by Lucy Score
It was Margeaux—that nasty asshole—laying across the leather of a limo bench seat. Her head was in a man’s lap. He was wearing a gray suit, just like Aiden’s in the pictures. She was toying with his tie, stroking his thigh. “Heading to the Manchester for some afternoon delight,” she purred. Frankie wanted to break her laptop, snap it in half, set it on fire. Anything to get the image of Margeaux and Aiden out of her head. A hand in the video swooped down to stroke over Margeaux’s jaw.
Frankie frowned and hit pause. She backed up the video and watched it again. The hand was wrong. So was the watch. Aiden wore a Patek Philippe watch that cost more than her parents’ house when they bought it forty years ago. A sentimental and flashy gift from his father upon joining the company. The man in the video wore Cartier.
Son of a bitch.
She scrolled back to the pictures. The first one on the sidewalk. It was shot as if to highlight Margeaux’s face as she looked up at Aiden. His face was angled away. It was definitely him, but there was something about the photo. It wasn’t the blurry shot of a tourist or a rushed frame from a paparazzi. It looked crisp, clear, professional. Staged?
Frankie rubbed her temples. Her phone vibrated again on the table in front of her. It was Gio.
“What?” she answered.
“Dude, I don’t know what’s going on, but Aide’s about five seconds from tearing Brooklyn apart brick by brick looking for you.”
“You see the news?” she asked.
“Yeah, I saw it,” Gio said, sounding more annoyed than furious.
“Front row at a Knicks game’s enough to buy your loyalty?” Frankie asked.
“Jesus, Frankie. The dude in the video had a manicure. It ain’t Aiden. The guy is losing his shit, sis. I know you’re gonna hate me for this, but I think someone set him up.”
She’d already come to the same conclusion, but that didn’t explain the other pictures. The embrace, the kiss. And there was that whole other thing about destroying the happiness of her best friend in the world.
“I’m not ready to talk to him yet,” Frankie said.
“Can I at least tell him you’re okay?”
“Fine. Whatever. Look, I gotta go.”
“Are you okay?” Gio asked.
For the first time, she felt tears prick at her eyes.
“Not really,” she said, her voice breaking.
Gio swore. “Listen. You know I have your back, right? No matter what.”
“Yeah. I know,” she said, finding a sliver of comfort in that. Family first.
She hung up and dialed the only person who would tell her the truth.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Aiden kicked open the door of his penthouse and strode inside. The desk had called to tell him that Ms. Baranski was waiting for him. He saw her, sitting on the leather sofa, a bag packed on the floor, two glasses of scotch in front of her. Relief, fast and fierce, coursed through him.
“Franchesca,” he whispered her name.
She turned to him but didn’t look him in the eye, and Aiden’s stomach sank. He reached for her, but the chill she gave off stopped him.
“Tell me you don’t believe it,” he said quietly. He needed her to know him, to trust him. The idea that she could ever think that he’d—
“Some of the pictures are real,” she said flatly.
He nodded. “Yes. I ran into her after my meeting this week. She bumped into me and acted as if she was crying. Said she had some kind of fight with her boyfriend.”
“You gave her a ride,” Frankie filled in.
“Yes. Just a ride.” He reached for her again, but she leaned forward and picked up a glass and handed it to him.
He closed his fingers around the cold of the crystal and wished it was her skin. If he could just touch her, everything would be all right. They couldn’t lie to each other when they were touching.
“I believe you,” she said simply, and the ball in Aiden’s gut dissolved. He dropped to his knees in front of her dumping the scotch on the rug to run his hands up the outside of her thighs.
“I’m so sorry. I don’t know why Margeaux would have done something like that. Attention or—”
“Revenge,” Frankie filled in. “Did you know she was involved with Elliot?”
Aiden’s spine stiffened. The alcohol soaked into the knees of his trousers. Elliot. It wasn’t Margeaux and the fake scandal. It was Elliot and what he’d told her.
“I didn’t know,” he began, waiting for her to determine his fate.
“I’m not going to do this anymore, Aiden.” Her voice was so calm, so flat.
“Franchesca, you can’t leave.” She couldn’t. It was physically impossible for her to leave. She had possession of his heart. If she walked out, she’d leave with it.
She shook her head, and when she met his gaze, he saw the temper in her eyes. “Don’t ‘you can’t’ me. I’m sick of being in a fucking circus.”
She rose, and he grabbed onto her hips, his forehead landing on her stomach. “Franchesca.”
She pulled him to his feet. “Look at me, Aiden,” she ordered.
He did as he was told and cupped her face in his hands. She closed her eyes for a moment. And when she opened them, he knew he’d lost her.
“I want you to understand I know you didn’t have an affair with Margeaux. I know that you wouldn’t have done that to me.”
“Then why…” he trailed off. He knew why. He just wanted her to say the words that he deserved to hear.
“I want to hear you say it.” Her words echoed his own thoughts. “I want you to tell me.”
Aiden clenched his jaw. He felt powerless. Was this karma for all his years of manipulation, living for the pursuit of success at all costs? He could have had it all, and now he’d be left with everything he had before. Ironically, it added up to the equivalent of nothing without Franchesca.
