Do not ever touch me. And do not tell me what to do in my own house. " Dean stepped closer. He didn't raise his voice. He didn't have to. The sheer physical gravity of the man forced Claire to take a half step back.
"Look behind you," he ordered. Claire swallowed the bile in her throat and glanced past his shoulder toward the doorway of the library. Leo was standing there. The boy had dropped his clipboard. He wasn't wearing his earmuffs.
His small hands were pressed tight against his ears, his shoulders hunched, his eyes wide and locked onto Claire. He looked exactly like a cornered animal waiting for the next strike. Claire felt a cold spike of horror drive straight through her stomach. "He spent the first four years of his life listening to machines keep his mother alive," Dean said, his voice dropping into a lethal, grating whisper. "He spent the last year listening to me try to hold my grief together.
I brought here because it's quiet. I bring him to work because the wood doesn't scream. It doesn't threaten. It just is. Dean pointed a calloused finger at the front door.
You want to play God with your boats and your lawyers. You do it in your car. You do it in the snow. But you do not scream in front of my son. You do not bring that kind of violence into his space.
I won't allow it. "I am the one paying you. " Claire spat, the defense mechanism automatic, a knee-jerk reaction to being reprimanded. Dean looked at her with profound disgust. It was worse than anger. It was pity.
"Keep your money. " He said softly. He turned his back on her, walked over to Leo, and knelt down. He didn't say a word to the boy. He just gently pulled Leo's hands away from his ears, picked him up, and carried him back into the library. Claire stood alone in the freezing kitchen.
Her phone was buzzing on the floor. The screen flashed with an incoming call from her board of directors. Millions of dollars were waiting for her orders. She stared down at the glowing screen. For the first time in 20 years, she didn't pick it up.
She walked to the large bay window and looked out at the dead, frozen trees. The silence in the house rushed back in, but it wasn't the peaceful quiet Dean had cultivated. It was a suffocating, crushing vacuum. Dean was right. She was leaking poison.
She had spent a decade building an empire, convincing herself that ruthlessness was a virtue. She called it efficiency. She called it leadership. But standing here, watching a 5-year-old boy cower from the sound of her voice, the truth stripped away all the corporate jargon. She was just cruel.
She had built a life so devoid of actual human connection that the only way she knew how to interact with the world was by threatening to destroy it. She was wealthy beyond comprehension. And she was utterly completely bankrupt. Claire sank to the floor, her expensive coat pooling in the dust. She pulled her knees to her chest.