by Elodie Colt
My mouth slackens. She never gave a shit about me. Why now?
“Tell me about her,” she says. “I want to know who the woman is who cut you so deep, the heartbreak is pouring from your eyes.”
Fuck. I swear, that woman is a witch. Each word feels as if it has the power to hollow me out until I’m nothing but an empty corpse.
It takes me a moment to find my composure, and I throw her a frosty stare. “Give me one reason why I should tell you anything about my private life.”
“Because you need a woman’s advice, so unless you want to pour out your heart to the cleaning lady or Susan McElroy, who’s still stuck in the last century, I’d suggest you talk to me.”
She delivers her speech swiftly, unperturbed by my wariness. What’s her deal? There has to be some sort of hidden agenda, right?
I taper my eyes at her, but she doesn’t back down from my glare. No, not her. No matter if she is the brutal businesswoman or the caring mother, she will always be the Crawford Queen. Superior, steadfast, and perpetually assertive.
She sighs when I remain silent, and when she starts to speak, my jaw almost hits the floor.
“All I wanted was a baby. His baby.” Her tone is wistful, wavering with emotion. “The longer I waited, the more obsessed I became. I’ve tried everything—diets, fertility treatments, massages, yoga to soothe the stress…”
She lets the sentence hover in the air, and I rip my gaze away, unable to keep eye contact. I’m vacillating between indifference, frustration, and a tinge of pity that I’m not ready to show.
“Every happy moment I shared with my husband was clouded by disappointment,” she goes on. “Mother’s Day was my yearly torture. Visiting my friends who all have children was agonizing. Sex became a clinical means to an end.”
I fidget, chewing at the inside of my mouth.
“I dreamed about what could have been instead of living what I had, and before I knew it, my relationship was in ruins. Vincent withdrew from me, knowing he couldn’t make me happy. He started to do his own thing—drinking, gambling, stealing. Cheating, eventually. And then, out of nowhere, heaven answered my prayers, and you literally dropped into my hands.”
A disarming smile spreads on her face, and I take a gulp from my scotch to cover up my unease. I’m glad I don’t remember the woman who gave birth to me only to abandon me at the age of two months right in the middle of Central Park.
“Vincent fell in love with you on the spot,” she says. “I thought we were a happy family, but I realized too late that Vincent’s love for me had run dry. When I became pregnant with Nick, I hoped it would reignite the flame in his heart seeing as Nick was his own flesh and blood, but it didn’t.” She smacks her lips. “Don’t misunderstand me, he loved him, just not as much as he loved you. Or me…”
Her last words crack into my soul, and I carve a hand through my hair. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yes, it was.” She nods to herself. “Ultimately, we stayed a patchwork family. Vincent neglected Nick, and I neglected you.”
The profound conversation weighs down on me, so I try to lighten the mood. “All in all, Nick and I didn’t develop so bad, now, did we?”
She chuckles, and it’s the first time in ages that I see the accessible, considerate, good-natured side of her, one she likes to hide beneath a thick shield of ignorance and emotional detachment.
Still, we both know we’ve only scratched on the surface of our dysfunctional relationship. She can’t erase the past, just as I can’t hand her my forgiveness. Come tomorrow, we’ll both slip back into our roles as unattainable mother and defiant son.
“Now, your turn,” she prompts.
I set my glass on the table, gripping my hands.
You ruled off Ella Jenkins. Buried her in a grave labeled ‘unrequited love.’ Why are you rooting everything out again?
Brooke clicks her tongue. “You were never a carouser, Nathan. I could smell the booze radiating from your pores when I entered. Who is this woman that has been making you kill your brain cells for three weeks now?”
That’s why she came here tonight. She fears that I’m about to fall down the same cliff as Nick before he met Janice.
