“The de Vrieses?” I frowned at Eric. “What do you have against one of the oldest families in America?” It was ironic, I knew, that I was actually defending a family who had treated me like a kitchen scamp for the last six months, but here we were. I’d take their snooty Dutch noses over this asshole any day of the week.
“That’s none of your concern!” Carson barked. “One way or another you will learn some respect. I advise you learn it quickly before you receive the consequences of your disregard. Since he loves to talk so much, perhaps Eric can give you a preview.”
I looked to Eric. His head gave an infinitesimal shake—the universal sign for shut up, Jane.
“What is the deal with rich people and their legacies?” I blurted out “Look, Goldfinger, I hate to break it to you, but your DNA is not that special. And neither is mine.”
“Ah, but I must disagree with you, my dear,” Carson put in. “You see, history proves different. Some genetic legacies are more powerful than others. It’s the strong who inherit the earth, not the weak.”
I looked at Eric. “Is he serious? This is over some kind of freaking eugenicist garbage? Are we in the middle of the nineteenth century?”
“If this were the nineteenth century, my dear, you wouldn’t exist.”
I snorted. “Someone needs to go back to history class, Johnny boy. You think you’re the only rich white man to take advantage of a poor Asian woman? It’s a timeworn stereotype, so really, you’re the one out of date. Not to mention ordinary as fuck.”
“Jane,” Eric hissed.
“Don’t bother, Triton,” Carson said, his eyes blazing at me. “Her concerns do not matter anyway.” He paused. “However it emerged, I would hate to know that my legacy will go to waste. You’re rough, but there is enough of me in you that it is worth my effort to take an interest in where it…goes.”
I scowled. “You talk about me like I’m a broodmare.”
Carson just shrugged, which told me the comparison wasn’t totally off base. But before I could argue, something else occurred to me:
“But Eric’s part of your little club,” I said. “If you want to talk bloodlines, his family has deeper roots here than just about anyone besides the actual indigenous people. The de Vrieses didn’t come on the Mayflower, but that’s only because they bought Manhattan ten years later for twenty bucks.”
“Technically, that was Peter Minuit,” Eric put in. “My ancestors were among the merchants that helped him settle.”
Carson smiled, like the detail strengthened his argument that the de Vries line was corrupt.
I just rolled my eyes. “Are we done with the pedantry, boys?” I turned back to Carson. “You want a pedigree? He’s got one. I should think you’d be happy—if I wanted a relationship with you at all, which I don’t—that I ended up with the colonial crown prince of Manhattan should tickle those shaved whiskers of yours bloody pink.”
“Be that as it may,” Carson said, barely able to contain his irritation. “That’s how I feel. And it’s how it shall be. Anyone—anyone—but a member of the de Vries family.”
“Except there’s one problem, Carson.”
Finally, Eric managed to find his voice as he stepped in front of me. He picked his jacket off the floor, pulled out the wet, wadded remains of our copy of Celeste’s will—given to each family member in the office—and handed it to Carson.
“Page five,” Eric said softly as Carson laid the document on the counter and started peeling it apart.
“Stupid woman,” Carson muttered to himself as he scanned the ways in which Celeste had divided her estate. “Two hundred million dollars in real estate to a butler?”
He continued to murmur to himself, chuckling every so often until he came to the section concerning Eric and me. Then his face turned an ungodly shade of red as he read the short paragraph. And read it again. And again. Until finally, when he was just about to spout like a tea kettle, he looked up, fairly shaking with fury.
“What. Is. This?”
Eric shrugged. And for once, it was the best thing I’d ever seen. “It’s my birthright,” he said softly. “Tied to the woman I love.”
Carson spluttered. “You had to get married to keep your inheritance. You told me yourself, it didn’t matter to whom.”