“I was afraid she wasn’t right for him. She seemed so young, so immature. He was my first real friend, and I was looking out for him. At the time, I didn’t think she was the right partner for him.”
Frankie flinched at his words, and he felt her pain like it was his own wound.
“Go on,” she said flatly.
“He had just graduated and was talking about getting engaged. I thought… I thought it was a mistake. I didn’t realize how strong her feelings were for him. I’d only met Pruitt a handful of times. I thought I was doing him a favor.”
“Do you know how devastated she was?” Frankie asked, her voice low and strained.
“I had no idea until you mentioned it at the wedding. When they found their way back together again, they seemed so much better suited. She was steadier, more mature. She was good for him. I thought the time apart had been warranted.”
“She didn’t eat, Aiden. She couldn’t get out of bed. She should have been hospitalized, but instead her parents pumped her full of anti-anxiety meds and put a full-time nurse on her. She thought she’d met the one. Thought her future was just starting, and then you took it away from her because she wasn’t good enough.”
Her voice rose sharply.
“Franchesca, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I never meant to cause any harm. I was looking out for a friend and had I known how deeply Pruitt felt for him I never would have said anything.”
“If she wasn’t good enough, then what am I, Aiden? If Pruitt ‘Blueblood’ Stockton isn’t good enough, why did you waste so much time slumming it with me?”
He gripped her arms. “You are everything to me, Franchesca. Everything I didn’t know I was missing. Everything that I can’t live without now. I love you.”
He saw them, bright in her eyes. Shock and horror. “What did you just say?” There was nothing flat and dull about her tone now.
“I said I fucking love you.”
“You do not get to manipulate me with that word! You don’t get to pull it out and throw it down when you’re in fucking trouble for hurting pe
ople that I love. You don’t get to use love as a tool to get you what you want.”
The panic was clawing its way up his throat. “It’s the truth, Franchesca. Damn it. I’m no good at this. I’ve never told anyone who wasn’t my mother that I—”
“Stop talking, Aiden! Christ. I’m a regular person. Regular people don’t have photographers following them around or rich assholes trying to destroy their relationships. Regular people don’t use love as a weapon.”
“What do you want me to do? Tell me, and I’ll do it,” Aiden demanded.
“I want you to let me go,” Franchesca shouted.
“No!” He would do anything for her. Just not that.
“You don’t get to decide to keep us together. You hurt my friends. You hurt me. And you didn’t tell me yourself. I had to hear it from your creepy brother who was waiting to pounce outside my office. Everywhere I go, there’s a Kilbourn telling me I’m not good enough.”
“Elliot is my problem. I’ll handle him.”
“He cooked this up. He and Margeaux. I’d bet your big fat checking account on it. Pru and I saw them when we were out to lunch. I thought they were dating, but they were plotting.”
“Elliot wants me to buy him out of the company. He said he’d tell you about Pru and Chip if I didn’t close the deal.”
“So why didn’t you?” Frankie demanded.
“I thought he was bluffing.”
“Wrong fucking answer, Kilbourn!”
“It’s the truth!” Aiden roared.
“I know it’s the truth! That’s the problem! I can’t deal with this, Aiden. I don’t want to spend my life being outmaneuvered or lied to or constantly threatened or used because of your last name. I want a partnership. That’s not what we have.”
She made a move toward her duffle bag, and he stopped her, grabbing her arm.
“We can have it. I swear to you, Franchesca.”
“You said you’d give me everything I wanted,” she said, looking at him accusingly.
“Anything and everything.”
“But you couldn’t even be honest with me. Tell me, when Elliot came to you with what he knew, did it even occur to you to come clean? To tell me? To take your lumps and hope for the best?”
Had he considered it? Or had he just decided to handle it?
“Everything is a power play to you,” she said quietly. “And I’m done being played.”
She tried to free herself from his grip, but he just held on tighter.
“You’re hurting me.”
“You’re hurting me, Franchesca. Let’s talk about this. Let me fix this!” If she walked out that door, he knew she’d never be back. It was like holding back the tide, but he’d be damned if he didn’t at least try.
“I’m not lying when I say I love you. I really felt it and knew what it was at my mother’s house. I looked at you in the audience, and you’re all I saw. You’re all I want to see every day for the rest of my life. Please don’t let this break us, Franchesca.”
“You’ve known you loved me for how many weeks now, and you didn’t think to tell me? Like an ace up your sleeve? Your get out of jail free card? Do you see how fucked up that is? Do you think that’s what I deserve?”
“No, of course not. I’ve never been in love before, Franchesca. So excuse me if I don’t know how to process it. It took a battle just to get you to date me. I didn’t know what it would be like to say those words to you and hear nothing but silence in return. I wasn’t ready.”
“Who said there would have been silence, you idiot?” Temper and tears glistened in her eyes. “Who said you were the only one who felt those feelings?”
He gripped her arms. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying I loved you, too. You ass!”
Loved? How could it be past tense just like that?
