by Violet Duke
She shook her head. “No.” Then in barely a whisper: “Not anymore.”
Pain warred with guilt in the pit of his stomach.
But remorse came out as the dark horse winner. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I’ve tried to stop those ridiculous stories Nate’s been leaking to the tabloids, but it’s been impossible to contain.”
“He’s not going to stop. He vowed that much to me right before the gunman burst in on us.” She shrugged lightly. “The day the tabloids started running those insane ‘Grayhurst brother ménage’ stories with those doctored photos Nate gave them, I knew I had to do something or it’d never end. Clearly, Nate has nothing to lose. The network, however, had everything to lose by all the bad press. So I quit. I didn’t want to see them suffer because of my one bad choice accepting his help on getting me hired.”
Bullshit. He didn’t buy that for a second. “Just give me a little more time, sweetheart. I’ll fix this. I’ll figure out a way to make this all go away. I’ll release press statements—”
“Don’t.” She rested a soft hand on his chest. “If your board is worth their salt, I’m guessing they’ve been telling you to distance yourself from me. And they’re absolutely right, you should. We both know it.”
“How can you stand there saying it’s fine for you to sacrifice your career, but I can’t take a few risks in mine?”
“But it isn’t a sacrifice for me, Jackson. Not anymore. Don’t you see? I can’t even think about my old job anymore without thinking about all of it—dealing with Nate, losing you, the shooting, the recovery, the horrible rumors…It’s all tangled together now. If I went back to that job, I’d constantly be reminded of the fact that I’d made a deal with the devil, who ended up being the corrupt brother of the man I love. I’d constantly be reminded that the ‘service’ I was supposed to give your brother would’ve landed you in jail.
“And I’d constantly relive the most terrifying day of my life where that same man used me as a human shield against bullets intended for him, before leaving me to die in a pool of my own blood.” A bitter sigh exhaled out of her. “Really, the gigantic national smear campaign to make it sound like I’m a three-timing slut was just spiteful sprinkles on the already horrific dessert he’s turned my dreams into.”
She let loose a shaky breath. “So, Jackson, I mean it when I say my reputation getting trashed is only one part of the big sad picture that this job has become for me.” Her voice strengthened with each word following, however. “You and your new career, on the other hand? Don’t get me wrong, you were extraordinary as an analyst. But as a billionaire?” A slow, radiant smile lit up her face. “You’re an inspiration…and nothing short of heroic. I’ve been hearing about the things you’ve accomplished in just the past six weeks alone. Not to mention the things you have planned. You’re making a difference in countless lives. You’re not just reversing the corrupt acts of your brother, you’re taking Grayhurst into the future. With research and innovation. Healing and heart.”
Pride and love and admiration filled her fiery eyes. “From the grassroots efforts of communities to the incomparably unique mind of a single gifted individual—you listen. And you challenge. And like you’ve always done for me…you believe.”
Jackson fought back the overwhelming desire to yank her into a kiss, to taste those heartfelt words on her lips. To just hold her, dammit. He gave her a small, rusty laugh instead. “I should hire you to handle my PR—you make me sound like an effing saint.”
Her incredulous hiccupped laughter at the idea was music to his ears. Christ, he’d missed that sound. For one brief moment, he just stood there and drank it in, like water in the desert.
“Being your PR agent would be the worst lateral move ever for me.” Chuckling, she met and held his gaze. “And you don’t need it. Soon, everyone will see what I see. Know what I know. I believe in you, Jackson. You’re destined to do great things.”
“I won’t have you giving up your dreams, Leila. You’re already doing great things, and destined to do even more.”
“Damn straight.” A near visible pride straightened her spine and charged the air all around her. “I’m going to find new dreams, Jackson. Dreams that will make me happy. But just as important, I’m choosing the well-lived life to go along with those dreams. My job at the network wasn’t making me happy anymore.”
