A Twist of Fate

by Joanna Rees

  Thea stumbled back towards the doorway, right into someone. She turned, expecting to see a doctor – the consultant, she hoped. But it was Brett who was standing there. And even then, tumbling in the vortex of her terror and despair, from the spark of dark triumph in his eyes she knew that he’d been standing there all along, coldly observing and listening in.

  Thea stared across the Hudson and delved deep into the pocket of her black woollen coat, her fingertips worrying once more at the sharp edge of the letter she’d received this morning.

  It could only have been sent by Brett, she’d decided. He’d finally found proof of what Griffin Maddox’s dying words had implied. And now he’d shared it with her. And Thea still felt numb from the shock.

  With the death of her father – or ‘our’ father, as Brett still insisted on calling him – Thea had hoped she’d be able to sever her own and Brett’s relationship entirely. But Griffin Maddox had had other ideas.

  In his will he’d shown no favouritism between Thea and Brett, in spite of the fact that Thea had already been practically a teenager by the time Brett became a part of their lives. If anything, it was Thea who’d been sidelined. Because Storm, too, had been a major beneficiary of Griffin’s will. Meaning that together she and Brett had inherited the lion’s share of Griffin’s personal wealth.

  Griffin had also enshrined both Thea and Brett’s roles in Maddox Inc., by carefully balancing the board members during his last few months in charge to contain an equal amount of support for them both. Thea might be Chairwoman now, but her position was a precarious one. If she didn’t perform, or if the other board members thought Brett would do a better job, then Thea knew she’d be out.

  Healthy competition – that’s probably what Griffin had envisaged. The two of them competing, thereby driving the business forward twice as fast. But this wasn’t competition. It was war.

  Brett had even moved himself and Bethany from his apartment into Griffin and Storm’s apartment right at the top of Maddox Tower, while Storm herself now divided her time between there and Crofters.

  Thea had asked Brett several times if she could sort through her father’s personal belongings and go through his private paperwork, but his reply had always been the same: she could come up any time she wanted. The way he’d said it had left her in no doubt of the danger she’d be in if she did.

  Feeling the letter in her pocket now, she knew she should have braved a visit anyway. The self-defence classes she’d taken and the canister of Mace she always carried on her would, surely, have made a match for him now? She should have been stronger. She shouldn’t have given Brett open access like that to her father’s papers and her family’s past.

  And I should have told you, Thea thought again, looking back at her father’s grave. I should have told you what he did to me. I should have told you the truth, she thought, feeling the letter as she gripped it in her cold hand, just the same as you should have told me . . .

  Thea felt Michael put his arm out to steady her. It had been Michael she’d called that day her father had died. Michael who’d stood beside her here at the funeral, supporting her so that she didn’t collapse. And Michael who’d been the only person she wanted to be here with her today.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, worry etched across his face. ‘You looked like you were about to faint.’

  She felt as if she were unravelling and had no way of stopping herself. She felt weak, insubstantial. Everything she thought she’d ever known – it had all become a lie.

  He looked up at the marble statue. ‘You did a good thing here today,’ he assured her, misreading her expression, assuming it was being here and remembering Griffin that was making her look so upset.

  ‘If only the rest of my life was that solid,’ she heard herself say.

  ‘What do you mean?’ he said.

  ‘Nothing.’ The letter in her pocket – she didn’t want to talk about it. She didn’t know how she could even begin. But Michael was still staring at her. ‘It’s just . . . I was always so sure of everything,’ she said.

  A bitter smile crossed her face as she remembered what he’d told her before she’d gone to Australia, about how she never let anything get in her way. Thea no longer felt like that. She no longer recognized that woman at all.

  ‘But now,’ she said, ‘every time I try and reach for the truth – about who I am . . . what I am – everything just seems to crumble into dust.’

  Michael was still looking confused. ‘What is it you’re trying to say?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter . . .’ Thea said dismissively, shaking her head in frustration.

