Chapter Seventeen

 

Mason had a very, very bad feeling as he walked into his office. The receptionist had told him his father had left less than an hour ago. It was unusual for him to leave the office without Mason there since he was such a control freak. His father trusted none of the other board members to handle even the simplest tasks. He pulled his phone out of his pocket with a sense of urgency. A dark pit of worry formed in the hollow of his stomach when Danielle didn’t answer. He started to call his father’s cell phone but thought the better of it. He may not answer if he knew it was Mason.

He rang his secretary. “Lana, get my father on the phone, please. Don’t tell him your calling for me. Just tell him you have an urgent call for him, and you’ll patch the call through.”

“Of course, Mr. Rutherford.”

He tried Danielle again and for the third time, he went straight to her voice mail. He was certain that whatever had happened was not going to make him happy. And he was even more certain his father was the reason for his unhappiness. Why should anything change after all these years?

A minute later he picked up his desk phone. “Your father just walked in,” Lana whispered. “Should I send him to your office.”

Mason could feel his jaws clenching. “Yes.”

When his father walked in with a smug look on his face, Mason knew his instincts had been right. “What have you done?” Mason barked.

“You’re back already?” his father said. There was no mistaking the nervous twitch that made his lips quiver just a bit when he spoke.

“What have you done? Answer me?”

His father feigned ignorance very poorly. “What do you mean?”

“I mean my wife is not answering me on her phone, and I know you are behind it.”

“Oh son, women can be so fickle.”

“I will leave you penniless. I will make sure of it if you don’t tell me what you did. And fix it.”

“Son, I’ve saved you a lifetime of misery. Those gold diggers-”

“You are the only gold digger involved in this equation,” Mason said. “You ran your father’s hard built company into the ground with your womanizing and gambling. I built it back up and just like Derek, you are the free-loading gold diggers who live like kings off my hard work. Danielle is a good woman. You will not ruin my marriage. Now I will only ask you one more time. What did you do?”

“You need to calm down, son.” There was no mistaking the nervousness in his voice.

“I am giving you exactly thirty seconds to answer me or I’ll have security escort you from the building and all your accounts will be frozen. It is about time you stopped ruining people’s lives with your toxic control freak behavior. I’m doing what I should have done a long time ago. I’m putting my foot down. For good.”

“How dare you talk to me like that!”

Mason slammed his fist down on his desk. “How dare you interfere in my marriage!”

“Marriage? How long have you known this girl? A week? Two weeks?”

“I love her and she’s my wife. Spill what you did or pay the consequences. I won’t forgive you for this,” Mason said, his voice rich with anger.

He picked up his phone and dialed his secretary. “Get security here, pronto,” he barked. Her turned to his Father, the heat rising in his face.

“You’ve finally done it, Father. You’ve finally pushed too far. It’s over. You are out of the company. I arranged it all after you showed up to my house and treated Danielle so disrespectfully. I don’t know what you’ve done, but I will do everything in my power to find her. I love her. Do you even understand what the word means?”

“You can’t do that! You have no right!” his father wailed.

“I have every right. I built this company after you ran it into the ground. And you’ve been selling off your shares to cover your gambling debts and who knows what else you’ve wasted money on. You now only own twenty percent of this company. Did you realize that?”

“That can’t be,” his father howled.

“It is. I own sixty percent of the company. You are out.”

His father grabbed him by the shoulders. “You can’t do that. You owe me, you’d be nothing without me. I made you who you are today,” his father yelled.

“No, I made myself who I am today. The only thing you did was force me into marriage and that seems to have backfired, hasn’t it? That marriage turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. And for that, I have you to thank. But I will never forgive you for the way you treated Danielle, for driving her away. You better get down on your knees and pray I find her and that she’ll come back.”

His father stepped back in stunned silence. “I had no idea,” he said. “I thought you’d gone out and married the first girl you met in a bar,” he said.

Mason shrugged. “I didn’t. Meeting Danielle was an act of God. One I’ve been grateful for since the day I met her. Call it love at first sight if you want. She was a gift to me and I’m not letting her go, not for anything or anyone in this world.” He sat down. Just talking about Danielle calmed him.

“Tell me where she went and why and maybe one day, you’ll get to see your grandchildren, if you promise to go to counseling and get help. You really need it,” Mason said.

His father backed away. He could see the shock on his face but Mason was done with his manipulations. A feeling of relief swept over him.

His father started towards the door. He stopped and cleared his throat. “I told her to go back to Savannah and never see you again. I told her I’d destroy any evidence to vindicate her father, and I’d destroy her family name if she didn’t leave.”

The rage Mason felt made him shake. “Get out,” he said in an eerily quiet voice.

His father started to say something but shut his mouth abruptly as he studied Mason’s face. The way he slouched towards the door did nothing to soften Mason’s heart.

“If you love her that much, what are you doing sitting here? Go after her, son. It’s what I should have done with your mother years ago.” He opened the door and left without another word.

Mason was shocked at his father’s words. He didn’t think his father was capable of loving anyone. He was and always had been a selfish man. He waited for several minutes to try and calm down. Imagining what Danielle must be going through right now, all alone was too much for him to bear another second. He opened his briefcase and pulled out the photos he’s managed to get from the newspaper. His father had hired a paparazzi to tail him, and that was the one who’d taken the only wedding pictures he had from his wedding day with Danielle. Just seeing her beautiful face sent a stab of pain through his heart.

He picked up the phone. “Lana, call my driver. I have somewhere I need to be right now.”

With a few strokes of the keyboard he had Danielle’s San Francisco address. He just hoped he wasn’t too late.