LITMIR.BIZ

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to throw water on your theory,” Payne’s ex-wife murmured in a just barely audible voice. “But you, Rafe, of all people, being adopted the way you were by Payne and his kind late first wife,” Selina continued, her voice fairly dripping with a false sweetness as she circled back to her point, “should know that blood is everything when it comes to being a Colton.”

      Although there was a smile on the woman’s face, her eyes were cruel and ice-cold, looking not unlike those belonging to a cobra just before its fatal strike.

      “What are you talking about?” Rafe asked. “What is she talking about?” he repeated, turning toward the other people on the board for an answer.

      When his gaze landed on Ainsley, the woman shifted uncomfortably. Marlowe knew the last thing Ainsley would want to do was side with Selina, especially against someone she actually considered family. In this particular case, however, as odious as it seemed, apparently the law was on the woman’s side.

      Clearing her throat and avoiding looking at either Ace or Selina, Ainsley told the others, “The reason it would derail the company is because on page one, paragraph two of the Colton Oil bylaws, it clearly states that the company CEO must be a Colton by blood only.”

      Okay, enough was enough. Incensed, Ace shot to his feet.

      “This is crazy,” he declared, using, Marlowe thought, the exact same phrasing she had when she’d seen the results of her pregnancy test.

      This was crazy. They couldn’t oust Ace from the board, Marlowe thought. He belonged on it.

      And yet...

      “This ridiculous email is a lie,” Ace was saying. “A total fabrication meant to send shock waves through our entire company and undermine its very structure. I’m a Colton! I was born a Colton and I’ll always be a Colton.” He looked at his father. Though it wasn’t in his nature to ask for any sort of help or backup, this one time he made an exception. “Tell them, Dad.”

      It wasn’t a plea, it was a request for the older man’s verification about his birthright.

      Payne nodded so hard, his thick silver-gray hair shook and fell into his eyes.

      “Of course it’s a lie!” he declared with a fierceness that defied opposition. “Ace is my son. I was right there, in the delivery room, the day that he was born,” Payne said, looking directly at his oldest son. “Of course, he wasn’t quite this big at the time,” he added with a small, dry chuckle. “As a matter of fact,” Payne recalled, “he was pretty frail. Everyone in the hospital, myself included, thought it was a Christmas miracle that he even survived. But he did survive. Not just survive—he managed to thrive almost overnight,” Payne recalled with a nearly tangible wave of nostalgia. “And now just look at him!” the family patriarch cried.

      It took Marlowe a moment to realize that his small trip down memory lane had been received with surprise by the others around the conference table.

      This was part of the narrative that hadn’t been previously broadcast. This was the first she’d heard that Payne and Tessa’s big, robust firstborn had been born a sickly infant whose chances of making it through the night had been regarded as slim to none.

      Despite their obvious surprise, only Selina picked up the thread that had been dropped.

      “A Christmas miracle?” she asked in a slightly mocking tone. “Really? Or did you or your first wife at the time deliberately decide to switch that sickly, frail baby with a healthy newborn?”

      Payne’s face immediately turned a vivid shade of red.

      “How dare you insinuate,” Payne screeched, “that either I or Ace’s mother could do something so reprehensible as—”

      He couldn’t even bring himself to finish his sentence, he was so incensed.

      Everyone suddenly started talking at once, their raised voices drowning one another out as each tried to make his or her point.

      Despite the turmoil going on in her head and her life, Marlowe’s inner instincts took hold. Before she even realized what she was doing, she was on her feet, her raised voice louder than anyone else’s as she attempted to calm them down.

      “People. People!” she cried even louder. “Calm down!” she ordered in a semi friendly, albeit very authoritative, voice. “Of course this is all a huge mistake. My big brother is a Colton. He always has been—in his heart as well as in his blood. You know that,” she insisted. “And, like this awful email said, one simple DNA test will prove that.”

      “You’re right,” Ainsley said, adding her voice to back up her younger half sister. She glanced at Ace. “I’ll go with Ace to make sure he gets a test fast and have that test expedited as quickly as humanly possible. It’ll cost a fortune,” she said before Selina had the opportunity to raise an objection concerning the cost of having the test results delivered so quickly, “but it will definitely be worth it. Especially when you think of it how it will prevent certain chaos if the press ever got hold of this.”

      Selina raised and lowered her shoulders in a careless, dismissive shrug. “It’s only money, right?” the woman said scornfully.

      “Yes, it is,” Marlowe replied. “And it’s not your money,” she deliberately added, knowing that was the sort of thing that would really irritate the hateful woman.

      Selina’s eyes narrowed, her pupils like two laser pointers as she glared at Marlowe. “To prevent anyone from contesting the results and saying that they were deliberately manipulated to give the results we were all after—” her tone placed quotation marks around the word we “—shouldn’t there be a disinterested third party present to act as a witness—just to keep everything honest?” she concluded sweetly.

      “You’re absolutely right,” Payne said. It was obvious that agreeing with his ex-wife was costing him. “Any suggestions?” he asked the others, deliberately ignoring Selina as he looked around the table.

      But Selina refused to be ignored. “How about—” the woman began, only to be drowned out by Ainsley, who spoke over her.

      “I can ask Chief Barco to come along and serve as a witness to the whole procedure, from the initial taking of Ace’s blood to every single step taken in order to get to the end result.” Only then did Ainsley look at Selina. “Will that satisfy you, Selina?” she asked the woman.

      “Absolutely,” Selina replied smugly. “I’m just trying to make sure that everything’s aboveboard so that no one can say the results were manipulated or doctored,” she told the rest of the board.

      Marlowe kept her expression neutral even as she glared at Selina. They all knew that the only one who would claim that the results were “doctored” was Selina. Selina was clearly the enemy in their midst, but they were going to have to deal with that if the company was going to continue to survive the way it had all along.

      Marlowe made a silent pledge that it would, if she had anything to say about it.

      For the time being, focused on fighting for the company—and her brother—all thoughts of the earthshaking test in her office were temporarily pushed into the background.

       Chapter 3

      Marlowe quickly made her way back to her office. She was a woman with a mission. The crisis surrounding Ace and whether or not he was truly a Colton—a ridiculous question at best—had, however temporarily, displaced her own personal drama. After all, it wasn’t as if that problem was going anywhere, at least not without some sort of intervention on her part.

      And besides, there was still a chance, albeit an increasingly slim one, that it was some sort of mistake, or glitch, and she really was not pregnant. But pregnant or not, she would tackle that problem later. Right

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