He hadn’t even asked what had happened the other night with the Roy incident, and I knew it was because he simply didn’t care. He probably didn’t even remember that I’d told him Rayna had been kidnapped, and why would he? All he cared about was money and getting laid by younger women. Everything else had just been an act; a weak attempt to paint himself as a perfect family man to the rest of London’s so-called elite. I remembered my old attitude a couple of years ago, and a chill shot up my spine as I realized just how close I’d come to turning out exactly like him—nothing more than a sleazy liar.
I wasn’t him, though. I was me, and even if I’d done some fucked up shit in my life, at least I was trying to better myself nowadays. That was enough for me to know I’d never be like him; not even close.
“Jace?”
I looked up to see him standing at the entrance to my cubicle, and I forced a smile. “Hey, thanks for picking me up, Dad.”
He looked at his watch and then back at me. “I don’t see why you couldn’t just take your own car today and meet me there. I don’t exactly have time to be driving you around everywhere. But we can always cut this lunch short, I suppose.”
I suppressed the urge to roll my eyes. “Well, thanks for making some time for me,” I said, keeping any hint of sarcasm out of my voice. “Like I said earlier, my car’s been making weird sounds lately. I was a bit worried about driving it this far into the city from the manor without having it looked at first.”
“You should’ve taken one of my other cars. Would’ve saved me the bother.”
I could barely hold back a smirk at that. Oh, how he’d regret those words in about half an hour. “Really? Didn’t even think of that.”
“I’d be surprised if you ever did think,” he muttered. Ah, good old Dad. Ever the charmer. “Anyway, let’s head out.”
My heart started to pound as we parked up fifteen minutes later and walked towards the restaurant. This was where it was all going to go down, and I had no idea what was going to happen. I’d planned out every single detail, but there was no telling how Dad was going to react.
“Table for Wilde?” I said to the restaurant hostess.
She smiled and directed us towards an outdoor table, and Dad was too busy looking at his phone to even notice who was sitting there until the hostess spoke. “Here we are. Table for five.”
His head jerked up. “Five? What the…?”
The sight that greeted him drained all the color from his face, and he looked at the three women in turn—Elena, Rayna and most importantly, his mistress.
“Hello, Gerald,” Elena said coolly, her face stony as she looked up at him.
Shit was about to go down.
Knowing my Dad, I’d wondered if his mistress even knew he was married, so phase one of my plan had involved tracking her down and finding out. It hadn’t been all that hard for me to do so. I’d gone to one of the manor security guys and acted like I knew all about Dad’s affair and approved—like father, like son or some other such bullshit—and I’d told them that she’d left something at our place and I’d lost her number. He’d been suspicious at first and asked why I didn’t just ask my Dad to call her to come pick it up, but I’d told him Dad was busy and stressed with work, so I wanted to sort this out for him, and if Elena saw the item the mistress had left behind anytime soon, Dad would be in trouble, so I needed to contact her immediately.
He finally relented and gave me her contact details, which I’d known would be there seeing as anyone who regularly had contact with my father had to be cleared with security, and then I’d made the call. She hung up on me the first time, but I kept trying, and then I finally got the full story from her.
Her name was Milly, and it turns out I was right—she didn’t even know they were having an affair. They’d met two months ago, and from what I’d gathered, it was around three days after Elena and Rayna had moved here. Dad had told her he was single. Surprise, surprise. Apparently he’d been sneaking away from the office almost every day on his lunch break to see her, and he’d told her that he had a ‘mentally disturbed’ son living with him, which was why they normally spent their time together at her house rather than the manor. That was also why she’d hung up on me the first time I called; he’d convinced her that I was completely deranged and might scream at her if I ever found out about her and got in contact. Also, on the one night she’d stayed over while Elena was away, Dad had told her that Rayna was just a live-in maid when she’d run into her in the hallway and been scared by the sight of the unfamiliar girl.