And before I know what’s happening, the dam cracks, the words spilling out of my soul in a flood of confessions. I tell her about Silent Sins, and how Carl persuaded me to give it a shot. I tell her about Ella, how our bond grew stronger with each date, and that I realized she was the Russian interpreter at our exhibition shortly before she left. I tell her about her stalker, that he’d been the one to beat me black and blue that night at the bar, and how Vincent and Nick chased him out of the city.
Brooke listens intently, her attention never straying, soaking up my entire story as if it were second nature to her. As if this wasn’t the first time in ages we’ve talked like mother and son.
She wants to know everything about Ella—what I like about her, what I hate about her, when I fell in love with her. And stupid, helpless, desperate me lets her in on all my pain and lost hopes.
When I huff out the last word of my endless speech, a long moment of silence stretches between us, the only sounds the fire cracking in the corner and her nails clicking on her scotch glass. Her expression is inscrutable, and I don’t like it. Knowing her, she’s about to throw a fit and rake me over the coals for dragging Vincent and Nick into this.
Turns out I was wrong.
“You have to cut a diamond with a diamond,” she says at last.
“What do you mean?”
“That girl is a rock. Hard to get and even harder to polish. If you want to unearth that gem, you have to dig deep.”
I scoff. “I already dug so deep, I’ve left scratches on her.”
“That stalker left the scratches, not you. You’ve got the tools to cut her smooth and make her all shiny again.”
I tap a finger against my lip. She’s telling me not to give up. To bend every rule and break every law to get what I want. It just leaves one question…
“Why the sudden interest in my love life?” I taper my eyes at her. “You were against my divorce with Aiko. You wanted me to give her a second chance. Why push me into the hands of another now?”
She lets lose a solemn smile that wavers on her face. “I hated that you were smarter than me. That you had the guts to leave her after she cheated on you. I didn’t, and Vincent cheated on me for years. And then I found out that…”
The breath hitches in her throat, and a curtain of pain clouds her eyes.
I lean forward, propping my elbows on my knees. “You found out what?”
She doesn’t speak for a long moment, and when she finally does, I stop breathing altogether.
“That Vincent has another child.”
3
Nathan
I’m raging. Ready to do some serious damage. I’m so pumped, I could compete against Ronnie Coleman for the next Mr. Universe.
I haven’t shut an eye the entire night. After my heart-to-heart with Brooke, that ended with a Hiroshima bomb exploding in my face, I was a wreck. For the rest of the night—or rather, morning hours—I’ve jogged through half of the city, let out some steam in the gym, and then did some more running until the sinews in my legs threatened to snap.
Vincent Crawford. The con of the century, and a liar to a fault.
How many secrets does this man hide inside his Hugo Boss pockets? How many mysteries of his past will he take to his grave?
And how many fucking times will he lie to his family?
The elevator pings open, and I slip out, marching down the office hallway with hammering steps.
Vincent has a child. Another fucking child.
No idea what made Brooke hand over the secret to me. Now. Almost fifteen years later. Nick is sure to have a stroke when he finds out his father failed to mention a blood-related sibling. But he needs to know. I’m sick of keeping secrets for others.
And the cherry on top: Vincent never told Brooke, either. After V
incent went into the slammer, the child’s mother wrote her a letter in which she confessed they’d been dating years ago. When she found out that he was married, she left. It was only years later, after Vincent conducted the heist and his arrest hit the headlines, that she decided to contact Brooke and set the record straight about Vincent being her child’s father.
I didn’t ask Brooke why she never said a word. I didn’t ask her if Vincent had a daughter or a son. I didn’t ask her who the woman was and if she ever heard from her again. As soon as she dropped the word ‘child,’ my mind drew a blank.
Fuck me. It had taken me months to place a sliver of trust in that man again, to be willing to reintegrate him into the company, to let him into my heart and show him forgiveness, and now it turns out that only a handful of his secrets had ever come to light.
Don’t worry, Daddy, I’m going to dig them all up.
I gun for Vincent’s office with my pulse out of control. Not bothering to knock, I slam the door open. Two heads whip in my direction, but I ignore Nick’s quizzical look as I brush past him to beeline for my target. Sensing that shit is about to hit the fan, Vincent shoots up from his chair.