She shrugged lightly, her voice growing sentimental. “For me, it was always about the football, about helping folks see football through my eyes and having the sport make their days a little bit brighter the way it always did mine. Over the past six weeks, it all stopped being about football. So I quit.” With a thoughtful head tilt, she added, “I don’t need the network for me to have football in my life in a meaningful way. In fact, a few coaches have approached me about the algorithm I created for my locks-and-picks site and asked if I’d be interested in doing some drafting and even game consulting. Can you believe that? Me, an NFL team consultant.”
He absolutely could. “Any team would be lucky to have you,” he said with feeling.
“I’m considering it, along with some other things I would never have even dreamed possible in my life before. Bottom line, I’m fighting to be happy again, Jackson. Your half-brother chose to let unforeseen circumstances and bitterness eat away at his life. He let ambition override happiness. That’s not going to be me. I won’t let it be me.”
He just stared at her for a moment, seeing the peace in her eyes dousing the pain. “You’re choosing life.”
She nodded with a strong, thoughtful smile. “I am. I’m choosing to believe that the new dreams worthy of that life I want to lead are out there for me to find. And that’s all because of you, Jackson. You taught me how to believe big.”
—
Leila watched his eyes soften…a moment before they dropped down to her chest with a frown, which was instantly replaced by shaken, horrified rage.
Looking down to see what he was staring at, she winced at the sight of the still healing scars on her chest.
“I’ve never considered myself a hostile man before,” he spoke quietly as his pained gaze slid back up to meet hers. “But every time I think about what you’ve been through, some days, it’s all I can do to keep myself from seeking vengeance…independent from justice, uncaring of consequences. Pure, unrestrained violence for every ounce of pain you suffered.”
Jaw clenched, voice raw, he asked softly, “How is it that you don’t seem to hate me as much as I hate myself right now?”
Chapter 35
Leila stared at him in shock, momentarily too stunned to reply.
Broken, tortured eyes met hers in endless apology. “I’m so sorry, sweetheart. I am so sorry I let this happen. I don’t blame you if you hate me.”
“Jackson, how can you possibly think I could ever hate you?”
His tortured gaze pointedly touched on her scars once more.
“They don’t hurt much anymore,” she reassured him quickly as she cinched her robe tighter.
His anger was almost palpable, his remorse practically pouring out of him in waves. “I hate that this happened to you, Leila. And I will never forgive myself for not shielding you from it all. I knew better. This is my family legacy. How absolutely arrogant of me to believe that I’d be able to avoid the inevitable…that somehow you and I would be able to have it all. Simply because I wanted it more than I’ve ever wanted anything else in my life.”
The emotion vibrating in his words hit a corresponding chord in her chest. “You can’t possibly blame yourself for this. Any of it. There was no way you could’ve known, nothing you could’ve done.”
With a bitter laugh, he said simply, “That’s not true. Hell, you don’t even need to be a weatherman to predict the kind of shit storms that follow my family. Nate used you in a chess game. Your dream career, the dream home you were hoping to buy, and very nearly your life. The man used you as a human shield, Leila. He screwed with your life to get what he wants. He’s just like the r
est of them.”
“Who’re you talking about, Jackson?” She watched the dark clouds forming all around him. Saw his fists clench in anger, his jaw grit in frustration.
“Them—the people who want to steal the Grayhurst fortune and claim the fame we’ve never wanted. The ones who have hated us for having more money than most people will ever see in multiple lifetimes. The ones who have made it their mission to make every person in my family—from my great-grandparents down to my parents—pay for always trying to do good with our fortune, rather than simply sit back and make more.” He blew out a ragged breath. “My own half-brother is a prime example. In the short decade under Nate’s reign, Grayhurst Industries became known for choosing income over integrity, power over people. Nate had always been one of them; hell, he was born to one of them. That’s the only reason he was able to accomplish what so many before him tried only semi-successfully…because his mother went further than any of them had dared to.”
Jackson’s eyes shut in pain. “By killing my mother.”