Eric just cocked his head. “Grandmother changed the terms. Jane and I are both granted our own trusts, but the conditions were altered. We don’t have to stay married. We don’t even have to get married again at all. We just have to live together for sixty days. Jane receives fifty million, and I keep my family’s forty-nine percent and remaining assets. If I do nothing, the executor has instructions to sell it all. Which means, of course, DVS loses all its contracts around world ports.” He quirked a brow. “Something tells me you might be interested in that, considering the way Chariot has been investing in DVS stock for the last ten years. What’s your stake now? A full one percent?”
Carson’s jaw dropped and stayed there for several seconds.
“I might be new to this job,” Eric said. “But I’m not stupid. You want me in Janus? You summoned me, after all, Carson. Was that to keep your enemy close or because I served some interest? I remember. You never do anything unless it benefits you in some way. Or, of course, anarchy. So which is it? I can’t be a someone without her, Carson. I’m no one without Jane.”
My brain wasn’t sure how to take that. But my heart definitely thrilled.
Eric winked at me. “Maybe Grandmother wasn’t such a viper after all, huh, Jane?”
I grinned. I had never been so thrilled that Eric’s grandmother was a Machiavellian genius. Carson looked back and forth between us frantically, and I bristled, feeling triumphant. More, however, than I should have.
“Yes, well…” Carson tapped a long finger on the counter, then suddenly swept the entire will into the garbage container on one side of the island. “She wasn’t smart enough to include a procreation clause or anything else like it.”
Carson’s shocked expression morphed into a smile. The kind that, like the Cheshire cat’s, seemed to be present before the rest of his face appeared around it.
“Sixty days,” Carson said. “And you will. Not. Touch. Her.”
I snorted. “Yeah, that’s going to happen.”
“Oh, it will. It will. Won’t it, Triton?” He reached across the island to Eric and pulled his coin out of his shirt.
“This,” he said, “was your father’s, not yours. I recognized it when I last saw you.”
With a sudden wrench, he ripped the chain from Eric’s neck.
“Hey!” Eric yelped.
Carson examined the coin for a few moments. “I should take it,” he said. “Until you’ve earned back the right.”
But instead, he dropped the necklace on the counter, where it collapsed into a pile.
I stared at Eric, who was staring at the coin. I started to grab for it, to hurl it out the window or back at this horrible, snide man who was somehow related to me. But before I could, Eric’s broad hand covered it and pulled it away. I watched in shock as he tucked it into his pants pocket with great care.
“You’re kidding,” I said. “You’re not really going to agree to this, are you?”
“Jane,” he said weakly. “I—I have to.”
“Well, I don’t!”
I stomped my foot on the ground like a child. Carson seemed to enjoy it. I whirled around at him.
“Listen, you pompous prick. There is no fucking way in hell you’re going to dictate any parts of my life or his! I don’t know who you think you are, but—”
Suddenly, my wrist was snatched, and I was swiftly walked backward into the wall in four long steps.
“Hey!” Eric shouted just as I was slammed against the exposed brick, its jagged, uneven texture cutting into my back. “Easy!”
“This is a family matter,” Carson bit out as he glared down at me. “I’ve forgiven your ill manners because of the unfortunate circumstances of our meeting. Haven’t you
considered why your prince over there is so terrified of me, Jane?”
I quivered, from fear yes, but mostly anger. “No.”
That same smile appeared, revealing white teeth that had to be capped, but several stained ones near the back. Carson’s breath smelled lightly of cigars. I hoped cancer was eating him alive as we stood there.
“People who cross me usually regret it. Painfully so.”
“Is that a threat?” I asked.
“It’s a fact.”
A low, almost inaudible laugh hummed from the back of Carson’s throat. He released my hand, and I crumpled against the wall and down to the floor, holding my sore wrist to my chest.
“It’s fine,” Eric said as Carson turned around. “We’ll do it.”
“We’ll do it?” I cried. “We will do it? Don’t I have a say in this at all?”
“Jane, please,” he said, as nonchalant as ever, but with a pleading note that almost broke me. “It’s two months. Just…just two months.”