“Time to play truth or dare.” Glowering at him, I drive a fist down on his desk. “You’re going to choose truth.”
“Nathan, what the hell is going on?” Nick demands, and I shoot him a scowl as he approaches me, no doubt to pull me back. My deadly vibes make him think better of it.
“Ask Daddy dearest, brother. Keeping secrets seems to be his favorite pastime.”
Vincent raises his hands, palms up. “Son, I think you should—”
“Son…” My mocking tone speaks of my scorn as I lean closer, bristling. “How many sons do you have, huh? Two? Three? Or maybe there’s a daughter in the mix, too?”
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
I ignore Nick, my unbreakable glare on Vincent’s color-bleeding face. He sucks in his cheeks, an excessive swallow bobbing his throat before he takes a deep, pained breath.
“How did you find out?” His voice is low, coated with shame and guilt.
I drum my knuckles on his desk. “Why don’t you ask your wife? Apparently, she’s known since you went down for another stretch.”
“She’s known what?” Nick presses.
I keep my steel-hard gaze on Vincent who winces when I drawl, “Vincent has another child. Turns out he knocked up that woman, what was her name…?” I make a show of trying to remember, snapping my fingers. “Mar, right?”
“What in God’s name…” Nick starts, but he stops when Vincent’s chin dips to his chest, a haunted look crossing his features. “Tell me this is a joke.”
“It’s the truth,” he says at last, his tone rueful.
Nick gapes at him, blanching. “Are you fucking kidding me? I’m twenty-six, and I only find out now that I have another brother?”
“Or sister,” I throw in with a click of my tongue. “Maybe Daddy can shed some light on that one.”
Vincent clears his throat, stuffing his hands into his pockets. “A sister.”
“I can’t believe it,” Nick huffs. “Why the fuck did you never tell us?”
“Because I didn’t know,” Vincent hisses through gritted teeth. “It was only after I landed in prison that Mar wrote me a letter, confessing that she’d been raising my child. She didn’t even tell me the kid’s name. Said our daughter would never find out who I am because…”
“Because you were a cheater and a fucking thief?” I end the sentence for him.
The pointed look he throws me sideways tells me I’ve hit the nail on the head.
“I wanted to visit her to talk things out, but she died one year before I came out of jail,” he confesses in a leaden tone.
Now it makes sense why he was so sentimental every time he stood in front of the sixth nook in my office. The alexandrite he gave to Mar reminded him of the love he lost, and the daughter he never met.
“Hang on,” Nick says with a shake of his head. “How come you knew she died if you were in jail? Have you been in contact with her family?”
Vincent takes a deep breath, and I know he’s about to hit us with another shocker. “No. Carl kept me posted.”
“Carl knew?” Nick exclaims, gawking at his father.
I scoff. “All this time, Carl was in the know about that woman and your child, but you never thought to spill the beans to your family?”
“I was dead to Mar way before she died, and she made it clear what she thought of me meeting my daughter. I saw no reason to open that grave after everything my family had to endure.”
“You mean after everything you put your family under.”
His eyes are cold as ice when they veer to me. “I paid for my mistakes. I’ve atoned for every one of my sins, trust me. I understand your anger, son, but don’t forget that you don’t share my daughter’s bloodline.”
He might as well have slapped me. I can feel the sting of his words on my skin. My father, the one who always loved me more than his own flesh and blood, is telling me to go fuck myself because I’m the savage creature who’s adopted.
He can go fuck himself, too.
“Fuck, Dad, you can’t—” Nick starts, but I interrupt him.
“No, he’s right.” My heart wreaks havoc inside my chest as I rip Vincent’s gold pendant from my neck, the one he gave me when I was a kid. “Well, lucky me, I don’t share your bloodline, either.”