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you’re Aiden Kilbourn, permanent bachelor and womanizer. You’re married to your work. And I didn’t know how to say it. I wasn’t saving it up to tip the scales at the right moment. I just didn’t know how to tell you without breaking my own heart.”
“Franchesca, we can make this work. We love each other.”
“It’s not enough.”
“It has to be.”
She shook her head and pulled free from his grip and held up her hands when he stepped forward. “Look at me. Understand me. I don’t want to be here and I don’t want you to come with me.”
“Why can’t we talk this out? Why can’t you let me fix this?”
“Because a team fixes things together, Aiden. And we’re not a team, and we’re not together.”
He took a step back as if she’d landed a physical blow. This couldn’t be the end of it. But she was picking up her bag and moving to the door. She paused, her hand on the knob.
“Don’t talk to me. Don’t come see me. Don’t call me.”
God she meant it. He’d never seen her so serious, so hurt. And he’d done that.
“And one more thing. Elliot’s trying to ruin you, Aiden. Be careful there.”
She left, closing the door behind her with a quiet click. And all the light went out of his world.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Back in her apartment, in the bed they had shared, she finally let the tears come. Hot and salty, they scorched paths down her cheeks and soaked the pillow beneath her. His pillow. She’d known, hadn’t she, that this was how it would end? She’d taken precautions, but in the end, nothing could have guarded her heart from Aiden.
He’d looked so brokenly at her as she left. She felt his pain echo inside her. They were both to blame. She for falling for him and him for disappointing her. He would always be looking for a way to win. It was in his blood.
Frankie rolled over, clutching the pillow to her chest and cried until she slept.
The dull gray winter morning did little to coax her out of bed. She’d seen Pru in the depths of despair over Chip and had promised herself she’d never let a man wreck her like that. And here she was aching on the inside, eyes puffy from so many tears shed.
She couldn’t today. She couldn’t go out into the world, not with news of Aiden and Margeaux smugly splattered on every blog and news site in the city. Not with the truth of her loneliness.
She texted Brenda and sent her apologies saying she wasn’t feeling well and couldn’t come in today.
Great. Not even the threat of loss of income could tempt her out of bed. She was officially a broken woman. She didn’t even want food. She just wanted to be left alone.
As if the universe heard that thought, there was a loud pounding on her door. Frankie’s heart raced at the thought that it might be Aiden who magically found the right words to stop her hurt. She pulled a pillow over her head and pretended the world didn’t exist.
Unfortunately, the world had a key to her apartment. Two big bodies hit her mattress, jostling her under the covers.
“Go away.”
Her pillow, the one that smelled like Aiden’s shampoo—oh God, his thousand-million-dollar shampoo was still in her shower—was ripped from her face.
Her brother Marco smiled down at her. “There she is,” he said cheerfully.
“Get. Out.”
“It’s either us or Ma, and she’s curled up in the fetal position crying about all those beautiful Kilbourn babies she’ll never get to hold,” Gio announced from the foot of her bed.
Frankie did the last thing her brothers expected her to do. She burst into tears. In all her adult years, she had never once cried in their presence. Not even that time when one of their buffoon cousins broke her arm playing flag football on Thanksgiving.
“Oh, shit,” Marco whispered.
“What do we do?” Gio demanded.
“I can still hear you, idiots,” Frankie sobbed, ripping the pillow out of Marco’s hand and holding it over her head.
“She trying to suffocate herself?”<
br />
“I’m callin’ Rach. She’ll know what to do.”
“You’re not calling anyone! I’m fine!” Frankie wailed. If she was going to humiliate herself, she was going to commit to it. At least it would teach her brothers to never enter her apartment without an express invitation again.
Not that they’d be interrupting anything. New life plan: She was going to age badly and rescue a bunch of cats that would one day eat her in her sleep.
Frankie heard Marco on the phone in her living room through the paper-thin walls. “I never saw her like this before,” he was saying.
“What can we do, Frankie?” Gio was asking. “You want us to go beat the shit out of him?”
She sat upright. “No, I don’t want you to beat the shit out of him!”
He frowned. “You want us to beat the shit out of her?”
“Maybe.” She shook her head. “No, I don’t want anyone beating the shit out of anyone. It wasn’t true. He was set up, but we’re still broken up. Okay?”
“I’m confused.”
She flopped back down on the bed and held the pillow over her face.
Marco came back in the room. “Rach gave me a really specific list. I’m gonna go get the stuff. You stay here. And don’t let her look out the window.”
“Why?” Frankie asked, sitting up again.
“Shit. I thought you couldn’t hear me through the pillow.”
“What’s outside my window?” Frankie scrambled over the mattress, and Gio made a dive for her, but she dodged him. She pressed her face to the dingy glass. “You’ve gotta be kidding me.”
“Fuckin’ paparazzi,” Gio sighed.
“Why are there cameramen outside my building?”
“I guess you didn’t see the news today.”
“What the hell could have possibly happened?”
“Aiden filed a lawsuit against that Mar-goat chick and every blog and news site that printed the story. Most of them already printed retractions.”
“How is this my life?” she murmured to herself.
