He pauses long enough to take a deep, cleansing breath, and then in a slow, steady voice he simply says, “I’ll stop him.”

Relief floods through me with the force of a raging river. The man I thought Lander was, the one I set out to destroy, would have protected Travis out of family loyalty, or maybe just for the sake of convenience and profit. But Lander is not the man I thought he was.

Which means I can be with him . . . even work with him.

It’s perfect.

I reach out and touch his arm, connecting myself to him, feeling what it’s like to be with someone I can both trust and respect.

“Lander—” I begin.

“I’ll stop him without anyone having to go to jail.”

I freeze. “How?” I whisper.

“I’ll be able to sideline him or, if I need to, push him out of HGVB entirely. We’ll quietly correct things at HGVB and make sure nothing like this happens again.”

“That’s it?” I can barely get the words out. He’s telling me that he’ll simply cover up the crime and move on. All those people and smaller companies that Travis has hurt in his quest for profits, nothing will change for them. Lander will deny them their justice.

“Trust me, it’s enough,” Lander says. “Without HGVB, Travis is nothing. And there’s no point in his doing time. It won’t fix anything and it will hurt his wife and kids as well as the family name. Plus it will damage the reputation of HGVB, and there will be fines, of course. Best to handle the whole thing in-house.”

There will be fines. Companies have folded. People have lost their jobs, been blacklisted from careers they’ve spent their whole lives building. But Lander will sweep the whole thing under the rug so that HGVB doesn’t have to pay a fine.

And so that the Gable name stays clean.

I pull back my hand and subtly shift away from him.

“So you’ll help me plant a few seeds in Travis’s head and then let me handle the rest?” he asks, oblivious to my change in mood.

“Of course, Lander,” I say, working hard to keep the cold out of my voice. “I’ll leave it all up to you.”

Of all the lies I’ve told him since we met, that one is probably the biggest.

chapter thirty-four

The morning is difficult for me. Not in a pragmatic way; for once I actually had the foresight to bring my clothes to Lander’s so I can leave for work directly from there rather than have to stop at my apartment. But I’m suffering from a hard-core emotional hangover.