold in the industry. If you so much as touch a hair on her head, I will make you wish you were dead."
"Such devotion. Truly moving." Grayson's cold laughter was thick with contempt. "You'd rip your own heart out for Selene Blanc, but I doubt she'd spare a second glance at a businessman with blood on his hands. Why don't you just go home to your precious Lois? She thinks you're her salvation. She has no idea that you're the worst thing that ever happened to her."