“John, why don’t we show Olivia the stream up ahead?” He points to a stream I can vaguely make out in the distance, changing the subject. On cue, John jumps up, dusting off his knees and leading the way. “I’ll bet you can catch some tadpoles in there this time.”
To my surprise, AJ maintains a slow, steady pace behind him. I follow suit, keeping a close eye on John. When he’s far enough away, AJ lowers his voice.
“I don’t know what you think you know, but you can’t just say stuff like that.”
I’m caught off guard. “I don’t know what you mean—”
“Yes, you do,” he whispers firmly. “The Lockes aren’t people to screw with, Olivia. I don’t know what your game is, but…they’re dangerous, and messing with them, with their lives, is dangerous.”
I swallow as a shiver of panic runs through me. “What do you mean they’re dangerous?”
“I mean they’re the type of people that if you do the wrong thing, if you threaten them, they have the power to…take care of the problem.” The line of his mouth tightens a fraction more.
“Why are you telling me this?”
“Because…I think you’re a nice girl. John cares about you. I don’t want to see you get in over your head.”
I feel my skin color at his words. Up ahead, John has reached the stream and is bent down beside it, kneeling over the water in an attempt to catch whatever might be swimming underneath its cool, clear surface. “If they’re so dangerous, why are you still here?”
There’s almost an imperceptible note of pleading in his face. “I stay to protect him,” he says, tilting his chin forward toward John. “Because he does…he does look like me.”
I swallow down the confession he’s just given, too surprised to do more than nod.
These people are dangerous, but, now, so am I.
Secrets are the most powerful weapon available.
Chapter Twenty
Iris
My husband’s face is twisted with concern, a look I know all too well. I’m staring at him through the glass, watching as his lips move, talking to someone on the phone as his exasperation grows.
Finally, having had enough, I stand, strolling from my office and into the assistant’s office where Elena sits temporarily. “Who is Mr. Locke on the phone with?”
I startle her, and she jerks forward, knocking over the bottled Atkins shake on her desk.
“Oh! Oh no!”
She catches it before too much spills, standing up and attempting to blot it with tissues from the blue box beside her computer screen.
I roll my eyes, growing impatient as I fold my arms across my chest. She’s clumsy and unorganized, and it makes me miss Tom even more. Just the thought of him has me filled with longing and regret, a lethal combination. Once the majority of her mess is cleaned up, she sits down, tucking a piece of bushy black hair behind her ears and adjusting her glasses. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Locke. What did you say?”
I eye the sticky, smeared streaks that remain on her desk. If she doesn’t get them cleaned up, we’ll have ants. “I said who is Mr. Locke on the phone with?”
“I’m sorry, I—uh—” She flips through the notes on her desk, dropping some onto the floor.
“Forget it,” I manage to say through gritted teeth. “Just…please just clean this mess up, Elena.”
“Yes, yes, ma’am.” The new assistant Orrick hired last week will start next Monday, and I am counting down the days. I storm across the hall, my heels clicking on the floor and alerting him that I’m coming. He looks up just as I open the door. Without a word, I march to his desk and press the speakerphone button.
He drops the handset, his mouth set in annoyance as a familiar voice fills the line.
“The boy was nice, Orrick, that’s not what I’m saying. I just think he may have been snooping, that’s all. He was in my bedroom—” Ms. Edmonson. A longtime customer who, since her husband’s passing last year, has been calling with issues about once a week. Orrick takes her calls as a courtesy, but it’s time she’s passed onto our service team on the second floor.
“Where you asked us to install cameras, Ms. Edmonson. Justin was just doing his job. If you’d rather us not install the cameras in your bedroom, we can adjust the order, but when you originally placed it, you stated that you believed people were breaking into your bedroom when you were away. Would you like me to change the order?”
“No, I’d like you to fire him. He needs to be fired, Orrick. I specifically told him to stay out of my bedroom.” It irritates me that he allows her to call him by his first name, something I should’ve put an end to long ago.
“I can’t fire someone for doing their job, Ms. Edmonson. I’ll get your order updated and let Justin know he’s not supposed to go into your bedroom. Will that be okay?”
“Well, if you do that, how will I know if anyone’s trying to break in?” she squawks.
Orrick pounds his head into his palm. “What exactly would you like me to do, then? I’m a little confused.”
“I guess I’m just going to have to switch companies,” she says, and I see a glint of hope. Then, “But it’s just a shame because Melvin was so loyal to Locke Industries. He was one of your biggest donors when you were starting up, and he just raved about your father.” She’s waiting…
I click the mute button, and Orrick looks up at me. “Tell her Justin’s going to be fired, then send a woman to do the installation. Someone young. Someone who’ll listen to her babble without complaint.”
“I can’t fire Justin for following exactly what the order said,” he says, his brows drawing together in an agonized expression. “I’m not even sure if he realizes she’s calling to complain.”
“So don’t fire him. Tell her you will and put a note on her account that he can’t ever go out to do updates or make phone calls to her. As far as she’s concerned, he’s gone. As far as he’s concerned, we handled it. Neither have to know the details.”