But that wasn’t it. It wasn’t the asking me to live platonically that made me so upset. It was that he was choosing this farce—this fucked-up parody of a marriage—over the truth and passion and grit that had always been between us.
Eric had broken my heart so many times before, but this time, he smashed it to pieces. Because it was clear to me, for the first time since he’d walked back into my life six months ago, that the only thing that really mattered to him was his own fucking skin.
Well. I could look out for mine too.
I pushed up from the floor, still cradling my hand, fighting not to swing out at both of the smug, entitled fuckers in front of me.
But before I could say anything, Carson seemed to accept Eric’s consent for us both. He tapped his finger to his nose and walked to the door.
“Sixty days, Triton,” he said before leaving. “And I’ll know. You know I will.”
The door closed behind him and the click of the lock echoed through the apartment.
I turned to Eric. “You’re insane if you think I’m going along with this. If this is how it’s going to be, I’ll just leave now.”
“Jane—” Eric’s voice cracked as he pulled the coin out of his pocket and stared at it. That stupid, flashing piece of metal that seemed to mock us with its brightness.
He looked up, and I could see every argument he had flashing across his otherwise immovable face. That he had to do this, not for himself, but for his family. For Nina and her kids. For his mother and aunt. For the people, bad and good, who were grieving a woman who had done everything she could to maintain a legacy for them through her sole heir.
I deflated like a sad, tired balloon. Every emotion I had seeped from me like the air out of my lungs. All except for anger. At him.
“Fine,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll do it. Not for you. For Nina. For my mother’s future. I’ll stay for sixty days, and not one fucking day longer. But if you think I’m going to make it easy on you, think again.”
Eric stared at me like a monster was rising in front of him. And who knows? Maybe one was.
I pushed up on my toes to look him right in the eye. His gaze, however, drifted to my lips like it always did. I shuddered. Dammit.
Anger, I thought to myself. Hold on to your anger. It was the only way I would be able to do it.
Somehow, we’d have to live together for sixty days. Sixty days without touching. Without kissing. Without fucking.
I moved in with Eric six months ago absolutely hating his guts, and I lasted two weeks. Two months would be impossible without holding on to that hate. Doing everything I could to keep it alive.
“If I have to live this miserable, stupid charade with you, I’m going to make you regret it more than you’ve ever regretted anything in your life.”
I moved closer so that my lips hovered inches from his, and Eric’s steely gaze drifted down, fixed on them.
“Is that a threat?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper. Dangerous and scared all at once.
“No,” I said as I stood as straight as I could. “That’s a promise.”
Interlude I
“Good lord. Would you look at this?”
Eric turned to find his cousin Nina, with a moth-eaten caftan that was half gold sequins, half magenta silk. She held it against her slim body, and the sequins glimmered, the same color as her hair.
“Just call me Madame Esmeralda,” she said, swaying the fabric back and forth. The movement caused miniature plumes of dust to fly into the air. Nina sneezed and tossed the item into a box designated for donation.
They had taken it upon themselves to go through the remainder of Celeste’s things so that Garrett could use the storage space beneath Celeste’s Park Avenue building. A castle on top of a landfill, Eric thought. Yes, they could have hired an estate manager to do the majority of the work for them—and they would, after this bit was finished. A good half was just clutter—papers and decayed clothes from decades gone, things Celeste hadn’t even considered for thirty, forty, even fifty years or more. A sizeable portion of whatever the family declined to keep would end up at Sotheby’s on auction. The rest would go to donation. Violet and their great-uncle Rufus, had already retrieved the few belongings they wanted. Now it was Nina and Eric’s turn.
“I think Grandmother had a bit more fun back in the day than she let on,” Eric said from his place amid several boxes of books.
