by J. S. Cooper
“What?” My jaw dropped. “What are you talking about?”
“You’re moving in with me. I can’t let you go back to that place.”
“I’m not moving in with you, Jakob, that’s way too fast.” I shook my head. What was going on here?
“Just for now, until we figure out everything.”
“I can’t stay with you forever.”
“We’ll talk about it later. We have bigger concerns to deal with now.”
“You’re not the boss of me, Jakob. You can’t tell me how to live my life.”
“Like I said, we’ll talk about it later.”
“You shouldn’t be here.” Larry’s wife came outside as we were walking up the driveway. “You both need to leave.”
“Larry sent me.” I walked up to her. “He said you’d have some papers for me.” I could feel Jakob’s eyes on me. I’d omitted that part, and he wasn’t happy about it.
“I don’t want to get involved.” She looked at Jakob and then back at me.
“Mrs. Renee, please. This is important.”
“I told Larry I’m done. I don’t want any part of this anymore.”
“Any part of what?” Jakob stepped closer to her.
“I never signed up for this life, you know.” She looked angry. “When I met Larry, I thought he was a good guy. I didn’t know he was married.”
“Married?” I looked at Jakob and we exchanged a glance.
“I didn’t know.” She looked guilty. “I didn’t know he was a father, either.”
“Father? He has kids?” My eyes widened. “What?”
“He has a daughter.” She nodded. “She hates him.”
“He has a daughter?” I repeated, my heart beating fast.
“Yes, he didn’t have much of a relationship with her until a few years ago.” She looked at me. “That’s when everything changed. I knew something bad was coming. I just knew it.” Her face looked bleak. “I thought it was my payback for ruining a marriage. I thought I deserved the hostility and tension for being a home wrecker, but this is all too much now. His daughter coming back into his life ruined everything.”
“Why?” I breathed out.
“Roma was bad news. I could see it in her eyes, the very first time I met her.”
“Roma?” Jakob’s voice rose and I froze. “Her name is Roma?”
“Yes.” Mrs. Renee nodded. “Evil girl she was.”
“Where is she now, Mrs. Renee? How do we get in contact with her?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “She and I are not close. I don’t even know where she lives and I don’t want to know. I want a divorce from Larry. I’m not letting Larry take me down with him.” She took a deep breath. “I suppose it’s my penance for splitting up his first marriage. This is the price I had to pay. That’s how karma goes. You can’t ruin a marriage and expect your marriage to go perfectly.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not something I publicized.” She laughed bitterly. “Though in that group of friends it didn’t mean much. All of those men were cheats and liars.”
“I’m sorry.” I could see she was near the breaking point. “Do you have anything for me? Larry said that you might have something to give to me.”
She stared at me for a few seconds, her pupils dilating as she turned around. “Come with me quickly.” She walked toward the house, and Jakob and I followed her inside. She walked into the kitchen, grabbed an envelope off the counter, and handed it to me. “Larry said to give this to you. He said you’d know what to do.” I took hold of the envelope, but she held on to it tightly without letting it go. “Think carefully before you make your next step, Bianca. There are people watching everything.”
“I’ll be careful, Mrs. Renee.” I nodded. “I promise.”
“Don’t come back here.” She shook her head. “I don’t want anything to do with any of this anymore.”
“I have one last question for you, please,” I begged as she took a step back.
“What is it?” She looked around suspiciously again.
“Do you know anything about Maxwell, the third partner in Bradley, London, and Maxwell?”
She stared at me for a second, her face twisting as she laughed, an odd, loud sound from her petite body.
I recoiled in shock. “Mrs. Renee?”
“They were all thick as thieves, you know. Thick as thieves and too smart for their own good. Not a one of them was good.” She glanced at me and then at Jakob. “Not a one of them.”
“Not a one of who?” I asked quietly.
“Not Bradley, not London, and not Maxwell.” She shook her head. “What a twisted, twisted web they wove.”
“But what about Maxwell?” I ignored her comments about my father. I didn’t even want to know what she was talking about. She didn’t know my father. My father was a good man. My father had been cheated on. He’d been devastated. He had tried the best that he could.
“Maxwell got the last laugh, didn’t he?” She chuckled. “He screwed us all.”
“What are you talking about?” I could feel my heart racing. “How did he screw us all?”
“What are you talking about, Mrs. Renee?” Jakob took a step forward and grabbed her wrist. “Tell us what you mean.”
“You’re Jakob Bradley.” She batted her eyelashes at him. “How ironic that you’re here with her.” She laughed.
“Mrs. Renee.” Jakob’s voice grated like a knife in the air and his expression was hostile, even arrogant, as he stared at her.
“Mrs. Renee, why did Maxwell’s wife contact you both and threaten you?” My voice cut through the tension in the room. She looked at me blankly. “When I was here last time, you said that Maxwell’s wife had threatened you.” She glanced at me again for a second without speaking, then turned to face Jakob again.
“My husband was the one who decided on the name Mattias,” she said softly. “It wasn’t your father. My husband had a thing about names. He liked to be clever.”
“Mrs. Renee—” Jakob started again.