“I mean, he’d roll over in his grave if he knew I was even thinking about leaving. I know your father would’ve made this right, Orrick.” She’s still droning on and on over the line.
I press the button to unmute it and point to the speaker. Orrick leans in. “Okay, Ms. Edmonson, I’ll see to it that Justin is fired, and we’ll get another tech out there to finish up the installation. Will that work?”
“Yes, I think that’ll be great.” She sniffs.
“Okay, have a nice day, Ms. Edmonson.”
“Well, I should—” I lift the receiver and slam it down. Normally, I’d never be so careless with our service, but we both know she isn’t going anywhere, and she’ll be calling again next week with a new issue.
“I had it handled,” Orrick says, and an angry muscle tenses in his jaw.
“Yeah, it looked like it.” I shake my hair away from my shoulders. “When are you going to learn to tell her like it is and move on? I’m so sick of cleaning up your messes, Orrick.” My blood pressure is rising, the anger of it roaring in my ears.
“My messes?” He stiffens at the statement, standing from his seat. “What the hell are you talking about? All we ever do is clean up your messes, Iris.” His mouth thins with displeasure.
I lift my chin, meeting his icy gaze straight on. “What about the bug in your office? That certainly wasn’t my mess. Why was Olivia in there, anyway?”
“Olivia had nothing to do with the bug. It was Cathrine.” His voice is filled with contempt.
“And you know that how, exactly? Have you talked to Cathrine about it? Has she confessed?” I still don’t understand the issues between my husband and his cousin completely, but Cathrine has no reason to bug his office. If she wanted to catch him doing something scandalous, it would make more sense to do it here than at home.
“She’s not going to confess,” he says. “She’s a lot of things, but she’s not stupid.”
“What about Olivia, then? You still haven’t answered why she was there.” My lips curl in a defiant s
mile because I believe we both know why she was there. After all these years, all my affairs while my husband played the perfect gentleman, he’s finally fallen for someone. Why she was in his office, I still don’t know, but the pink of his cheeks tells me I’m right about that. I no longer feel the sting of jealousy I once felt at the idea of it, instead I feel white-hot rage.
He flexes his fingers before drawing them into fists. “I’d asked her to find me a folder from the office. I was running late, I’d just left the house when I realized I’d forgotten it back at home, and I didn’t have time to go through everything. I asked if she would find it for me to save time.”
“What folder?” My vision narrows.
“One about Tom, for the police.” His response is tight-lipped, and he doesn’t meet my eye.
“And you think it’s smart to have Olivia involved in anything to do with that investigation?” I rest my hand on his desk, bending over to get him to look at me.
“She has no idea what’s going on. She was just trying to help.”
“Was she, Orrick? Or were you helping yourself?” Bitter rage settles in my veins.
His back straightens, eyes darkening. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
“After all this time, it’s normal for you to have a little…crush. Olivia’s a very pretty girl, but you know you can’t have an affair with our nanny, just the same as I couldn’t have an affair with Tom.”
His lips draw inward as he nods sarcastically. “Tom and Olivia aren’t the same.”
“Why aren’t they? They’re both members of our staff, both people we’re trusting with our business and our families.” How can he not see this? They’re exactly the same.
“Because Tom was like a son to me!” he screams, pounding a fist on the desk as he stands. “They are not the same.” He throws the words at me like stones.
The hair on my arms stands on end. “So, what are you saying? Are you admitting to having an affair with her?”
He swipes a hand across his jaw. “Do you care, Iris? Honestly?” His brows raise with uncertainty, creating a deep, unflattering wrinkle in his forehead.
“Of course I care, Orrick. I care about what happens to you, I care about what happens to our son, and I care about what happens to this company.”
“But only where my indiscretions are involved, right?” A sudden, thin chill hangs on the edge of his words.
The challenge of his tone doesn't sit well with me. I lean even closer, my eyes narrowing. “You can have your little fun all you want, but with someone who’s not Olivia.”
“Did you ever end your affair with Tom?” he asks, and I can tell by the defiant way his jaw is set that he knows the answer.
“What are you talking about? Of course I did.”
His smile is sarcastic and hardened all at once. “Right.”
“This isn’t about me, Orrick, it’s about our family.” My chest tightens, and I’m filled with worry. What does he know? What does he think he knows? I’m not used to losing the upper hand.
“I need to get back to work, Iris. I don’t have time for this.” He picks up the handset on his desk, his eyes darting from me to the door as he waits for me to leave.
I stroll across his floor with haste. When my hands touch the glass, I look back at him, my lips thinning with anger, a promise in my words. “Oh, and Orrick?” He looks up, the phone still in his hand. “If I find out you laid a finger on her, I’ll make sure to do to her what you did to Tom.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Iris
ONE YEAR AND NINE MONTHS AGO
“It’s not your decision to make,” I whisper angrily, staring across the car where AJ sits, the veins in his neck prominent.
“No, you’ll give him my name, but won’t listen to any of the advice I give you,” he argues. He won’t look at me. “He’s my son, too, Iris.”
“I gave him your name because I respect you enough to do that, AJ, but you knew the moment I got pregnant with him everything we had was over. It had to be.”
