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СКАЧАТЬ view anything in the way she had before. As if he’d torn the veil from her eyes without her consent and it didn’t matter, anyway, because there was no going back now that she could see. Maybe that was why she found herself studying these people, her family, whom she’d spent most of her life wanting desperately to include her.

      For twenty years now, all she’d wanted was to feel as if she was a part of this. Of them. And the truth was that she never had.

      In those twenty years, only Philippa had ever treated Lexi as if she was something more than a charity case. Only Philippa had ever acted as if she cared—and that had been such a long time ago it was almost as if Lexi had made it up. Dreamed it, perhaps, a decade back when she’d still been so young and hopeful.

      Only Philippa—and occasionally, back in those gleaming days before anything bad had happened, Atlas.

      Lexi didn’t want to think about what Atlas had said to her earlier. And worse, if what he’d said was true, what that meant about everything she’d believed about her life all these years. She didn’t want to consider all the implications—but she couldn’t quite seem to help herself.

      She concentrated on her uncle. Richard looked like exactly who he was and always had been. A very wealthy man indeed, whose consequence stretched back several centuries to a time when the first Worth merchants had emerged from the unwashed masses and dared to claim a place in British society. He was inordinately proud of the fact he still had a full head of leonine white hair and stood a bit above six feet. He ran a religious few miles every morning and swore by an evening constitutional around the grounds to digest his dinner. He was a careful man, Lexi would have said, despite his vanity—or perhaps because of it. He considered his every move deeply and dispassionately.

      If he was disconcerted by Atlas’s return, he was the only one who didn’t show it. Richard stood in one of his quietly masterful suits at the mantel over the crackling fire. He hardly touched the drink he held. That he was irritated with Harry’s drunkenness was evident only in the faintest curl of his austere lips. That he had never had any particular use for Lady Susan was equally evident in the way he failed to look at her directly, no matter how she tittered and made a show of herself.

      Lexi thought Gerard was Richard’s favorite, but tonight she wondered if that was true—or if Gerard was simply the only one who didn’t inspire his father to visibly fight the urge to roll his eyes. She tried to remember how he’d treated Philippa, but that had been so long ago. And Lexi had been so young and easily embarrassed herself that it was hard to remember what had really happened and what was simply her own potential overreaction to things.

      Before tonight, Lexi had never considered the fact that her uncle’s complete lack of expression when he looked at her was a kind of blessing. It was neutral, anyway. She wondered if that put her higher in his estimation than Harry—or at least, drunken Harry. Or Lady Susan and her tittering.

      Then again, perhaps his neutral expression when he looked at her was simply because Richard Worth didn’t stir himself to have visible reactions to anyone who wasn’t a member of his nuclear family.

      Damn Atlas for making all of that seem nefarious.

      Lexi was the first to hear the footsteps in the hall. She sat a little straighter, her gaze on the door, but no one else seemed to hear anything. The footsteps drew closer. Then closer still, that same dark-sounding tread that announced Atlas like the drums of war. It wasn’t until he was right outside the door that all the Worths tensed, and Lexi couldn’t tell if they’d been pretending not to hear him earlier or if they’d truly been oblivious. Either way, the drawing room fell silent.

      And this time, when Atlas pushed through the door, he was smiling.

      “How delightful,” Atlas murmured, stopping in the doorway again, as if he knew exactly what kind of entrance he made and wanted to make sure they gazed at him there—not in handcuffs, not in a courtroom, not on a television screen from across the sea—for as long as possible. “All together again, just as I asked.”

      “Welcome home, Atlas,” Uncle Richard said, after only the faintest pause. He even lifted his glass.

      Atlas’s smile seemed to get darker. Sharper. He moved farther into the tidy little drawing room decked out in its Victorian finery, his black glare sweeping from one wall to the next, then back. Lexi found herself holding her breath while her pulse went wild—and hated herself for her own reaction.

      It was the same reaction she’d always had to him. Only tonight it was worse.

      “And what a home it is,” Atlas was saying in that same too-dark approximation of joviality. “Imagine my delirious joy to find that every single improvement I suggested during my tenure as CEO has been implemented. Every. Single. One. I took a long tour of the house and grounds today, and it warms my convict heart. It truly does. What a visionary I was. Feel free to applaud at will.”

      “Listen, you—” Harry started, all red and snarly, but he subsided with a single harsh look from his father.

      “There’s no need for all this menacing scenery-chewing, surely,” Uncle Richard said into the tense silence, his voice bland. Much blander than the cold gleam in his eyes. “We’re all quite aware of the role you played in...well, everything.”

      “To clarify, do you mean the fantasy evil villain role you cast me in that landed me in jail?” Atlas asked with soft menace. “Or are you referring to the actual reality of what I did here that lacked any murderous intent but did manage to transform the place from a crumbling old mausoleum into...all this?”

      Lexi saw the muscles leap in her uncle’s cheek and knew he was clenching his jaw. Just as she was clenching hers. She made herself relax. A little.

      “No one can change the past,” Uncle Richard said in a gravelly sort of way, somber and serious. “We can only move forward, I’m afraid.”

      Atlas accepted a drink from the wide-eyed footman, but Lexi noticed he didn’t take a sip of it. He only played with it in his hand, swirling the amber liquid this way, then that, as if he was enjoying a relaxing evening surrounded by loved ones.

      “To the future,” he said in that same mild tone with its darker edge, then lifted his tumbler toward the light.

      It was the most awkward toast in history. The room was silent, but filled with tension. So much tension Lexi was half-afraid it would choke them all where they stood.

      But no. Dutifully, helplessly, everyone lifted their glasses. Even Harry, though he still wore that same dark scowl on his face.

      Even Lexi, though she knew better.

      Atlas didn’t say another word. He simply stood there a scant inch or two in front of the door—almost as if he was blocking it. It felt as if he was. He was dark and commanding and entirely too enigmatic, especially when all he did was swirl his drink around and let his black, fulminating gaze land on whomever he chose.

      As if he was taking mental notes, none of them flattering, and committing them to memory where he stood.

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