  But Michael stayed exactly where he was. ‘You know you can tell me anything, Thea,’ he said. ‘Anything at all.’

  She turned once more to face him and saw only kindness and concern reflected back in his eyes. He was the strong one now, not her. She realized he was also probably the only true friend she had.

  She took her hand out of her pocket. She did it quickly, surprising even herself. She handed him the letter before she had time to change her mind. She knew she could no longer handle this alone.

  He read her name and address on the envelope,

  ‘What is it?’ he said.

  ‘Just read it. Then tell me what you think.’

  Quickly, she thought. Do it quickly, before I snatch it back.

  Michael took the creased typed letter out of the crisp new envelope. It was dated June 1970. Thea watched his face as he read the kind but firm words of Dr Myerson telling his patient, Griffin Maddox, that he was sorry to inform him, but this new set of fertility tests was conclusive. Griffin’s active sperm count was zero. And due to the complications of his wife Alyssa’s previous pregnancy and the extreme unlikelihood of her ever being able to conceive again, they were not going to be able to have children.

  ‘So you see,’ Thea said, as Michael finally looked up, ‘they weren’t my parents.’

  ‘But . . . ’ Michael started to object, but his words ran out.

  ‘That’s what he meant when he died,’ she continued, as Michael stared unblinking at the letter again. ‘When he said, “I always loved you like you were my own,” that’s just what he meant. Like his own. Because I never actually was.’

  ‘Oh God, Thea.’ Michael looked up at her, ashen-faced. ‘I’m so sorry . . .’

  ‘All my life,’ Thea said, trying to keep the anger and resentment from her voice, ‘my mother called me her “gift from God”. My name – Theadora – even means that. But it’s only now that it makes sense. Because I was a gift – a present. Someone else’s baby that they took as their own.’

  Michael was nothing but a silhouette now, blurred by her tears.

  ‘All I keep thinking is that, if he really loved me, then why didn’t he tell me the truth? If you love someone, you tell them the truth, no matter how much it hurts.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Michael said. ‘Maybe he didn’t think you needed to know. Maybe he didn’t think it made any difference.’

  ‘No,’ Thea said, and this time she couldn’t hide her anger any more, ‘it wouldn’t have made any difference if he had told me. Not telling me – lying to me – that makes all the difference in the world.’ She rubbed furiously at her tears. ‘And not just him. Mom. Her. I don’t even know what to call her any more. Both of them lied to me every day of my life.’

  ‘They still loved you, Thea.’ Michael reached out to touch her shoulder. ‘Isn’t that the most important thing of all?’

  Thea shook him off. All of it made sense now. All of it. Why Griffin Maddox had favoured neither her nor Brett in his will. Because they’d both been adopted, so of course he’d treat them the same. And it explained why Jenny in Australia had looked nothing like her. Because she was nothing like her, because neither of their parents were the same.

  ‘You’re still you, Thea,’ Michael said. ‘This . . .’ he waved the paper at her, ‘. . . this might change where you came from, but it can’t change who you are.’<
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  ‘No.’ Thea was shaking now. Her voice began cracking as fresh tears welled up in her eyes. ‘This could have changed everything. Everything I’ve ever done – every day I’ve ever worked – I did it for him, for the man I thought was my father . . . To make him proud. To prove that I could be just as much of a Maddox as him.’ Thea’s tears wouldn’t stop. ‘And all the time I kept smiling, I kept smiling for him . . .’ She hauled in a great shuddering breath, her words rushing out in a torrent now, a torrent she just couldn’t stop. ‘And I bit down on them – on all those disgusting, dirty secrets . . . on everything Brett did, everything Brett did to me – I did all that to protect him. And for what?’

  It all came out then. Everything. She told Michael everything that had happened. About Brett. About how he’d abused her as a child and raped her as an adult. And about Tom and how she’d broken his heart. And about the abortion too. She held nothing back. And about everything else Brett had ruined for her since, and how he’d protected himself by marrying Bethany, and how Storm had fucked her father’s most trusted lawyer. How she’d had to lie and lie, and uphold the hideous Maddox family myth, for her father. She told Michael all this, as he held her tight in his unwavering arms.