The flicker of regret in his eyes leaves me cold as I fling the pendant at his feet. He opens his mouth, no doubt to tell me he didn’t mean it like that, but I send him a look that makes his teeth clack shut before I pivot on my heels to throw myself a pity-party in my office.
Once there, I grab the first thing on the shelf next to the door—a heavy, abstract figurine in the form of a warrior bull—and smash it against the sixth nook in the wall. The damn safety glass wobbles as the weight bounces against it, and it takes me two more anger-driven blows to shatter it for good.
The pounding in my ears is so loud, the background noises fade into nothing until I realize that the entire floor has halted in the middle of their tasks, whispering agitatedly outside my door. Still shaking from the rage fueling my blood, I set the figurine on my desk and loosen my collar to cool the heat flushing up my neck.
Maybe Vincent is right, and I’ve been barking up the wrong tree. He hid something that had been hidden from him to save himself the trouble. God only knows how old that kid was when Mar broke the news to him, and his hands were literally tied with a pair of iron shackles.
My phone rings in my pocket, and I heave an annoyed sigh. After taking a moment to find my composure, I answer Brooke’s call.
“You’ve got a visitor,” she barks down the line. Naturally, she has snapped all her shields back into place. “Can I send her up?”
Better send up a bottle of booze. Or six.
“Sure.”
I quickly fix my hairstyle and use my shoe to sweep the shards on the floor into a corner. A knock on the door resounds, and I adjust my tie just as a woman clad in a snow-white business suit enters.
“Hello, Mr. Crawford,” she says with a warm smile on her face, extending a caramel-toned hand for me to shake. “Kate Dugan.”
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Dugan. Please, take a seat.”
The chocolate corkscrews on her head bounce as she follows me over to my desk and folds her frame into the leather seat opposite me. Sweeping my gaze over her, I quickly take inventory of her jewelry. No watch, no earrings, no necklace whatsoever. Just a cookie-cutter wedding band in plain gold.
I roll my chair closer to my desk. “What can I do for you, Mrs. Dugan?”
“Actually, I was hoping I could do something for you.”
I send her a quizzical look that she reciprocates with a smile. Taking her time, she places her silver flap bag onto the vacant seat next to her and folds her hands onto the desk.
“I work at eNtimacy for Silent Sins. I’m El
la Jenkins’ accountant.”
I stiffen. Fuck. I can only think of one reason why this woman would show up here. To bust my chops.
On second thought, if eNtimacy wants my head for violating their terms, why didn’t Carl give me a heads-up?
“If you’re here to kick me out of Silent Sins, please go ahead,” I say with an edge to my voice. “I have no interest in that program any longer. My lawyer has already been informed about—”
“I’m not here because of the breach,” she slices in. “I’m here because of Ella.”
Her worried tone rings all alarm bells at once, and I jerk in my seat, knocking over the pen holder on my desk.
“Did something happen to her? Is she alright?”
She blinks, clearly stunned by the vigor in my voice. “No, she’s fine. Uh, I mean… I haven’t spoken to her since she filed the report against you.”
I sag back in my seat, exhaling in relief while Kate distinctly assesses my behavior.
“How do you know who I am?” I ask when my head is somewhat clearer. “I thought you didn’t know the names of your clients’ matches. Wouldn’t you need my accountant’s permission to seek me out?”
She bites her lip before she swiftly changes the subject. “Ella was quite upset that you invaded her privacy.”
As if I didn’t already know it.
“I just wanted to protect her,” I say through clenched teeth, nodding to the fading scar on her temple. “You should know better than anyone that her stalker knows no limits.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Wiping a hand over her neck, she loosens her posture and sags back in her chair. “The thing is, Silent Sins is the exact opposite of what they’re selling you. No strings, no emotional attachments, no consequences… It doesn’t work like that when you lock two people in a dark room. Ever since eNtimacy launched this program, I’ve seen dozens of new relationships evolve and ten times as many hearts break. Ultimately, love always gets in the way. I’m the best example.” She lifts her hand to wriggle her fourth finger adorned with her wedding band.