He held up an album of pictures, one in which their grandmother was actually wearing the garment Nina had just tossed aside. Celeste was perhaps thirty in the photo, the mother of two small children—Violet, Nina’s mother, and Jacob, Eric’s father—and a full-time New York socialite during the swinging sixties. In the photo, she was as poised as ever, but held her Manhattan high alongside her husband, Jonathan de Vries, and a roomful of New York’s highest society toasting the 1965 New Year.
Nina sidled around the debris to take a look.
“They look so glamorous,” she admired. “And look at Grandfather. He’s positively besotted with her.”
The note of envy in her voice made Eric glance at her, but before he could respond, Nina had already gone back to her sorting. Eric examined the photo more closely. Jonathan de Vries had died long before any of his grandchildren were born, but it was clear that he was the life of the party. Celeste stood as imperious as ever despite her small size and the bedazzled dress, but looked a bit like the cat who had gotten the cream. Meanwhile, Jonathan’s arms were spread magnanimously around his wife and son, five-year-old Jacob, with a cigar perched between his bright white teeth and a twinkle in his eye as bright as the North Star. A marriage of opposites, sheltering their heir, Eric’s father.
Eric put the photo album in a box marked to take home with him.
Even the wealthy hoard, Eric thought as he closed one cardboard box and opened another. Maybe more than others. Maybe that was why he had always erred toward a more ascetic existence during the ten years he’d been estranged from these people.
“Calvin still can’t believe we are even doing this,” Nina remarked as she approached a rack full of clothes hanging in plastic bags. “He wanted to fight the will in court and take the penthouse from Garrett. He’s still mad you told him it would be impossible.”
“Well, it would, even if I thought it was the right thing to do. Grandmother knew what she was doing. And her lawyer, despite his bumbling, is the best estate attorney in the city.” Eric’s eyes widened as he discovered a trove of old poetry books. “We still own the rest of the building. And besides, would you really want to live in that mausoleum?”
Nina’s silence told him she would. Eric felt guilty. He forgot sometimes that Nina had grown up in this apartment much more than he had. And that Celeste’s decision to turn the company over to him, the black sheep, instead of her dutiful granddaughter likely still stung.
“I think he deserves it,” Eric reverted back to Garrett as he paged through a first edition of Shelley. He tucked the book in t
he take-home box and picked up another. “He’s been around since our parents were kids.”
Nina raised a brow under a broad-billed sun hat that made her look like a duck. “Do you think…no, never mind.”
Eric looked up. “What?”
She shrugged—a family tendency—as she turned around and opened a spare box of antique silver. “I was just wondering if they had ever…you know… After all, they did live there alone together for such a long time.”
Eric screwed up his face. “Garrett and Grandmother? I doubt it. First of all, he was, what, at least fifteen years her senior?”
Nina’s expression made it clear what an impediment she thought that was. After all, their grandfather had been forty-seven when he married his twenty-two-year-old bride in the early fifties. And Calvin was sixteen years older than Nina.
Eric smirked. “Okay, okay. It’s possible, I guess. It has been almost thirty-five years since Grandfather passed.”
“And she never wanted to remarry,” Nina added as she fingered a fork. “Do you want these?
Eric shook his head. “No, Mom gave Jane and me a set as a wedding gift.” He didn’t mention that he would likely have to give it back. “Grandmother wouldn’t be the first to enter into a marriage of convenience anyway,” he added wryly.
Nina put the silverware aside and removed her hat. “Is it really that bad? After all, they ended up happy. And you and Jane always seemed so…well, I always thought there was a spark.” The envy in her soft voice reappeared—masked, but only just. It was a family talent.
Eric picked a few more books and tucked a first edition of Joyce’s Dubliners in the “keep” pile. “It’s complicated. First that bullshit with Caitlyn—”
“Who is so sorry, by the way, Eric. Really, she is.”
“Yeah, I bet.” The acid in Eric’s voice fairly dripped. “Don’t bother defending her to me. What she did was unforgivable.”
“Eric, she was just confiding in me—”
The Kiss Plot: Book Two of the Quicksilver Trilogy Page 12