  But when her breathing slowed and she finally stepped away from him, she saw cold fury burning in his eyes.

  ‘You’ve done nothing wrong,’ he told her. ‘None of this. None of what’s happened is your fault.’

  He turned his back on her. He marched away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ she called after him. She couldn’t believe he was just going to leave her like this.

  ‘To find him,’ he shouted, his words echoing furiously across the graveyard. ‘To find him and make him pay.’

  ‘No.’ Thea ran after him. She grabbed at his coat sleeve. ‘Please, Michael, you can’t.’

  He shook her off. He didn’t break his stride.

  ‘But I’ve got no proof,’ she said. ‘Nothing.’

  ‘I don’t need proof.’ He spun round to face her. The scar on his face had turned livid. His fingers had curled into fists. ‘I believe you. I’ve always believed in you.’

  She knew it then. She knew he was telling her the truth. Panic rose up inside her. ‘But if you do anything to him, you’ll end up in prison,’ she said.

  ‘It’ll be worth it.’

  ‘It won’t be for me.’ She meant it. No matter what had happened, she wouldn’t let Michael get caught up in this too. ‘Because don’t you see?’ she said. ‘Hurting you – that would be giving Brett what he wants.’ She suddenly saw the full truth of this now. ‘Because hurting you would be hurting me.’

  ‘Then leave,’ he finally said. ‘Quit today. Walk out of there and never go back.’

  ‘Oh God, Michael, you don’t think I’ve thought of that?’ So many long nights, for so many months now, she had thought of that – the easy way out; she’d thought of that and nothing else.

  ‘Just do it. Cut him. Cut all of them out of your life.’

  And Thea could see it, the kind of future he meant, where she could draw a line under her past and move on, away from the company. And Michael was right. This was within her power. All she needed to do to make it so was say ‘Yes’.

  But instead she answered, ‘No.’

  Michael threw up his arms, but she slowly shook her head. ‘Because if I walked away,’ she said, ‘then everything would be . . . ’

  ‘Would be . . . ?’ he prompted.

  ‘Would be Brett’s. And that can’t happen,’ she said. ‘Not after what he’s done to me. What he’s still trying to do to me.’ She felt the determination rising up inside her. ‘The only way I can beat him,’ she said, ‘the only way I can punish him for everything he’s done, is to take it. All of it. To stay and fight for that company, and one day take it back. To snatch everything he’s ever wanted from out of his hands.’

  Michael’s whole body seemed to sag then. A look of resignation and distress replaced the anger on his face. He knew he couldn’t change her mind. And he knew he shouldn’t try. He knew he’d support her no matter what she did. And Thea knew it too now.

  She remembered then what she’d said about her father: If he really loved me, then why didn’t he tell me the truth? If you love someone, you tell them the truth, no matter how much it hurts.

  Was that what she felt right now? she wondered, as she stepped towards Michael and let him gather her into his arms. Was this something like love? Was that what this strength was that she now felt pouring into her, filling her and raising her up?

  ‘If he ever lays a finger on you again, you tell me,’ Michael said. ‘You promise me now, Thea. You swear that you will.’

  ‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘I swear it, Michael, I will.’

  ‘No one’s ever going to hurt you again.’

  Standing there with him, as the cold wind blew around them, whipping up spirals of autumnal leaves in its wake, Thea knew for certain that she would not be cowed by this letter. She would not let Brett win.

  She turned and stared one final time at Griffin Maddox’s grave. She thought of her mother and the wonderful times they’d once had. And she thought of Griffin, too, and how he’d always had one eye on the future, as Thea did now. And as she turned and slipped her hand into Michael’s and the two of them walked away, towards the storm gathering on the horizon, she wondered if maybe Michael had been right. Maybe she really was much more Griffin Maddox’s daughter than she thought.