Stunned, Leila tried to remember everything Jackson had told her about his mother. It wasn’t much, from what she could recall. He’d told her his mother had passed away in her sleep, and she hadn’t pried any further. She didn’t know how to even begin asking now.
“My mother died of a sleeping pill overdose when I was in high school. All evidence suggested it was suicide, but my father and I never believed that for a second. She was happy. And not just that, but she’d thought she was pregnant at the time. We found the pregnancy test after her death, but the autopsy showed it was a false positive.” He shook his head angrily. “But they didn’t know that. They killed a pregnant woman, Leila, and the unborn baby they thought she’d been carrying at the time.”
“Who’s ‘they,’ Jackson?” Leila rephrased her earlier question, feeling like she was missing a giant, and frankly frightening, piece of the puzzle. “Were they caught?”
“We caught them, yes. But there was no justice found for their actions.” He paused and fresh anger laced his voice. “Our private investigators discovered everything pointed back to Nate’s mother. But it wasn’t enough to put her away. She’d covered her tracks well.”
Leila reached for him. “I’m so sorry, Jackson. Was it jealousy or revenge? Is that how everything with Nate got started?”
With a bitter laugh and a sigh, he unraveled more of his past for her. “That’s the thing. If either of them had done the things they have out of vengeance, it would at least make sense. But where ‘they’ are concerned, it’s never that rational. It always comes down to money. Ridiculously. Unthinkably. It’s just always about the money.”
He gazed at her as if she were on the other side of a glass bubble she couldn’t penetrate. And damn it, she hated that. “Is this some sort of family feud, then? Is that who ‘they’ are? Help me comprehend this better, Jackson. I want to understand.”
“No, it’s not a family feud. ‘They’ are never connected to each other like that. They’d be easy for us to spot if they were. For me, it was Nate. For my parents, it was my father’s ex-wife. For my grandfather, it was his best friend. And for my great-grandmother, sadly, it was her own husband. The only thing ‘they’ all have in common is that the money was all that mattered. The money was why each of them betrayed us and took what we loved most as leverage in their sick chess games.” Haunted eyes stared into the darkest shadows in her apartment. “It would at least make sense if Nate did this out of revenge for his mother. But he didn’t. Since we didn’t have enough evidence for a case against her, she actually went on to live a pretty long, wealthy life. There was nothing to avenge. Nope, Nate did it for the same reason his mother killed my mother. For more money. Always for money. Only for money.”
Leila just stared at him, speechless, unable to wrap her brain around how anyone could do all this for money alone.
And he smiled at that. “You look the way I felt growing up hearing all these stories. And that’s exactly why I’ve always known that you were never in cahoots with Nate. Regardless of what Caleb or any of the private investigators found. To you, money is an absolutely stupid reason to do any of this. To me as well. But not to ‘them.’ ”
She nodded, finally understanding who “they” were. “They aren’t like us.”
“No.” Eyes on her now covered scars, he shook his head sadly. “Money is all they care about. And they set out to destroy Grayhursts to get it.” His hand rested gently on her chest. “So yes, this is all my fault. You got hurt because I fell in love with you.”
Hearing the words aloud were bittersweet. Even as her heart expanded in her chest in response, it also felt torn in half over the pain in his eyes. “Jackson. I’m fine. They didn’t win this time. I’m alive. Just a little banged up.”
He continued on almost as if he couldn’t hear her. “I never should have brought you into this world of mine. It was selfish of me. Gullible of me. It’s just…you’re so strong. I thought we’d be strong enough together.”
“Who’s to say we aren’t, Jackson?”
“This.” He parted her robe gently and traced his finger along the jagged scar. “The really twisted part is how Nate infected the shooter as well, by turning him and getting him to lie to the press about you. For money. It’s like a friggin’ plague.”
“But it was money for his family,” Leila reasoned. “That’s different.” Wasn’t it?