“It didn’t have to be, you chose for it to be.” A glazed look of despair spreads over his face, but he’s wrong. There was never a choice. The money was all Orrick’s. If I chose to walk away, he would’ve used his money, his power, to ruin me. He would’ve taken our child from the both of us.
“No, there was no choice for me. If Orrick ever found out it was you I’d been sneaking around with all those years, that the people he fired were just people I named to cover for what we were doing, I don’t know what he’d do to us.”
“That’s the point, Iris. You don’t know, yet you aren’t willing to find out. Is it money? Is that why? Do you think I can’t take care of you? Or do you think I can’t protect you from him?”
“It was never about the money, and you know it,” I lie. The question stings.
“I don’t know it. I love you, Iris. I’ve loved you for years now, and I’ve sat quietly while you remain married to a man who doesn’t love you the way you should be loved. A man who…who doesn’t look at you, doesn’t touch you. And I’ve done it. I’ve done it because that’s what you asked me to do. Then, you got pregnant and broke it off, what I wanted be damned, and now you’re putting him in private school but you refuse to consider Catholic school when you know how important that is to me. And, again, I’m supposed to sit back and let you do whatever you want with my child.”
I ball my hands into fists to control the rage I feel growing. “He is my child. Mine. He may be yours by blood, Alcott, but he was never yours to control. He is not Catholic. He will be brought up by my standards. I broke it off with you because I wanted him to have a stable home life. Security. A life I couldn’t dream of having as a child. I wanted him to have two parents who love him—”
“But not ones who love each other.”
I stiffen, momentarily abashed. The way he looks at me when he speaks of Orrick is deflating. “As far as John is concerned, everything is fine at home.”
“And you’re okay with that? Honestly? That’s what matters to you? Image?”
“How dare you? How dare you do this to me? How dare you challenge the decisions I’ve made when you yourself said you weren’t ready to be a father?”
His features contort with shock and anger. “Don’t twist my words, Iris. Was I ready when you got pregnant? Not exactly. Would I have stepped up and raised him with you? Abso-fucking-lutely I would’ve, and you know it. I would’ve married you in a secon—”
I shove my finger into my chest, bristling with indignation. “I was—I am—already married. Don’t you see that? I didn’t want someone to step up and marry me, step up and raise my child, when I had someone already in that position. Orrick may be a lot of things, but he’s never once failed me. He’s there and, with a child, that’s what matters most. Not feelings, not even love, but sticking around when it counts. Orrick doesn’t falter in that category.”
“You and Orrick haven’t slept together in years, hadn’t in years before you got pregnant, you said so yourself. You can’t tell me he doesn’t suspect John isn’t his.” My face heats up at his words because he doesn’t know we were together the night I found out I was pregnant and how I waited a month to tell Orrick, so I could convince him John was his. The thought is mortifying. “Don’t you think he’d rather it be me than some random guy from accounting?”
“It’s not that simple. You don’t know him like I do.” My breath burns in my throat as I stare at him, begging him to understand, just as I have so many times over the years.
“I’ve worked for him for twenty years, Iris, I do know him. I know things about him that no one should know about another person. But even still, I shouldn’t have to know him, I know you. Or…at least I thought I did.”
“You walked away. That night that I told you I was pregnant, you walked away—”
“Because you said it was over—”
“You didn’t fight for me! You didn’t argue—”
“I was in shoc
k!”
Tears blind my eyes, choking my voice. “It doesn’t matter, okay? What’s done is done. John is Orrick’s son, John is not being raised Catholic, and there’s absolutely nothing that will change that. If you so much as breathe a word to anyone, you’ll be fired. Do you hear me? Do you honestly think Orrick would choose you over me? Believe you over me? I will have you fired, and you will never see your son again. Is that what you want?”
When he looks at me, his eyes, too, are filled with tears. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen AJ cry. He doesn’t answer, but he doesn’t need to. We both know what his answer will be.
I open the car door and bolt for the garage, fighting back tears of my own as I climb in and drive away, refusing to check the rearview.
I’m still crying when Tom comes into the office, and I hurriedly wipe my eyes, sniffling into the tissue in my hands. I look back up, a forced smile on my face, ready to pretend everything’s fine, but by the look on his, it’s easy to see everything isn’t.
I stand, walking to his office and stopping in the doorway. “Good morning, Mrs. Locke,” he says. His eyes are red and bloodshot, and it’s obvious he’s been crying, too.
“Is everything okay, Tom?”
Aside from the usual office chatter, we’ve never talked. He and Orrick are close, and I’m typically left out of the loop, but not today. Today, Orrick is out of the office. Today, my heart is broken. Today, as much as I pride myself on not needing anyone, I need someone to make me feel something other than broken.
He glances up at me, confusion filling his green eyes. “Are you okay?”
I shake my head, fresh tears blurring my vision, though I brush them away as quickly as they fall. I never cry at work. “My son started kindergarten this morning.”
“I’m…sorry?” he offers with hesitation in his voice.
I huff out a long, slow breath. “I’ll be fine, I just need to get my mind off of it. Tell me what’s going on with you.”
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