  It was late afternoon and Thea was riding in the lift up to her office in Maddox Tower. She checked her reflection in the mirror. Thank God for make-up, she thought. Her tear-stained face was nothing but a memory. She looked on top of her game and felt it too.

  She thought of all the floors the lift was rising up through, and of all the people there whose lives Maddox Inc. controlled. She was going to be watching Brett’s every move from now on. With whatever means it took. In his business life and his private life too. She was going to get the proof she needed to finish him off. The phoney war between them was over. The real war had now begun.

  She thought too about Michael. She could still feel a ‘ghost’ impression of his hand, of his fingers intertwined with hers.

  She’d told him everything and he hadn’t judged her. Or been disgusted by her. He doesn’t hate me because of what happened, as she’d always thought he might.

  Tonight she was going straight from the office to the small apartment he’d rented over in Queens. He’d been offered a job last week, bossing for a private corporate-security firm. He was going to cook for her, he’d said. Just one of his mother’s old recipes. A favourite from both their childhoods, he’d teased her, refusing to tell her just what it was.

  Thea hadn’t even known that he could cook. In fact, she knew so little about all the small details and quirks that made up the grown-up person he’d become. But it didn’t seem to matter, because in another way she felt she knew him completely. Who Michael was at his core. Who he’d always been, and always would be.

  No one’s ever going to hurt you again. That’s what he’d told her. And she believed him.

  Brett couldn’t hurt her. Ever again.

  Thea stepped out of the elevator and glanced at the bank of TVs on the reception wall. One of them was switched to CNN. As she took a sip of the takeaway coffee she’d picked up at her favourite deli on the way over, she read the news banner line and slowed to a stop.

  She turned, rereading what she’d just seen. Which is when her assistant, Sarah, came hurrying over.

  ‘I’ve been trying to get hold of you,’ Sarah said, not hiding the panic in her voice.

  Thea realized that since she’d gone to the graveyard, she must have left her phone switched off.

  ‘Brett’s called a board meeting. They’ve all been waiting in there for over half an hour.’ It was obvious from her flushed cheeks that poor Sarah had been bearing the brunt of the fallout from Thea’s absence.

  ‘Tell them I’m coming,’
Thea said, her eyes being drawn back to the TV screen, still disbelieving what she saw.

  It was impossible. The news banner line said that Maddox Inc. had just taken over Scolari. But how could that be possible? Thea had tried everything. Only last week, in fact, she’d informed the board – much to their disappointment – that she’d failed to secure a deal and believed that one could never be made. Her mind was whirring. She dumped her coffee on the receptionist’s desk and marched towards the boardroom.

  ‘Why didn’t I know about this?’ she barked as she saw Peter and Dennis, two of the other directors and her father’s most trusted allies, standing in the corridor outside the boardroom door.

  ‘Brett said he had your full authorization,’ Peter said, but she noticed something sheepish in his tone.

  ‘Brett?’ Thea didn’t understand. ‘What’s Brett got to do with any of this?’

  ‘Brett closed the deal,’ Dennis said, clearly puzzled by Thea’s reaction. ‘He said you’d asked him to take over negotiations after you’d failed. That you didn’t think he’d get anywhere, but he was certainly welcome to try.

  Failed . . .

  Thea suddenly saw the danger she was in. Brett had done this to show the board what he was capable of. He’d done this to show them that, where Thea failed, he’d succeed.

  ‘He said you’d be pleased, that he’d turned one of your dreams into reality.’

  The liar, Thea thought. And Peter and Dennis too. More liars. Thea could see it in their eyes. They’d all known what Brett was up to with Scolari, and had deliberately kept it from her. They’d sided with him. How many other directors had done the same?

  She could see the answer written on their faces the moment she stepped into the boardroom. None of the men seated around the table would look at her.

  ‘Ah, there you are at last,’ Brett said.

  He was standing at the head of the boardroom table in a smart new suit. His smile was wide, his eyes as cold as a shark’s, as he pulled at his pristine white cuffs beneath his sleeves.