Winning the Heir Who Bullied Me Chapter 75

**NATHAN’S POV**

I didn’t sleep a wink.

I spent the entire night tossing and turning in bed, my mind reeling from everything that had happened—from my idiotic, ill-thought-out announcement earlier to the emotional rollercoaster that followed afterward with April, to Peter’s interruption and proposal.

After he made April leave, my younger brother tried to have a heart-to-heart with me. I immediately shut it down and kicked him out of my room.

I didn’t dare to sleep after that. I knew I couldn't handle night terrors on top of everything else that had happened.

Now, I'm gripping my phone so tight, my knuckles are white while I scroll through my feed, taking in all the #KeepApril comments. I thought the tag was silly when Peter made the inciting post yesterday, but it has been efficient enough.

I just hope it will have the desired effect on my parents.

My knee jerks erratically as I nervously check the time. Everything in me wants to rush downstairs to find April, but doing that will only adversely affect our plan.

The ringing of the landline in my room snaps me out of my thoughts. I practically fly toward it, desperate for good news.

“Hello?” I answer breathlessly.

“My office,” my father’s stern voice comes through the receiver. “Now.” The call ends with a sharp click.

I glance down at the phone, dread spreading in my chest. “Fuck,” I whisper.

As much as I want to dawdle, I don’t. You don’t keep Samuel Ashford waiting.

The entire last floor of the Ashford mansion belongs exclusively to my father. It’s occupied by his office and bedroom only. You’d think that wouldn’t be enough if both rooms weren’t bigger than a regular bungalow.

Outside the large oak door of my father’s office, I hesitate.

I’m not scared of my father, per se, but when I close my eyes and run through my memories of him, it’s mostly yelling and throwing things and insults and heavy fists.

You can imagine my enthusiasm.

I clench my jaw, bracing myself as I knock on the door.

“Enter.”

Here goes nothing.

Samuel Ashford sits behind his large mahogany desk, a picture of power and sovereignty. He’s dressed in his usual crisp suit, but his tie is unusually askew, as if he’s loosened and tightened it a couple of times—a tell-tale sign that he’s aggravated.

He’s glaring at something on his desktop, and I cross my arms behind my back, waiting. In my father’s presence, you don’t speak until he speaks.

“I thought the Ashfords said they didn’t care about background,” he reads from his screen through clenched teeth. “We all knew the rich, influential girls would win anyway. Let’s be honest, she never stood a chance. Fuck this competition.”

He looks up, fixing eyes unnervingly identical to mine on me. Sometimes, when I look in the mirror and see my father’s green eyes staring back at me, I have the urge to carve them out of my head with my trimming scissors.

“Hashtag Keep April,” he deadpans.

“I—”

“I warned you,” my father continues in a deathly calm voice. “I told you we needed to send her away as soon as we realized the error. From that first day, I knew *that girl* would bring nothing but unrest.”

I swallow hard. The disgust with which he said, ‘that girl,’ makes my fists clench.

He glances down at the action, and his eyebrow quirks ever so slightly.

Then he leans back in his seat, surveying me coldly. I don’t think my father has ever looked at me with any form of affection in his eyes.

It’s always been cold calculation—like right now.

“Do you know why we held this competition?”

I shake my head. I have no fucking clue. It’s all just stupid posturing, after all.

Lucas is practically already engaged to Lara Ellington, and wives could easily be selected for Peter and me from the vast pool of eligible heiresses from respectable families that my parents know.

On the day my parents announced out of the blue that the three of us would be getting married and a competition would be held to determine our brides, I didn’t really know how to feel about it.

Just like every occurrence in my life, I welcomed the information with numbness.

*Whatever,* I thought. *I don’t care.*

My father scoffs. “Of course, you don’t. Because you don’t pay attention to anything that affects this family. You’ve never cared, have you?”

I don’t say anything.

“Even now,” he continues, “you don’t care how this public reaction affects us. You don’t care how *that girl* affects us. She should never have been in the competition and the only thing you ever did right was eliminating her last night, and now, that needs to be reversed.”

My heart skips a beat. There it is—my parents will always, *always*, submit to the court of public opinion.

I swallow hard. “I don’t have anything to do with the posts.”

He cocks his head to the side, folding his arms. “Did I say you did?”

Shit.

He scoffs derisively. “You know you can’t marry her, right?”

I balk. “I never…I didn’t—”

“She can’t win,” he continues. “She’s here as a sympathy sponge, nothing more. Remember that.”

A familiar sensation washes over me—like my skin is shrinking, tightening over my bones. It happens a lot in my father’s presence.

When I don’t say anything, my father rolls his eyes, his lips twisting in a look of disgust that’s as familiar to me as my own reflection.

“Get out.”

I spin around a little too quickly, so I try to measure my steps as I head for the door. My legs feel wooden as I move.

As I reach the door, it swings inward, barely missing me. Lucas stands at the other end, looking surprised to see me.

Of course, he didn’t knock. My older brother has never needed permission to enter my father’s presence.

His surprise is quickly replaced by smugness. “Little brother,” he says coolly. I grit my teeth. He knows I hate it when he refers to me that way—so he insists on it.

“It looks like April gets to stay,” he says, a strange lilt I don’t like in his voice.

I shrug in reply.

“Doesn’t that piss you off?” he asks. “After all, you eliminated her.”

“Does it piss you off that Rachel gets to stay?” I shoot back.

He smirks. “Who?”

I take a step towards him till we were practically chest to chest. Lucas is half an inch taller than me, and I loathe that half-inch with every fiber of my being.

“I don’t know what your interest in April is, but I swear, if—”

“We’re in a competition, no?” He shrugs. “What if I end up marrying her?”

I resist the urge to growl like a possessive animal. The thought of April anywhere near Luca causes something ugly to twist in my chest.

“That’s enough!” my father snaps. “Lucas, enter.”

“Yes, dad.” Lucas is the only one who calls Samuel Ashford ‘dad.’

He shoulders past me roughly as he walks into the office and sits without being told to.

I step out and shut the door, grateful to be out of the suffocating space.

I lean against the oak panel and exhale, my body sagging. Inside, I hear an unfamiliar boisterous laugh. My father’s. A rare sound I’ve never been the cause of.

The numbness starts in my chest—where my heart should be—and spreads through my body to the tips of my fingers and toes.

*Whatever, I don’t care.*