Getaway Driver | Graham

Honestly, if Sabine thought that someone would have told her that she was going to end up in this position she would have laughed in their face. But somehow, she had agreed to this, and now she had to deal with Van’s stupidity on a daily basis. Yes, she understood that they were technically ‘off’ right now. But that didn’t change the fact that they were still rock stars, and people were going to notice when they had a surprise wedding, or vow renewal, or whatever this was. It was not something that they could do without people getting wind of it, and that meant that she had to be four steps ahead.

And that wasn’t always easy to do when she was trying to keep track of Van Parkinson. Tiberius was a whole other issue. One that she knew well enough to tell him to go to hell now. She thought that he at least listened to her though, which was more than she could say for most ex-husbands. They had a very unique relationship. But it was one that she didn’t think either one of them actually thought had been a good idea. They were divorced for a reason, and Sabine was a lot of things, but Elizabeth Taylor was not one of them.

There were more intriguing prospects anyway. Tiberius Crabbe had been a waste of her mind. Because she had been too easily able to manipulate him, and she hadn’t wanted to deal with Sheryl, and really there were far too many things about that family that she wanted away from. Her mother had never quite known what to say about Tiberius either and Sabine thought that, in retrospect, it had been good for her. She had needed a scandal. She had needed to grow up, and that had made her. She knew that that whole experience had made her grow up.

And in a way, it had made her come to respect her mother. And the choices that she had made. She knew that she wasn’t exactly in the perfect position to judge the choices that Athena Finley had made, but in the last year, she thought that she had come to understand her just a little better. She had had her reasons for abandoning her. And while Sabine thought that she could have had some perfectly justifiable abandonment issues – and truth be told she probably did, they had just manifested differently – she thought that she was relatively normal. Homicidal tendencies non-withstanding.

If she was going to get through this stupid ceremony, if she was going to make sure that the press handled it in a way that they could spin in their favor, then she thought that they were going to come out of the day ahead. And she wasn’t entirely sure that it was possible. But she knew that she wasn’t going to have a chance in hell if she didn’t get some coffee first. She had left Padme at the office, making sure that her actual business was running itself as smoothly as possible today in her absence. But she thought that one day without her wasn’t going to hurt LEH.

They had been running just fine for the last four years. And she knew that people had been worried when a seventeen-year-old orphan had suddenly become the youngest CEO in Great Britain, but she had figured it out. Not without help. There were still plenty of people that she turned to every day for help. People that advised her. That helped her. Sabine had known never to try and do it by herself. And there were a couple of times when she had ostracized her board. But she owned the company, and she had the most stake in the board. She was the one that was in charge. Her adoptive parents had left her everything.

That paired with the things that came naturally to her via her Finley roots, she thought that she was one hell of a business woman. Perhaps she hadn’t quite inherited her mother’s proclivity for killing, but she had killed when she was plenty young enough. Seventeen years old. A sixth year Slytherin. And she had killed six people to take what she wanted. To gain the fortune, and the power that she had now. And not a soul had expected a thing. It had been brilliant, and she knew it. And the fact that she knew it was what made her who she was.

Slipping into Drip, Sabine smiled a little more warmly than she normally did. Her mother’s persona as icy, and distant, seemed to be a genetic trait, but there was a little more warmth when she found herself faced with Graham Tripe. “Shouldn’t you be somewhere stitching people’s heads back closed or something, Doctor?” Yes, he was a lord, but Sabine much preferred his doctor title. It had seemed to fit him better once she had learned of it. More self-made than being born a lord. There was no sense in ordering if he was here, he would make her whatever he felt like making her, and she would drink it. No questions asked.