She Used Me for a Dare… Now I Own Her Mother

Chapter 377: Stalled Ambitions

The traffic was a wall of red brake lights stretching into the dark like a wound that wouldn’t close.

”Move. Move, you useless —” Sterling slammed his palm against the steering wheel.

The horn blared, swallowed instantly by the chorus of a hundred other frustrated drivers going nowhere.

Five minutes. Maybe six. The silver car had been two turns ahead of him when the intersection choked shut.

Some construction barricade or broken signal or whatever godforsaken bureaucratic failure had decided to plant itself between Howard Sterling and the answers he was owed.

He craned his neck, straining to scan the choked lanes through the windshield.

Ahead lay nothing but an endless, bleeding procession of taillights stretching into the distance, with no sign of the bottleneck clearing anytime soon.

”Fuck.” He killed the engine. Reached into his jacket pocket, pulled out a cigarette and stepped out of the car.

The night air was cool against the sweat on his neck. He lit the cigarette with hands that were steadier than his pulse, took a long, bitter drag, and stared down the clogged road ahead.

The silver car was gone. Swallowed by the city.

​”That bastard already got away,” he hissed, exhaling a plume of smoke that was swallowed by the wind.

He looked like a man standing at the edge of a battlefield after the enemy had already left... furious, impotent, and too proud to admit he’d lost.

Inside the Audi, Siobhan watched him through the windshield.

She studied his silhouette... the rigid spine, the sharp inhale, the way he held the cigarette like a weapon rather than a vice.

”Look at this incompetent fool,” she muttered, her voice barely above a breath. Her Irish accent thickened the way it always did when she was truly furious rather than merely annoyed.

”Why the fuck did I give this man the time of day?”

​She cursed her own luck, a bitter taste rising in her throat.

She looked at herself in the vanity mirror, adjusting the line of her collar. Her confidence was a suit of armor; at forty-five, she still possessed a sharp, predatory beauty that turned heads in any room.

She knew her worth. She could have landed a young, hungry second-generation heir... the kind of boys who were obsessed with the polished authority of an older woman.

Or she could have finally said yes to the billionaire trustee who had been orbiting her for months. He was grotesque, yes, but he had the kind of wealth that bought silence.

Instead, she was sitting in a stalled Audi with a man who couldn’t even manage a traffic jam.

​

She looked back out at Howard, a sneer curling her lip.

”You’re lucky I even let you touch me,” she thought, her eyes narrowing as she watched his frantic pacing. ”God knows your wife isn’t giving you that luxury anymore. She probably can’t stand the sight of you.”

​Siobhan leaned back, the cool leather of the headrest a sharp contrast to the heat of her irritation. She needed to calm down; she wouldn’t let this man’s incompetence ruin her evening.

​Her gaze shifted to the road ahead, where the silver car had disappeared. Her brow furrowed in genuine curiosity.

’Who is in that car?’ She frowned. ’Is it really Heena.’

Was Howard actually chasing his wife, convinced she was having an affair? The idea was almost laughable.

She knew Heena Sterling. A quiet, composed woman who wore her dignity like armour and her loneliness like perfume. Nothing about her suggested she had it in her to do anything unexpected at all.

’But then again,’ Siobhan thought, watching Howard slam his phone against his thigh in frustration, ’the quiet ones are always the ones you underestimate.’

She settled back into the leather seat. The evening was ruined. And Siobhan Connolly... who had dressed up, shown up, and shut up on command... was sitting alone in a car watching a man chase another woman through the streets.

’Story of my bloody life.’

She pulled down the visor mirror. Checked her lipstick. Straightened her collar.

***

Outside, Howard flicked his ash into the stagnant air, his eyes tracking the red glow of the cigarette as he questioned the choices that had led him here.

”This is why you never put your feet on two boats, Howard,” he muttered to himself, tapping ash onto the road. He took a long, slow drag and held it — letting the burn settle in his chest before exhaling through his nose.

”Should be at the hotel right now. Enjoying the woman in his car. Instead I’m standing in traffic like a fucking taxi driver, chasing a woman who doesn’t even know she’s being chased.”

He glanced back at the Audi. Through the windshield, Siobhan’s silhouette was rigid, her face a mask of cold, visible irritation.

He didn’t need to hear her to know exactly what she was thinking.

”This bitch is finally showing her colors,” he muttered, exhaling a thick plume of smoke. He knew her type... knew the transactional nature of her affection.

”She’s definitely thinking of leaving me right now. Plotting her next move while the engine is cold.”

