Caught Between Two Billionaire Brothers

Episode 2

Sasha's POV

I turned around slowly, taking my eyes away from the gun's location and resisting every urge to pick it up.

I wanted him to see my face. I wanted him to have the full experience of what he had done.

"Say it again." My voice was calm. Terrifyingly calm, the way the sky goes flat and colorless before a storm tears a roof off a building.

Ben swallowed. Some of the cold had left his face, replaced now by something that looked almost like regret.

But I had spent nine years reading this man. I knew the difference between regret and the fear of consequence. This was the latter.

"Sasha—"

"I said say it again." I took one step toward him. "Look me in the eye and say what you just said."

He looked away. Of course he did.

"Nine years." I laughed softly, and I saw him flinch at the sound of it more than any shout would have made him.

"Nine years I have been in this house. I cooked. I managed your family. I smiled at your mother when she called me barren at Christmas dinner — yes, I heard her, I have always heard everything, and I smiled. I invested my inheritance, everything my father left me, everything, into your family's company when it was drowning. I did not ask for shares. I did not ask for a seat on the board. I asked for nothing because I believed you were my husband and what was mine was ours."

I stopped directly in front of him. He still would not look at me.

I reached out and gripped his chin the way you grip the chin of a child who is refusing to pay attention, firm and without apology, and I tilted his face up until his eyes had nowhere to go but mine.

"And while I was doing all of that," I said, "you were giving my money to another woman?"

His Adam's apple bobbed. "You wouldn't understand," he said.

I let go of his chin and stepped back. "No," I said. "You don't understand. So let me tell you what's going to happen."

I held up one finger. "I'm going to call my lawyer. He's going to prepare divorce papers. And you are going to return every single dollar of my money and forget we ever met."

I turned for the door. "You'll never see that money if you divorce me."

I stopped. The room was quiet.

"I knew you would leave me the moment I told you about her." His voice had changed, steadier now, almost careful. "So I used the money. I needed something to make you stay."

The urge to kill him came back. My eyes went to the drawer without my permission.

I had never killed anyone before. I had never wanted to. But my hands were steady in a way that frightened me.

I exhaled sharply, controlled my breathing and turned to face him. "You wouldn't dare," I said.

He stood up. And I watched something shift in him, a gathering of boldness, like a man who had decided the ground was solid enough to stand on.

"This is bigger than me, Sasha. There are things you don't know, things that go beyond—" He stopped. Steadied himself. "I just want you to know that I don't want this divorce. I still love you."

"Say that word again," I said quietly, "and your father will lose a son tonight."

He went silent. I hadn't expected him to be afraid of me. But he was. I could see it.

"I rebuilt your father's company," I said. "I know every account, every debt, every agreement that was made before and after my money went in. I can bring it down with three phone calls. Do not play games with me, Ben."

He was quiet for a long moment before speaking. "I'm sorry. I don't have the money anymore. I gave it to her. But maybe my father can—"

"Good." I moved to the wardrobe. "Get dressed."

"What?"

"We're flying there tonight."

"Sasha, it's a ten hour flight. It's already late, we can't just—"

"Then we'll sleep on the jet." I pulled out a few dresses, folded them, and set them on the bed without looking at him again.

He stood there for a moment the way Ben always stood when a conversation had moved past the point where he had any more moves.

I picked up my phone. First I texted my lawyer. Prepare the divorce papers. I'll explain everything tomorrow.

Then I texted Diane. Call me when you wake up. It's about Ben.

I put the phone in my bag, picked up my dresses, and walked out.

"Sasha—" he called.

"Ten hours, Ben," I said without turning around. "I suggest you use them to think about how you're going to explain this to your father."

We were on the next available flight that night. The flight was ten hours of silence.

Ben tried twice to talk to me. The first time somewhere over the clouds, leaning toward me with his voice low. I looked out the window.

The second time was closer to landing, something about how we should talk before we got there, how he needed to explain properly. I put my earphones in.

We landed at dawn. The drive to his father's mansion was another silence, different from the one on the plane, it was thicker this time.

The mansion appeared at the end of the long private road. It was the biggest mansion in the city.

The car stopped. I was out before Ben had even reached for his door handle.

I was smoothing my jacket when I sighted a woman standing in front of the mansion. Poised, pretty, well dressed even at this early hour.

And beside her, holding her hand, a little boy. Three, maybe four years old. Perhaps five. He had Ben's jaw.

I was going to walk past them. I had come here for one thing and it wasn't conversation with strangers on a doorstep.

"Honey, you're here," she said suddenly and I stopped.

The word moved through me strangely. I turned and looked at Ben.

His face had collapsed, he looked paled by her statement. I had genuinely never seen him that shocked before.

So she was not expected. I turned back to the woman. "Who is Ben to you?" I asked.

She smiled at me, the smile of a woman who had no idea what kind of morning she had just walked into.

"He's my husband. We've been married five years." She glanced down at the boy beside her. "And this is his son. Matt."

The air went out of everything.