The Loyal Woman by M.L. Lexi

Author:M.L. Lexi
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: M.L. Lexi
Published: 2022-07-01T00:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

TO CALM HIMSELF, Elliot paced the bedroom.

He was a problem solver, he told himself. As much as his father refused to accept it, it was what he did, and he needed to solve the problem under his roof. He had to find Soledad before word reached his father that she was missing.

It was why Elliot hadn’t said anything to Jasmine about Soledad’s disappearance. Jasmine was too close to her grandfather not to say anything. Working for him, she’d feel an obligation to tell him the minute Elliot relayed the news.

The disappointment in Charles’s eyes and the condemnation to follow for Elliot’s inability to control his wife would be swift. “How do you expect to manage my company when you can’t manage the drama under your roof?” Charles would question in the imperial tone he reserved solely for Elliot.

Elliot managed a staff of hundreds at Thomas and Partners with precision and a firm hand. As the COO, Elliot increased revenue by twenty-five percent by forming the profitable forensics accounting division. Elliot had the respect of staff and clients, but not his father.

Nothing Elliot did ever pleased his overly demanding father.

Soledad often told Elliot to put Thomas and Partners behind him and start his own accounting firm. “You have the education, the knowledge, and the expertise. You can be your own man, Elliot.”

Needing to prove his worth and earn his father’s much-needed validation, Elliot hadn’t taken heed of Soledad’s advice and continued to endure the stress of his father’s unreasonable demands. It was never enough for Charles Winston Thomas to increase revenue, decrease expenses, recruit the best minds, and bring in profitable clients. More, more, and more wasn’t enough for him.

Recognition formed in Elliot’s dark eyes, and he saw now how he’d brought that tension home with him every day and unloaded on his closest target and the only person who would listen, Soledad.

But Goddamn it, Soledad never complained, never made an issue of his thoughtlessness. She never said anything, whined, or made an issue of his long workdays. Elliot wished Soledad had. He wasn’t a mind reader.

Huffing a breath in sheer frustration, Elliot paced the bedroom. He might be able to negotiate million-dollar deals, but as a man, he was deficient in the workings of the female mind. He’d demand a how-to-figure-out-women capsule implanted on his frontal lobe in his next life.

Elliot studied himself in the mirror. He barely recognized the man who stared back. Character lines fanned from his eyes. Gray threaded through his cropped hair, and the clean-shaven face had replaced the dark, long, unkempt hair and scruffy stubble of his youth.

Christ! He was old.

His face was etched with the lines and crevices brought on by the pressures of life. He carried twenty additional pounds on the once runners frame. Worse than all those changes was the hopelessness he saw in the eyes of a man once filled with dreams and adventure.

Elliot wasn’t the once carefree, idealistic dreamer. He was no longer the man who protested the unjust and slept on a grass bed staring at the stars when the feeling suited.

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