With his back to me, he answered. “Rider Pharmaceutical.”
“What?”
He turned around and smiled, repeating his answer. “Rider Pharmaceutical. The success of Cordovex wasn’t going to be ruined by some nosy journalist or your father’s inability to keep his dick in his pants. So they had to go.
“All of this over Rider and Cordovex?”
“That competitive streak in your father extended to your mother too. When he found out, he gave me that tiny, pissant company named for her maiden name. I knew what that meant. That was his way of saying I couldn’t have the woman I loved but I could have some useless company to remind me every day that he’d won. Over the years, I’d been able to make it into something and then Cordovex came. We got it through the FDA with an acceptable level of problems, but no amount of hope changed the fact that it wasn’t what we wished it would be. Your father found out and fired me. He was nice enough to give me some time to come up with a way to save face when I left Stone. That’s where his mistake was.”
I wracked my brain to remember any evidence of Karl ever being fired, but if there had been any proof, I’d never seen or heard about it. Whatever he was going on about was fiction to feed his demented ego. “My father never fired you. This is all just to make you feel like you weren’t some low level operative in a company run by a bigger man.”
“So I found a way to make sure I didn’t have to leave. I couldn’t be forced out if the man doing it wasn’t around anymore.”
Karl’s words slowly sunk into my brain and I suddenly realized I wasn’t breathing. It couldn’t be true. He must have been lying.
“I see by the look on your face you don’t believe what I said. Believe it. I needed to find a way to get rid of your father and Taylor, since he’d take over the minute your father was gone. That your mother would have to suffer for staying with him was poetic justice, but I knew I’d have to find some way to get rid of you too. I figured I could deal with that later. Tressa had secretly told me that Victor planned to fire me over the Cordovex thing your girlfriend’s father had found out about and thought convincing him to take a few days off would give me the chance to leave the company quietly. She told me you didn’t want to go. Something about some party you didn’t want to miss.”
As he spoke, I remembered that time like it was yesterday. I’d told my mother I had no interest in going away with them but at the last minute, I’d given in to her constant asking me to change my mind, thinking a few days in the islands would at least offer a chance to party there with much better drugs. My mother had been so happy when I finally relented.
Rage coursed through my veins as the truth became clear. Karl had killed my family over his petty ambitions and now planned to kill me and Nina because he was a megalomaniacal fuck. “You bastard! You killed them over a fucking job?”
“I deserved that job! I made Rider Pharmaceutical a company worthy of respect and he wanted to shut me out of everything! I deserved everything he was taking away.”
“You killed my entire family over some bullshit company the Feds would have ruined anyway. Cordovex would have been the end of Rider,” I said quietly, still unable to process the actions of the monster in front of me.
“Not true. Rider only had to pull the drug voluntarily. The FDA is nice like that. Then it was just a matter of playing the waiting game for a few years and reintroducing it onto the market. I just had to make sure that reporter was handled. But then you didn’t die in the crash.”
A look of disappointment crossed his face and he shrugged nonchalantly. My living through the plane crash had put a damper on his big plans. At least I could know that even though I didn’t know about it at the time, I’d been a thorn in this fucker’s side.
“But then you disappeared a few months ago and all my plans could be set in motion once again. It was like God was smiling down on me from Heaven. So Cardiell was born, and I had it all, but once again, one of you fucking Stones ruined it.”
Karl’s face turned bright red, and he jumped up from his chair to begin pacing as he rambled on about how he’d been treated unfairly, first by my father and then by me. With every word, he sounded more and more like a madman out of his mind.
It didn’t matter, though. None of his men had returned to report their success in finding Nina and Varo, which meant they’d found a way to escape. As long as she was safe, I could handle anything Karl did.
As long as I believed I’d protected her, I could die with some sense of peace.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Nina
No matter how hard I tugged my arm, I couldn’t break Varo’s hold on me. I had no idea where he was taking me, and with each step away from Tristan, I feared I’d never see the man I loved again. I tried once more unsuccessfully to yank my arm free from his hand around my wrist, but he pulled me harder down walkway, hurrying me to some unknown place.
“Varo, you’re hurting me! Let me go! We need to go back to help Tristan.”
“We’re going to the plane. He’ll meet us there,” he said coldly.
I stopped walking, forcing him to drag me. “No! I won’t go without Tristan.”
For the first time since we left Accademia Bridge, Varo stopped walking and turned to face me. “Nina, I gave him my word that I’d keep you safe. That’s what I’m doing.”
“I don’t care what he made you sign when he hired you. That means nothing to me. We need to go back to help him.”
“I can’t let you do that. This has nothing to do with anything I signed for a job. He asked me before you left to come here to promise that I’d protect you if he couldn’t. I made that promise, Nina. You just have to trust that he’ll be okay.”
I hung my head in frustration. “He’s not going to be okay. Karl’s going to kill him. Why don’t you see that?”
“I can’t help that. I have a job to do, so let’s go.”
There had to be a way to get through to him. I knew he wasn’t the heartless bastard he seemed to be at that moment. That sweet guy who’d helped me when I didn’t think I could pretend to move on had to be in there somewhere.
“Gage, I know this is more than a job to you. You’re a good guy. I believe that in my heart. Please help me save Tristan. He needs us.”
“Nina, I can’t. Tristan needed to be sure you’d be safe. Just trust that he’ll be okay.”