CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

"I'll kill him," Rose paced the length of her room.

"Okay," Anna responded with a grimace. "But just in case you weren't keeping count, this is the fourth time making that statement. I don't think it's very wise"

I shot her a look on my bed and went to sink down beside her. 

"You're not helping me."

"To plan a murder. Prison is my hard limit." Anna responded instantly, sounding way more serious than the joking tone warranted. 

"Wait," Rose responded. "That sounds like a personal experience."

Anna laughed, waving her hand. "I mean. We all have that ex we want to kill right?"

"Nope." She responded without thinking and then remembered Laurent. She blushed immediately at Anna's knowing look. "He's not my ex. We… we weren't in a relationship. At least not like that." She muttered. 

"His loss," her friend responded but it was little comfort at that time. If she looked at it in hindsight, what had his plan been? They never got to the point of a relationship, she'd been the one to mention a date and he had canceled that. 

"Don't think too much about it," her friend reminded her for the third time. She'd been doing that whenever she sunk into that silence that reeked of being lost in thoughts. She finally put her thoughts into words. 

"Where do you think it all went wrong? Did he do that because of something I did?"

Anna stared at her with a long suffering look. "Asking you not to think about that isn't going to make you stop automatically, is it?"

She shook her head and her friend sighed. 

"Frankly," she started. "I don't know. With the way you described what you had, I believe he's had this plan for a while now. But something triggered him to do it early. Because no offense, but a close proximity to him didn't do anything to help him, except if he just wanted to hurt you."

"Right?" She asked, but her tone was wet. Her friend had just told her, however unintentionally, that she was the problem. 25 years old, and the first serious man who had approached her had had an ultrasound motive.

"I'm sorry, Rose but you do need to forget about him. He's useless. He might have dumped you all of a sudden but he doesn't have anything else on you. 

Yeah, she'd been too ashamed to tell Anna he really did have something on her. She kept quiet. 

"Rose," Anna asked slowly. "Is there something you're not telling me?"

She buried her head in her lap.

"My father signed the document." she muttered. 

"What!" her friend shouted and stood up, taking up the path her feet had with into just five minutes ago. "How the hell did that happen?"

She remained in her position, allowing her friend to rant and vent.

At last she came back to sit near her and tapped her on the back. Rose reluctantly put her head back up.

"You're right," her friend said. "We need to kill him."

LAURENT had done it. He now had his name on the will of the Blackwell empire. But if he'd thought he'd be satisfied with it, he was sorely disappointed. He felt like he was burying his brother anew. 

Andrew had died for the company he now held in his hands. He wanted to ruin it; set the goddamned thing on fire and watch it all burn to the ground. He wanted blood, he wanted someone to pay. 

Having the company was a low compromise. It was actually more risk than benefit. As proven by the shareholders, there were other people eyeing the company. He'd insisted the lawyers keep it on the low until the man's birthday, but that gave him less than a month to figure it out. 

He walked back into the room and felt so much better when he could hear the man sobbing even before he saw him. He stood by his side and waited until he was seen.

When the man saw him, he snarled and tried to reach for him. Grief having given way to anger had made him a bit stronger. 

Good, he needed someone to fight with. 

"Are you satisfied now?" The elder Blackwell shouted. "You single-handedly ruined mine and my daughter's life so I hope you're happy now."

He smirked at him. "Happy? Are you fucking kidding me? This is the least that you'll experience. From now till the day you die, you'll fucking curse my name wherever you find yourself, because if you think I'm done with you, you've got to be on stronger pain meds."

Fear darkened the man's eyes, "What. What are you talking about?" He stuttered, and Laurent leaned forward until he was in the man's face.

"Seems like you've forgotten those things you read. You should be fucking kissing my feet that you're not in cuffs right now, old man. Happy?" he scoffed, "You have no idea."

The man shrunk down for a moment, but then he came back, eyes flashing and lips curled in an ugly scowl, "You think this is going to bring the kid back? No matter how much you ruin my life, that kid is going to remain six feet under the ground, and you'll spend the remaining miserable years of your life regretting the fact that you couldn't save him. Taking my company, soiling my name," the man laughed, a high, broken sound. "That's all you can do. You think you're in control…" the man laughed long and hard, laughing until he was choking and gasping for breath. He kept laughing and kept choking as nurses rushed into the room due to the sound of the machines, kept laughing as they shouted and gathered around him trying to get him to calm down, kept laughing until someone stuck a needle into his arms and he carefully drifted slowly into oblivion. 

And Laurent stood there - pushed back during the frantic entrance of the nurses, just staring into space as the words pierced into his chest and every part of him, hating himself and wishing desperately that he wasn't still hoping the man never opened his eyes again.