"Thank you." She put her hand on the doorknob.
Chapter 28
Jeffrey Deveraux stood by the fireplace, hands in the pockets of a pin-striped suit she guessed had been tailored to his tall frame. Marguerite had been a bare five feet tall. It was Jeffrey who'd given Elena her height. He was six feet four without shoes-not that her father was ever anything less than perfectly put together.
Pale gray eyes met hers with the cold watchfulness of a hawk or a wolf. His face was all sharp lines and angles, his hair brushed back from a severe widow's peak. Most men would've had gray in their hair by now. Jeffrey had gone straight from aristocratic gold to pure white. It suited him, throwing his features into sharper relief.
"Elieanora." He finished polishing his spectacles and slid them back on, the thin rectangular frames as effective as ten-inch-thick walls.
"Jeffrey."
His mouth tightened. "Don't be childish. I'm your father."
She shrugged, shifting into an unconsciously aggressive posture. "You wanted me. Here I am." The words came out angry. Ten years of independence and the second she entered her father's presence, she reverted to teenager who'd spent a lifetime begging for his love and been kicked in the guts for her efforts.
"I'm disappointed," he said, unmoved. "I'd hoped you'd picked up some social graces from the company you've been keeping."
She frowned. "My company is the same as always. You'll have seen Sara, the Guild Director, at various events, and Ransom-"
"What your hunter"-said with a grimace of distaste-"friends do is of no interest to me."
"I didn't think so." Why the f**k had she come to heel at his command? Her only excuse was shock. "So why did you bring them up?"
"I was referring to the angels."
She blinked, then wondered why she was surprised. Jeffrey had a finger in every major pie in the city, not all of them strictly legal. Though of course, he'd flay her alive if she dared imply he was anything other than lily-white. "You'd be surprised at what they consider acceptable." Raphael's pitiless justice, Michaela's hungry sexuality, Uram's butchery, none of it would fit with her father's perception of the angels.
He waved off her words as if they didn't matter. "I need to talk to you about your inheritance."
Elena's fist clenched. "You mean the trust my mother set up for me." She could've starved on the streets and Jeffrey wouldn't have given a damn.
Skin pulled taut over Jeffrey's cheekbones. "I suppose genetics do tell."
She was one step away from calling him a bastard but ironically, it was her mother's voice that held her back. Marguerite had brought her up to respect her father. Elena couldn't do that, but she could respect her mother's memory. "Thank God," she said, letting him take the insult as he would.
Swiveling, Jeffrey walked to the desk set below the windows on the other side of the room, his steps silent on the deep claret of the Persian carpet. "The trust matured on your twenty-fifth birthday."
"A bit late, aren't you?"
He picked up an envelope. "A letter was sent to you by the solicitors."
Elena recalled throwing the unopened piece of mail in the trash. She'd figured it for yet another attempt at coercing her into selling out the shares she'd inherited in the family firm-through her paternal grandfather, a man who'd actually seemed to love her. "They did a real knock-up job of following up."
"Don't try to pass off your own laziness on others." Walking back, he shoved the envelope into her hand. "The money's been deposited in an interest-bearing account under your name. The details are all there."
She didn't look down. "Why the personal touch?"
Pale gray eyes narrowed behind the spectacles. "Distasteful as I find your choice of occupation-"
"It's not a choice," she said coldly. "Remember?"
Silence that warned her to never again bring up that bloody day.
"As I was saying, regretful as your profession is, it does bring you into contact with some powerful people."
Her stomach soured. What the hell had she expected? She knew she meant nothing to her father. Still she'd come. Instead of lashing out as she might've done as a teenager, she kept her mouth shut, wanting to know exactly what it was he expected of her.
"You're in a position to help the family." A steely-eyed gaze. "Something you've never cared to do."
Her hand clenched on the envelope. "I'm only a hunter," she said, turning his words back on him. "What makes you think they treat me any better than you do?"
He didn't flinch. "I've been told you're spending considerable time with Raphael, that he may be open to suggestions that come from you."
She told herself he wasn't implying what she thought he was implying. Shaking inside, she met his eyes. "You'd whore out your own daughter?"
No change in his expression. "No. But if she's already doing it herself, I see no reason not to take advantage."
She felt herself go sheet white. Without a word, she turned, opened the door, and walked out. It slammed shut behind her. A second later, she heard something smash, the discordant splintering of crystal against brick. She halted, stunned at the thought that she'd evoked any kind of a response from the always controlled Jeffrey Deveraux.
"Ms. Deveraux?" Geraldine came running around the corner. "I heard . . ." Her voice trailed off uncertainly.
"I'd suggest you make yourself scarce for the next little while," Elena said, snapping out of her frozen state and heading toward the door. Jeffrey had probably lost it because she'd dared defy him, unlike the rest of his band of sycophants. It had had nothing to do with the fact that he'd called his daughter a whore to her face. "And, Gerry"-she turned at the door-"don't ever let him find out."
The assistant gave a jerky nod.
Elena had never been so grateful to be out in the noise of the city as she was that day. Not giving the door a backward look, she walked down the steps and away from the man who'd contributed his sperm to her creation. Her hand clenched again and she remembered the envelope. Forcing herself to calm down enough that she could think, she slit it open and pulled out the letter. This was her mother's legacy to her and she refused to let Jeffrey cheapen it.
The amount of money was small in the scheme of things-Marguerite's estate had been split equally between her two living daughters, and consisted of the money she'd made from the sale of her one-of-a-kind quilts. She'd never needed to use any of it because Jeffrey had insisted on giving her a huge allowance.