She squared her shoulders and looked at both of us with sad eyes. “That’s my name.” She nodded her head. “You both need to leave now. Good-bye.” She turned around and walked back to the front of the house.
“Should we—” I started.
Jakob cut me off as we walked down the corridor and through the front door. Mrs. Renee slammed it behind us without another word.
“What’s in the envelope?” He pulled the envelope out of my hands.
“What are you doing?” I frowned and tried to grab it back.
“What’s in the envelope?” He glared at me and ripped it open. “Why didn’t you tell me we were coming here for a purpose?”
“I didn’t know if you would think it was a good idea, what with not trusting Larry at all.”
“I don’t trust Larry, and I don’t think that whatever is in the envelope is there for good intentions.”
“Who knows what to think now? Why did you just let us leave without interrogating Mrs. Renee a bit more?” I put my hand out. “Give me back my papers. What do they say?”
“First, Mrs. Renee was close to a breakdown. I don’t even think she knows what side she’s on right now. Trust me, I’m not done with her, but we need to give her some time. And we need to find something on her to make sure she gives us the information we need. Secondly, these are papers saying you own a thirty-five percent share in Bradley Inc.” He looked at the papers and handed them back. “Why do you have papers giving you a thirty-five percent share in my family’s company?”
“So I can stop the merger.” I repeated what Larry had asked me to do. “Larry told me to use these papers so that I can stop the merger from going through.”
“You can’t stop the merger, Bianca.” Jakob shook his head. “Don’t you find it suspicious that out of the blue Larry has now provided you with papers giving you a major stake in the company?”
“I don’t know. Maybe he’s
realized the error of his ways. Maybe he’s trying to make amends? Why shouldn’t I use the shares and stop the merger?”
“What if these shares are a setup?”
“What if they aren’t? If the merger goes through, I might not get anything.” I thought back to what I’d read in the newspaper.
“You have a claim to Bradley Inc. in your hand now, Bianca.” Jakob’s voice was intense. “You can share in any profits that the company receives from the merger.”
“I didn’t think of that.” I gasped.
“And I think that Larry was hoping that wouldn’t cross your mind as well. He made a mistake giving you the shares. For some reason he wants you to stop the merger because it’s in his best interests, not yours.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“What is it that you want?”
“I want what my father worked hard for.”
“Do you think Larry would just hand you your shares out of the kindness of his heart?” Jakob asked me grimly. “Do you think that after all this it would be this simple?”
“I don’t know.” I sighed deeply. Why did Larry care about me getting the shares? How would this help him? “I don’t think he would hand me the shares after all these years out of the kindness of his heart, not really.”
“Think, Bianca. Please. This could be a setup.”
“How? What sort of setup is giving me my rightful shares? Maybe he knew that he was about to go down and wanted me to get a claim to what was mine before he went to jail?”
“I sincerely doubt that those were his intentions.” Jakob shook his head. “And at this point, we don’t really know what your rightful shares are or were.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Let me see those papers again.” He grabbed them from my hand and read them more carefully this time. “These were signed off by David.”
“So?” I was upset at the snark in his voice when he had said rightful.
“So why would David sign off on papers giving you a major interest in the company?”
“Maybe he felt guilty as well?” My stomach churned as I spoke. I knew David didn’t even have the capacity to feel guilt. And if he did, he didn’t go along with a kidnapping to prevent me from getting access to any shares to signing over shares in less than a few weeks.
“Think, Bianca, think. Larry has a daughter, a long-lost daughter, called Roma. Roma came into his life a few years ago. Roma came into my brother’s life a few years ago. Roma is dating my brother.”
“Do you think David knows who Roma is?”
“No.” Jakob shook his head. “I don’t think he knows there’s a connection, but I could be wrong. I mean, this is all larger than I thought it was in the beginning.”
“So we need to find Roma now?”
“Hold on.” A light went off in his eyes as he stared at me. “Do you have your phone on you?”
“Yes, why?”
“What did Mrs. Renee just say?”
“What? That Larry had a daughter?”
“No, no. I think she gave us a clue.” He snapped his fingers. “She made it a point to tell me Larry was the one who chose Mattias’s name.”
“Yeah, so?”
“She also made a point of saying ‘that’s my name’ right before she left.”
“And?” I was confused.
“Give me your phone.” He grabbed it from me and typed something in. “ ‘Reborn’!” he exclaimed.
“What?” I was even more confused than I’d been before.
“Renee means ‘reborn.’ ”
“Okay, so?”
“So what if Larry’s last name wasn’t really Renee?” Jakob grabbed my hand and dragged me to the car with him. “What if he changed his name?”
“To Renee?” I frowned.
“He likes symbolism, so maybe he thought Renee was smart.”
“I guess so.” I nodded. “I guess it could make sense. He was reborn as a new person.” Then it hit me. I suddenly understood what Jakob was saying. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?”
He nodded. “What if Larry was Maxwell?”
“But why would he change his name?”
