Jacob looked me over for a long second, his eyes narrowed, like Ruben’s had been before. He was looking at me like someone far more mature who believed I was acting like a child.
“You’ve always been a spoiled brat, Lucien. Being so sick when you were little, in and out of the hospital, always getting everything you asked for because all the adults around you always felt so guilty for everything you had to go through, for every little pinprick you had to suffer day in and day out to treat your illness, you grew up thinking that you could have anything you wanted. But that’s not how the real world works, brother. That’s not how it will work for you anymore.”
I didn’t understand where this was coming from. I was as much stunned as I was angered by his words.
I shook my head slowly, the movement building with each degree my anger ratcheted as the shock wore off and his words really sank in.
“Fuck you, Jacob,” I said softly. “I don’t know what the hell is wrong with you—”
“This is my company. I started this company with my own money, my own blood and sweat. You came in as an afterthought. I invited you into this company because my father thought it would make your mother happy. You were supposed to sit in your little office and write little medical apps for people’s phones. That’s all you were supposed to do.”
Again, I was shocked. I hadn’t known any of this. I’d thought his invitation to join the company was genuine.
“No one forced you—”
“No, no one forced me,” he said with a bitter little chuckle. “Father simply announced that if I didn’t invite you into the company, he wouldn’t allow me to put my trust fund up as collateral for a business loan.”
“I didn’t ask him to do that.”
“No, I don’t suppose you did.”
“And everything I’ve done has only made our bottom line better.”
Jacob inclined his head. “Yeah. Until this. Until now.”
“Until what?”
Jacob’s eyes moved over me, dismissing me with a flick of his eyelid. He started for the door.
“We need to get to Katy.”
“No!” I grabbed his arm. “You started this. You end it.”
Jacob spun around and punched my shoulder. I lifted my hands to hit him back, but I stopped myself. There had to be a line drawn. There had to be a moment when one of us chose to be the bigger person. No matter what he thought of me, this was my brother. I wasn’t going to get into a tussle with my own brother.
“Tell me what you think it is I’ve done.”
“This whole thing is you, Lucien. You know that, I know that. You did this. You created this mess to take the focus off of what you did.”
“Jacob—”
“Don’t try to deny it. I’ve known all along. I talked to Rachel, heard her side of things.”
A vague memory tickled the edge of my thoughts, but I still couldn’t quite grasp what it was he was talking about.
“You sent the emails. You made it look like it was me. You wanted them to think that someone was blackmailing you so that when the truth came out, it would cast doubt on your part of things.”
“My part of what? You’re talking in circles, Jacob!”
“You stole the code that made your artificial pancreas possible.”
It was like he’d punched me in the center of my chest. I stepped back, unable to catch my breath for a moment.
“Then it was him,” Ruben said from where he’d come to stand in the doorway. “The emails, the threats. It was all him?”
Jacob nodded. “It was.”
Ruben rushed across the room and grabbed the front of my shirt, twisting it in his fist.
“Where is Adrienne? Where is my daughter?”
He shook me, forcing me back against the front of Jacob’s desk as Jacob himself disappeared out the door.
Shit!
What was I going to do now?
Chapter 34
Adrienne
“You don’t understand. You have to let me out!”
“Why?” I asked as I leaned against the door on the other side of which Rachel stood.
“If I don’t check in every hour, they’ll know something’s wrong.”
“Who is ‘they’?”
She was quiet for a long minute.
“I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s going on. What’s keeping me from taking the van and going back to the city? What’s keeping me from going to the police?”
“Don’t do that!” she said, the fear in her voice telling me more than her words did.
“Tell me why,” I repeated, speaking slowly.
“You’ll get a lot of good people in trouble.”
“Why shouldn’t I? You kidnapped me.”
She was quiet again, but I could hear her moving just on the other side of the door, could hear her brushing against the door itself. Finally, she made a noise like she was tapping her fingernails to the thin wood of the door.
“Let me out. Let me check in with them, and I’ll tell you everything.”
“You won’t try to run?”
“I won’t. I promise.”