All in all, Milly hadn’t had any idea that Dad had a wife, let alone a stepdaughter, and she’d been horrified when I told her the truth. I’d put her in contact with Elena, and the plan had evolved from there.
“What the fuck have you done?” Dad said, turning to face me with his eyes blazing. “You useless little bastard.”
He could obviously tell that I’d orchestrated everything, and this time I couldn’t keep the smirk off my face.
Elena interrupted before things could get too out of control. “This isn’t about Jace. It’s about you and your lies. Now sit down with us, please. We have lots that we need to discuss.”
Dad stood still for a moment, just staring at everyone, and then he finally sat down, his face practically twitching with anger. “What exactly is the meaning of all this?”
“Well, firstly,” Elena said. “I’m leaving you. I’ve already packed all my things while you’ve been at the office this morning, and so has Rayna. Those things are being moved out as we speak. Secondly, I think you owe Milly an apology. She’s a nice woman and you’ve told her all sorts of lies. You even told her you’d marry her one day and managed to keep the fact that you were already married from her. She didn’t deserve any of that…”
“You’re actually sticking up for this whore?” Dad scoffed, not even bothering to deny anything. He clearly thought he was so untouchable that it didn’t even matter. “If she had half a brain, she would’ve read the society pages and known I was married. Not my fault no one reads the papers these days.”
Seriously? Milly didn’t read the society pages in the newspaper, and therefore it was somehow her fault that the affair had happened? My father really would stoop to any excuse to justify himself.
“Screw you,” Milly hissed. “How dare you call me a whore? I’m worth more than you are. I thought I was dating a sweet, respectable and mature man. But now I know the truth. You’re just a sad, pathetic old loser. I doubt you’ll ever find a real woman who’ll stay with you longer than five seconds, not with all your bullshit.”
Dad actually had the audacity to smile at that. “Women are always attracted to money, dear. Say what you want, it doesn’t change the fact that you’re replaceable.”
“So that’s what I was?” Elena interjected. “Replaceable? You made me move all the way over here for this? I gave up my whole life for you, Gerald!”
“I didn’t say that. I said she was replaceable. But you’re my wife, darling,” Dad said, switching tactics and reaching across the table for her hand. “Surely you can forgive a few indiscretions here and there. I do care about you, and that’s why I got you to move here. I’ve given you everything to show how much I care. A wonderful house, a name in the social circles, a perfect—”
Elena slapped his hand away. “How dare you?” she said. “I thought I was marrying for real love, not some cushy position in high society. You knew that, you bastard. You deceived me. Not to mention how you behaved when my daughter was essentially kidnapped by a drug addict. Jace and Rayna told me everything, and you acted like it was nothing!”
“Oh, please,” Dad replied. “She was fine. She and Jace were just playing some silly little prank, and I—”
I cut him off by slamming my fist down on the table. “It wasn’t a fucking prank! I told you that so many times, but you were so desperate to get back to screwing your mistress that you couldn’t even begin to take it seriously. Rayna was kidnapped, and you
barely did a thing about it.”
“I gave you the money you asked for, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, under the bullshit condition that I keep my mouth shut about your affair,” I said. “Your stepdaughter’s life was on the line and all you thought to do was defend yourself from being caught.”
“Well, it all worked out fine,” he said, sniffing. “Rayna’s clearly unhurt.”
Rayna hadn’t said a word so far, and I could tell it was because she was trying to keep a firm grip on herself. If she opened her mouth, she’d probably explode and then jump across the table to strangle my father after what he’d done to hurt her mother. She’d been like a ticking time bomb these last few days, barely able to hold in her anger and keep a straight face around Dad as we waited for the perfect moment.
When no one else said anything for a moment, a victorious gleam appeared in Dad’s eye. “So what was this little gathering meant to be? For you to tell me how awful I am? Quite frankly, I don’t care, and none of this changes a thing. Leave me if you want, Elena, but you won’t get a cent. That’s the good thing about being wealthy…fantastic lawyers and ironclad pre-nups.”