“That’s what we need to find out. He has to be Maxwell, though. It makes the most sense. That’s why I always thought he was with the company from the beginning, even though he only started as an attorney when Maxwell left.” Jakob was about to say something else when my phone started ringing. “Here you go.” He looked at the screen as he handed it to me. As soon as he saw the screen, he blanched and the phone fell to the ground as he stared at me in shock.
“What is it?” I bent down and picked up the phone—somehow it had escaped significant damage. I had a missed call from Rosie. “What’s wrong?”
“The—the photo on the screen when the phone rang.” He stumbled over his words.
“Yeah, I like to do phone indicators in my phone book.” I nodded. “So?”
“Do you have any photos of your friend Rosie that I could see larger?” he asked urgently.
“Let me check.” I frowned. “Why?”
“Just pull one up,” he demanded.
I went to my photo album and opened it quickly. “Here you go.” I showed him a photo of Rosie and me at a bar a couple of months ago.
Only his sharp intake of breath betrayed his concern. “Bianca—Rosie is Roma.”
“What?” I felt the blood drain from my face.
“Bianca, Rosie is David’s girlfriend.” Jakob paused.
“No.” I shook my head. “She can’t be. It’s not possible.”
“Oh, shit, and I think I have something else. I think Roma stands for Rosie Maxwell. Ro Ma—she takes after her father, likes names to have a significance.” He looked at me with intense eyes. “Your best friend, Rosie, is Larry’s daughter.”
“Oh my God.” I stared at Jakob in shock. It all made sense now. Why she’d chosen that bar. Why she’d gone to the bathroom and not had any of the wine. Why she’d so easily believed the bartender when he’d told her I left with a guy. The way she kept bumping into David, even after we broke up. “Shit, she even told me she was working on a deal with Bradley Inc., but she said she didn’t get it. Oh my God.”
“She must have been working with her dad. That’s why the kidnapping plan worked out so perfectly. We had someone on the inside helping out.”
“I can’t believe she would do this to me.”
“Call her back, now.” His eyes flared. “Tell her you want to meet her. Don’t let her know you know anything.”
“Okay.” I dialed her number back quickly, fingers trembling. How could Rosie have lied to me? How could she have lied all these years? Was she really working with Larry? Was she really seeing David? My stomach dropped as I thought about the enormity of the lies that could have been going on for years. “She’s not answering.” I hung up and tried calling back again. “She’s not picking up.” I clutched the phone tightly.
“Let’s go.” He glanced back at the house. “Let’s get back to the city. I know someone who owes me a favor, and I think we should talk to your friend Blake. Maybe he can check out if there is a connection between Rosie and Larry.”
“Should I call him?”
“Yes, call him now. We’re going to find out exactly who Rosie is, Bianca, and exactly what role she had in all of this. Give me the envelope.” He took it from my hands. “This was definitely a setup. Larry wanted you to stop the merger for reasons that weren’t in your best interests.”
“What do you think he wanted?” I stared at the envelope in Jakob’s hands. “Why would they want me to have shares?”
“There has to be a reason why he wanted to set you up, just like he’s set everything else up. He’s been playing us, Bianca. He and his daughter have been playing all of us.” Jakob frowned. “There is one possible reason why he gave you the shares.”
“What’s that?”
“Maybe the reason has nothing to do with you getting par
t of the company. Maybe that was just a cost he had to pay to stop the merger. Maybe he saw you as the only way to get it stopped.”
“Couldn’t you stop it? Or David?”
“I don’t have shares in Bradley Inc.,” Jakob said softly. “It’s not my company. My father left all of his shares to David. I told you before that my mother wanted nothing from him.”
“Yes, you did tell me that.” I stopped talking as I thought. How then had Jakob made so much money? And was he mad that he didn’t own part of the corporation? He was Jeremiah’s son after all. He should have been left something.
“Larry wanted the merger stopped because he realized that it wouldn’t be beneficial to him and his daughter,” Jakob said. “And perhaps after everything he’s done, he just can’t accept that it was all for naught.”
“I guess his wife was right.” I sighed as we drove off. “Larry was evil, Jeremiah was evil . . .” My voice trailed off as I thought about what she’d said. She’d said that all three of them were as bad as each other. The third man was my father.
“We don’t know that your dad was bad as well, Bianca.” Jakob squeezed my hand.
“Mrs. Renee said they were all bad.” Pain rippled through me. “What could my father have done, Jakob? I don’t know why or how he could have been involved in all of this.”
“It could be a trick, Bianca. Maybe that’s the point. Maybe they want you to doubt your father and yourself.”
“Why did my dad leave me that letter? What was he hoping I’d figure out?” My voice cracked as my emotions overcame me. “I always thought my parents had the perfect marriage and it was stopped short by my mother’s accident. But what if all that was a lie? What if they never had a perfect love and a perfect life?” I put my face in my hands.
“It’ll be okay, Bianca. We’ll get to the bottom of everything, I promise you. We won’t stop until we have all the answers.” Jakob held me close to him, but all I could keep thinking was Is this something I really want to know? What had my father been involved with? What had gone on all those years ago between Bradley, London, and Maxwell? Somehow I had a feeling that Rosie was just the tip of the iceberg.