“Is it?” he asked in stereo with her thoughts. “Do you think his family would want that money, knowing what he did to get it? Between an admittedly tougher life of getting by to a lavish life paid by unclean hands, do you think they’d have asked him to do that for them?”
No, probably not.
“What about you, sunshine? If it were you, would you ruin an innocent person’s life and take blood money? For your family?”
The answer didn’t come as quickly as she expected. And she wondered what that said about her.
He gave her a small, fierce frown. “You’re not like Nate, so don’t even dare think it. You’re a thousand percent different. That line you’re looking at and thinking about right now? The one you can’t bring yourself to cross? That’s what makes you different. Not everyone sees that line. Of course it’s a hard decision. Of course you’re going to consider it if the stakes are as high as it is when those you love are involved.”
Eyes running over her face as if he were memorizing her features, he asked her simply, “Tell me the truth, would you cross that line? Would money obtained in the wrong way stop feeling wrong to you if it was for the right reasons?”
“No,” she replied finally. “No, I wouldn’t be able to take it. I wouldn’t be able to cross that line, and I wouldn’t want to bring my family over that line with me.”
“Exactly. When a person crosses that line, that’s when it stops being just about their family, or their ambition, or any number of initial reasons where it might’ve started. And if that line keeps getting crossed, that’s when it becomes all about the money, and when the person becomes one of ‘them.’ Not surprisingly, when the dollar amount becomes as high as what’s in the Grayhurst bank accounts, ‘they’ are everywhere.” He exhaled a harsh breath. “Which means you’d constantly be in danger…regardless of how strong we are.”
Cupping her cheek gently, he whispered softly. “I am so sorry for the mess I’ve made of your life, sweetheart. But selfishly, I’m not sorry for having had you in my life…even though I wasn’t able to keep you.”
Dammit, the universe really sucked sometimes.
“I’m not sorry either, Jackson.” Covering his hand with her own, she added, “I get it now. Why you never thought you could offer a woman more than sex. Why you don’t already have that white picket fence future you’ve always wanted.”
How awful to live in fear that “they” would try to take the people he loved away from him.
There was no way she could ask him to live like that…even for her.
As if he could hear
her thoughts, he stared down at her, eyes bleak with sadness.
His pain was a fresh arrow in her heart. “I meant what I said, Jackson; I don’t regret having had you in my life.”
He studied her for a beat before asking the question she’d also been pondering for the past few weeks. “So where do we go from here?”
“In the same directions our lives were always meant to. You’ll continue to do amazing things with your billions, and I’ll find the right dreams for my life.”
“You go one way, and I go another?”
She flinched, hating the idea of that. But she replied the only way she could, “Yes.”
“What if I go with you, sunshine?” The gruff question landed between them, between their two divergent life paths like a complicated, unpredictable bomb. “What if I gave it all up and let someone else run Grayhurst Industries? What if I let the Grayhurst legacy play out for me like it did for all my relatives? They all eventually gave up their control of the company, did I mention that part? It wasn’t just my father. After seeing the person they loved most in the world either hurt them or get hurt, they all gave it up and ran as far and fast as they could.”
His eyes locked on hers. “If it meant being able to spend the rest of my life with you, I’d give it all up in a heartbeat.”
She closed her eyes so he wouldn’t see in its depths how desperately she wanted to say yes. “I can’t let you do that, Jackson. Not for me. You need to show ‘them’ how you’ll rise above this. That’s how you’ll kill this horrible legacy you’ve feared your whole life. By not giving up. By continuing to run Grayhurst Industries in the way you envision, the way you know will honor your relatives, and build the foundation for a new legacy of greatness.”
“It’s just a company.”
“We both know that’s not true. It may have been just a company before you became CEO. But now…it’s changing lives. You’re changing lives. I know you, Jackson. I know you want to keep being a part of that.”
He slid her robe open an inch, and traced the long, puckered scar slashed across her chest with a gentle finger. “Does it really not hurt anymore?”