A dark, cynical smirk touched his lips. He wasn’t worried. He’d handled her kind before, and he knew the leverage he held.

”But can she really?” he whispered to the dark. ”All that Irish fire and high-and-mighty anger... it’ll all dissipate with just one good fuck. She’ll be back to purring by morning.”

The arrogance of the thought briefly steadied his pulse, a desperate attempt to reclaim the authority he felt slipping away.

Then, suddenly, the wall of red brake lights ahead flickered.

The stagnant silence was punctured by the sound of shifting gears and the collective roar of engines coming back to life.

”Finally.” Howard crushed his cigarette under the heel of his shoe, watching the wall of red brake lights begin to break apart, car by car.

He looked down the open stretch of road, his jaw tight. It had been too long. Even if he floor it now, the silver car was a ghost in the city—long gone, vanished into some side street or hidden driveway. He’d lost them.

A surge of bitter defeat tasted like copper in his mouth, but he forced it down.

He couldn’t catch them now, and he wasn’t about to spend the rest of his night chasing shadows and losing the sure thing sitting in his passenger seat.

His mood was a wreck, but he was a man who hated waste... especially the waste of a perfectly good woman.

He pulled open the door and slid back into the leather-scented sanctuary of the Audi.

Siobhan didn’t turn her head. She stayed profile-perfect, her gaze fixed on the road ahead as the car began to roll forward.

”Is it cleared?” she asked, her voice clipped, the Irish lilt as sharp as a razor.

”Yeah,” Howard replied, his voice shifting gears. The frantic hunter was gone, replaced by the smooth, practiced charm of the Professor. He reached over, his fingers trailing lightly along the back of her neck, testing the tension. ”It’s moving.”

He waited a beat, letting the hum of the engine fill the space between them.

”Hey... Siobhan,” he said, softening his tone until it was a low, intimate vibration. He flashed a smile... the one he knew made him look younger, more capable.

”I’m sorry for earlier. I was stressed, and I was rude. It was inexcusable.”

He gripped the wheel with one hand and leaned slightly toward her, his eyes warm.

”But I’m going to make up for it tonight. I promise you.”

Siobhan finally turned her head, her dark eyes searching his face for a long, silent moment. She didn’t smile back, but the rigid line of her shoulders began to give way, yielding just enough to let him know the door wasn’t locked.

Howard’s smile widened. He pressed his foot to the accelerator, the Audi surging forward, leaving the frustration of the traffic jam behind as he set his sights on the only prize he had left to win.

***

The Audi crawled through Garrison Avenue like a wounded animal.

Sterling’s hands tightened on the wheel with every crack and jolt, the suspension groaning beneath him as the road punished the car for daring to exist on its surface.

”What kind of — who maintains these roads?” he hissed through clenched teeth as a pothole deep enough to swallow a briefcase sent the Audi lurching sideways. Behind him, Siobhan grabbed the door handle and shot him a look that could have curdled milk.

The road was a disaster, the streetlights sparse, the dark pressing in from both sides through overhanging trees that turned the avenue into a tunnel.

Then he saw it.

A silver car. Parked on the shoulder. Engine off. Lights off. Sitting in the shadow of an old oak like something that didn’t want to be found.

Sterling’s foot eased off the accelerator. The Audi slowed to a crawl.

His chest went cold.

It’s them.

His confusion curdled into a cold, creeping dread.

It had been more than twenty minutes since they’d vanished into the traffic... plenty of time to be miles away. Why were they still here, parked in the dark on a road that led to nowhere?

​He slowed the Audi to a crawl, the engine’s low hum the only sound in the cabin.

​’Don’t tell me...’ The thought screamed in the back of his mind... a flash of Tisha, flushed and ruined, being handled by that boy.

He shook his head violently, a desperate internal denial. ’No. Heena is there. My wife is in that car. She wouldn’t allow... they wouldn’t...’

​It was impossible. Heena was the anchor, the woman of logic and decorum. She was the barrier between civilization and whatever animal impulses Tisha possessed.

’Maybe the car was broken,’ he rationalized, his mind scrambling for a version of reality that didn’t make his stomach turn. ’Maybe they’d hit a pothole on this godforsaken road and were waiting for the engine to cool.’

​​He was seconds away from shifting into park and storming toward the driver’s side window when the silver car suddenly lurched.

​The engine turned over, and the vehicle began to roll forward, slowly at first, then gaining speed as it drifted back onto the broken asphalt.