He leaned back and smiled, and Rayna finally spoke up, matching his expression with her own wide smile. “You may have a lot of money, Gerald,” she said. “But your precious luxury cars now belong to charity…and I know how much you love them.”
The smile faded from Dad’s face. “What did you just say?”
“Oh, did you think Mom forgot about your little tax scheme?” she said, her eyes widening in a faux-innocent expression. “No, she told us everything.”
Dad had a huge collection of luxury sports cars, but he didn’t keep them on the estate because they were too precious. He had his own driving track nearby for using them, and Elena had told us that in order to avoid paying so many luxury taxes on them—and to hide the fact that he had so many of them from Revenue—he’d put them in her name as soon as she’d arrived from the States. That was probably the dumbest thing he’d ever done, because it meant the cars belonged to Elena on paper, and she could do what she wanted with them.
“What the hell do you mean?” Dad hissed.
“We donated all your supercars to a charity auction,” I said.
“Those cars are worth millions!”
“Yes, and they’ll go a long way to helping the less fortunate,” Elena said. She glanced down at her watch. “They’re being picked up from the track as we speak. Technically, they belong to me, so there’s nothing you can do about it.”
Dad’s eyes narrowed. “Technically, you’re still my wife, so with anything you donate to charity, I can still have that claimed as a tax deduction. I guess you didn’t think your little plan through very well. I’ll still get some of that money back, written off my taxes.”
“Ah, but we did think it through,” I said proudly. “We didn’t donate the cars in the proper sense of the word. We actually sold them to the charity organization for one pound each. So legally, it wasn’t a donation, it was a sale, and you aren’t eligible for the charity tax deduction.”
His face turned white, and I grinned. “Working in finance these last few weeks has actually taught me a thing or two,” I added. “Guess I’m not as useless as you always said I was.”
“You ungrateful little bastard. You’ll never work at my friend’s firm ever again, or at any other firm in this city.”
“Fine by me. Finance is boring as fuck, and I’ve got my own shit to do, anyway.”
“I’ll be freezing your trust fund, too. You won’t get another cent from me.”
“Also fine by me. I don’t want your money anymore. Oh, and speaking of money…that thirty grand you gave me to give to the guy who took Rayna? I got it back from the police. But you aren’t getting it back. I’ve given it to Elena to help pay for the move back to California, seeing as you made her uproot her entire life to move here for you.”
“You can’t do that.”
“Oh? Try and stop me. I grew up with you, and I know of quite a few other dodgy tax evasion schemes you’ve cooked up over the years; not just for yourself, but for your company’s clients too. I’d really hate to have to get Revenue to audit you…”
I let those words hang in the air for a moment. There was nothing more terrifying to a corporate finance guy than a threat to have him and his company audited by the government taxation department, and Dad sat in silence for a moment before abruptly standing up, knocking his chair over in the process.
“You’re all done,” he said. “I’ll make you all pay for this rubbish. Especially you, Jace, you little shit. I should’ve just let your mother take you in the divorce all those years ago.”
With that, he stormed out of the restaurant, and I watched him go with my lips pressed into a thin line. I knew he wouldn’t follow through on his threats; he was just saying them out of anger. When he calmed down, he would realize that it was in his best interests to do absolutely nothing, and maybe he’d realize exactly why we’d done this—to show him how awful he was, and to give him back a bit of the shit he’d dished out to other people over the years.
I’d lost my trust fund money, but that was fine. I had a small amount of savings from the job I’d had for the last month, plus the job I’d had up in Edinburgh, and it’d be enough to get me by until I figured things out.
I honestly didn’t care that I’d lost the trust fund anyway, even though it was millions of pounds. I had Rayna, and I now knew that love was far more important than any amount of money. I wish I’d known that sooner.
Milly stood up. “I better go.”
“Are you sure you won’t stay for lunch?” Elena asked. “It’s on me.”
She smiled. “No, I have to get to an appointment. But thank you for telling me the truth about Gerald and helping me confront him. I hope the bastard rots in hell.”
