The Golden Blood Husband

CHAPTER THREE: THE WOMAN WHO WANTED HIM GONE

Lorcan pushed the papers back across the table with one finger. "No."

For a moment the only sound was rain against the tall windows. Then Crispin burst out laughing. "Did he just say no to you?" He waved at the butler by the door. "Harris, go upstairs and throw his things in the pool. It won't take long. He owns about four shirts."

"Crispin," Gloria said weakly, then fell silent.

Annika didn't laugh, and she didn't raise her voice. She looked at Lorcan the way she might look at a spreadsheet that refused to balance. "This marriage was my grandfather's mistake. I signed because he asked me to, and he can't ask anymore. I'm ending it."

"Now hold on." Uncle Clement set down his napkin, his tone smooth and reasonable. "Let's not be hasty. Crispin still needs his blood. The transfusions are the only thing keeping his heart stable. We can't throw away the supply."

Crispin scowled. "Since when do you care about him?"

"I care about you," Clement said, and smiled.

Lorcan watched him over the rim of his coffee cup. Last night Clement had expected him dead, and this morning Clement needed him to stay exactly where he was, under this roof and close enough for Friday. A man didn't change his mind that quickly unless someone else was making it up for him. Clement belonged to the Circle.

Annika ignored her uncle completely. "Friday night is the Ashcombe Foundation Gala. Half the city will be there. If you haven't signed by then, I'll announce the divorce from the stage myself, and you can explain to the newspapers why you refused." She turned toward the door. "Your choice."

Friday night. The same night the Circle had chosen for his heart.

Gloria found her voice as Annika reached the hall. "Lorcan will drive you to the office."

Annika frowned. "I have a driver."

"Your driver is sick." Gloria was gripping the coffee pot as if it might escape. "Lorcan will take you."

It was a clumsy lie, and Lorcan understood it perfectly. Gloria wanted him out of the house but still under watch, somewhere she didn't have to look at him. He rose without a word and went for the car keys.

Annika didn't speak during the drive. She worked on her laptop in the back seat while the city slid past in gray streaks, and when they reached the glass tower of Ashcombe Pharmaceuticals, she got out before he could open her door. He followed her into the lobby carrying her coat, and he had made it ten steps across the marble when a familiar voice rang out.

"Annika." Fabian Delmar strode toward them from the elevators, tall and golden in a navy suit that cost more than Lorcan's whole wardrobe. The heir to Delmar Bank had been chasing Annika openly for two years, wedding ring or not. He kissed her cheek, then let his gaze drift to Lorcan. "And you brought the help."

"He drove me," Annika said flatly, and kept walking.

Fabian snapped his fingers, and two security guards appeared at his side. "This man doesn't have clearance. Get him out."

The guards took Lorcan by both arms, and he let them. They marched him back across the lobby while employees turned to watch. At the revolving door, Fabian caught up and tucked a folded check into Lorcan's sweater pocket.

"Fifty thousand," he said quietly. "Sign her papers and disappear. It's more than you've earned in your life."

Lorcan looked at the check, then at Fabian. He said nothing. He simply pushed it deeper into his pocket and walked out into the rain.

Twenty minutes later, his phone buzzed. My blue folder is on the back seat. Forty-second floor. Now.

The guard at the desk scowled, but Annika's authorization was already on his screen. On the forty-second floor, the boardroom was walled in glass. Lorcan stopped outside the open door with the folder in his hand, and nobody inside noticed him at all.

Annika stood at the head of the long table beside a slide that read PROJECT AURUM. "Synthetic Rh-null blood," she was saying. "Stable, universal, and reproducible in a lab. If we finish this, no patient with golden blood ever has to depend on a living donor again."

"A beautiful dream," Clement said from the chairman's seat. "Unfortunately, dreams need money. Kestrel Holdings withdrew this morning. Without them, Aurum has no funding, and the board has no choice but to shut it down today."

Murmurs of agreement went around the table. Fabian, seated at Clement's right hand as Delmar Bank's representative, shook his head with theatrical sympathy.

Lorcan barely heard them. He was staring at the slide. If Aurum worked, no family would ever need to marry a man like him, bleed him, and keep him in a back room like a spare part. No one would need to buy children like Esme. The Circle's entire business rested on golden blood being impossibly rare, and Annika was trying to make it ordinary.

He studied his wife through the glass, pale and stubborn, fighting a room full of men who wanted her to fail. Maybe she was trying to free him. Maybe she only wanted her family free of him. Either way, she had painted a target on her back.

He handed the folder to her assistant, stepped into the coffee alcove down the hall, and sent one text to Nadia. Kestrel. Now.

Ten minutes later, the boardroom phone rang. Clement put it on speaker with a bored expression that died almost instantly. Kestrel's chairman was calling personally. He apologized for the morning's confusion and announced that Kestrel wasn't withdrawing. It was tripling its investment in Aurum, on one condition. Annika Ashcombe alone would control the money.

By evening, the story had spread through the building. Fabian had made a call, everyone said. Fabian had saved Annika's project. Fabian smiled at her in the lobby and didn't correct a word of it.

Annika sat in the back seat on the drive home, staring at the darkening water. As they crested the Gannet Bridge, she spoke for the first time all day. "Fabian says you took his money."

"I did."

"Good." She looked away. "Then you have no reason to stay."

The road tipped downward toward the far shore, and Lorcan pressed the brake. The pedal sank all the way to the floor. He pumped it again and felt nothing at all, while the car gathered speed down the long hill. At the bottom, beneath a red light, a fuel tanker sat idling across the intersection.