Because of His Future (For His Pleasure, Book 26) by Kelly Favor

Grace exited the law offices alone.
    Liam was still inside, being harassed and
picked apart by his two siblings.   But who was Grace to get in the middle of a fight over a family
fortune?  
    She hadn’t even known Liam that long.   Certainly not long enough to think she
had a chance at overcoming family loyalties.
    So that left her back at square one.
    Alone.   By myself.   Again.
    She felt like she’d just been sideswiped
by an eighteen-wheeler.   To have
gone into that meeting like a lamb to the slaughter—she was a fool.  
    A
damn fool.
    And what did that make Liam?   He’d walked in there with no plan in
mind, and he’d allowed Vera and Exley to chew him up and spit him out.
    They’d dropped a nuclear bomb on Liam and
the explosion had taken out Grace, as it had been intended to do.   Liam’s siblings were efficient assassins.  
    She had to give credit where credit was
due.
    They’d wanted to take her out of the
picture and they’d succeeded quite easily.   Telling Liam how his mother had died while driving over to the lawyers
to sign the new will that had been written specifically because of his
relationship with Grace?
    Grace had no doubt that Liam’s brother
and sister were telling the truth, but they’d used it to their advantage.   They’d been willing to emotionally
destroy their own brother’s psyche in order to make him do what they wanted him
to do: namely, break up with his new girlfriend.
    It
worked like a charm , she
thought, her shoulders slumping.
    She stood outside the law office
building, and she checked her phone.   There was nothing from Liam.   She waited for a few minutes, just in case he was going to come outside
and find her.
    But unsurprisingly, he never did come
outside.
    She couldn’t blame him.  
    Maybe
you should have stayed and fought harder for him.   Stood up to Exley and Vera.
    But Grace just couldn’t do it.   She was overmatched, and with Liam being
so weak and broken down from the things they’d told him about his mother’s
final hours—Grace knew that she hadn’t stood a chance after those
revelations.
    Could she really expect Liam to possibly
give up his fortune and his leadership of the family dynasty just to have a
relationship with her?   It didn’t
make sense, even to her.  
    They hadn’t known each other long enough
to justify such a sacrifice.  
    The right thing to do was to end the
relationship.   As Scott had told her
from the beginning, the world would never let them be together.  
    Never.
    So even if Liam was willing to sacrifice so
much to continue seeing Grace, she knew that in the end, he would simply resent
her for it.   And she’d probably
resent him, too.
    There was no winning this fight.
    Surprisingly, her eyes remained mostly
dry as she walked away from the building.   Liam had never come outside and she didn’t really want him to.   All it would have entailed was her
explaining to him that he should do as his brother and sister demanded.
    Go
lead your family—go back to law school, run the family business, and
marry some beautiful charming rich girl from a prestigious family.   That’s what they want and so that’s what
you’ll do.
    Grace caught a cab and took it to work.
    She was about an hour late, and truth be
told, she didn’t really care at this point if Easton was angry with her.   She was too numb to be afraid of her
boss, or anyone else for that matter.
    When she got into the suite, Easton’s
door was firmly shut but she heard his voice murmuring as if on the phone, and so
she sat down at her desk and got right to work.   Work was the best thing she could think
of to refocus on the here and now.   Continuing to create the meeting minutes that Easton had requested,
Grace did her best to tune out the thoughts and memories that plagued her mind.
    It was perhaps three hours later that she
was shocked to see a shadow fall across the entrance to the suite, and her eyes
widened as Liam threw the door open.