An Heir of Deception by Beverley Kendall Page A

contracts Alex had been working on the week past.
    Cautiously, Alex retreated, not stupid enough to turn his back to him and not stopping until he’d put half the distance of the room between them and several chairs and a side table.
    “I see you’ve spoken with your sister.” Alex didn’t want to have to fight him but he would if Rutherford gave him no choice.
    “If you believe I shall just sit idly by and do nothing while you attempt to destroy her, you don’t know me at all.” His friend issued the warning in the kind of threatening tone that buckled soldiers’ knees and caused beads of sweat to spring up like geysers along their hairlines. He advanced toward him.
    Alex gave a resigned sigh and met his friend’s frozen stare, his hands also mirroring Rutherford’s, curled as they were into tight fighting fists. Despite Alex’s aversion to violence, there may well be bloodletting after all.
    “You cannot take her son from her.”
    “You mean my son. The son of whose existence I knew nothing of until yesterday. Is that the son you’re speaking of?”
    “She’s—”
    “ She denied me my son!”
    And it was as if the full import of what she had done crashed into him just then. He heard the pain splinter his voice, peaking above the rage like the last note in a crescendo. The true enormity of what he had lost, all that he had missed and could never ever get back made his sight blur and caused his legs to wobble dangerously.
    “She kept the existence of my child from me and yet she’s the one you fight to shield from pain?” His question was low and gruff but yet not a question at all. It was an accusation meant to wound.
    Silence blanketed the room as he and Rutherford continued to stare hard at one another. This was new, a novelty of the worst sort. Never had anything this contentious, this volatile and corrosive existed between them in the thirty-one years of their acquaintance. Betrayal could no longer be delegated to Charlotte and her alone, for it appeared her brother had picked up her baton.
    His friend’s betrayal stung, embedding itself deep under the surface of Alex’s skin until it pierced his very soul. In many ways and for many years, Rutherford had been more a brother to him than Charles.
    Rutherford halted just as suddenly as he’d burst into the room. He stood perfectly still for long seconds, then his chest seemed to deflate as he exhaled a long breath. It was as if the anger had drained from him. A sort of helplessness settled across his features and he appeared torn.
    “While I understand your anger, this is not—”
    “You cannot ever know how I feel,” Alex replied, quick to disabuse him of the notion they would ever share any solidarity in this.
    “I didn’t say I know how you feel , I said I understand your anger. I did not meet my sisters—my flesh and blood—until they were fifteen years. To discover that my father had just left them in that school, knowing they had no mother, no adult who loved and cared for them, cut me to the core.”
    How like his friend to try to disarm him with sentiment by drawing parallels of their lives. Still it wasn’t the same. “This was—is my son . A son who should be my heir. She didn’t only deny me, she denied him.”
    “And for this, you intend to punish them both?” Rutherford asked, in a too reasoning tone. “You must see that you’ll only be hurting Nicholas if you hurt his mother.”
    “I am not doing this to hurt her,” Alex replied, knowing what he said was a lie. He wanted to wreak the same hell she had and still visited upon him.
    Rutherford’s face lost its hard edge. He slowly approached him, his hands up to indicate he had no intention of trying to beat him to a pulp. “I do not mean to excuse what Charlotte did. Believe me I do not. I don’t know why she left you. I don’t know why she stayed gone so long. But I’m glad she’s back. And what I do know is that my sister does not have a malicious heart. For