“You’re welcome, and thanks for coming today and helping with this,” Elena replied, standing up and giving Milly a hug.
I could still barely believe how gracious she was being. A lot of other women would’ve slapped their husband’s mistress and blamed her for everything, but Elena wasn’t like that. She understood that Milly hadn’t even known Dad was married, and she hadn’t held anything against her at all. She was a good, kind person, just like her daughter.
I looked over at Rayna, and she smiled and put her hand on mine as Elena walked Milly out of the restaurant. We stayed like that for what felt like forever, staring into each other’s eyes, and it was only when we heard the sound of someone clearing their throat that we looked up to see that Elena had returned.
Shit. In all the hectic mess of the last few days, it had totally slipped our minds that no one knew about our relationship yet.
There was a very pregnant pause, and Rayna and I slowly moved our hands apart on the table. That fooled no one, and Elena finally spoke, her eyes wide.
“You two…you’re together?” she asked.
Rayna leapt to her feet. “Mom, I’m so sorry, this isn’t how we wanted you to find out. I—”
“How long?” Elena interrupted sharply. “How long has this been going on for?”
I stood up too. “Since we first met,” I said. “Listen, Elena, I know this might seem wrong, and it’s such a bad time to tell you, but I love Rayna. I love her more than anything.”
Elena was silent for a long time, staring us down. “You’re in love?” she finally said in a small voice.
I nodded. “Yes. But I understand if you don’t want me anywhere near you after what my father did to you. I can try to stay—”
She cut me off. “No…it’s fine. It’s actually more than fine.”
Rayna’s eyebrows shot up. “It’s fine? Just like that?”
Elena nodded, then sat down and sighed. “Honestly, honey, I can’t imagine a better guy for you after what Jace has helped us with over the last few days. And if you love each other…well, who the hell would I be to stand in the way of that? Just because I got sc
rewed over by the wrong man doesn’t mean Jace isn’t the right man for you.”
“Elena…are you sure?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, looking back at me. “You’re nothing like your father, Jace. Nothing at all. I’m glad at least one good thing could come out of my marriage to your father. It’s just…” Her voice trailed off for a second, and tears filled her eyes.
“Mom?” Rayna said softly, gently stroking her back. “Just what?”
“I feel like I’ve lost a lot in these last few days, and I don’t want to lose my daughter too.”
“What do you mean?” Rayna asked. “You aren’t losing me. I’m not going anywhere.”
“But I am. I’m going back to California. And if you and Jace are really in love, then I can’t make you come with me. You’re nineteen, Rayna. Still young, but old enough to make your own choices and live where you want.”
A hint of a smile flickered over Rayna’s perfect face, and she reached over and grabbed Elena’s hand before taking a deep breath. “Mom…we discussed this for a long time the other day, and we’ve decided that we’re coming with you. Both of us.”
Elena’s head jerked up again. “What?”
I grinned brightly. “I’m coming with you. If you’ll have me, of course,” I said, echoing Rayna’s words.
Tears of joy began to spill down Elena’s cheeks. “Oh my…this is just….of course it’s okay, Jace. Although I should warn you now—our old house isn’t exactly a mansion. Our lifestyle back in California isn’t at all what you’re used to here in England.”
“I don’t care, as long as I’m with Rayna,” I said. I meant every word.
Elena smiled. “Well, we’re leaving from Heathrow at eight o’clock next Tuesday night,” she said. “We’ll be staying at my friend’s B&B till then.”
“I’ll be there on Tuesday, and I’ll be on the same flight,” I replied. “There’s just one more thing I have to do first...”
***
The drive to Edinburgh the next day was seven hours long and nerve-wracking as hell, but I needed to do it. There was no way I could leave the country without sorting all of this out first; I couldn’t leave this stone unturned. As I pulled up outside the familiar house, my heart was pounding, but as much in excitement as it was nerves.
Tease - A Stepbrother Sports Romance Page 36
