by HELEN HARDT
“I’ll get it, Belinda,” I called and walked to the door.
A young man stood on the porch.
“May I help you?” I asked.
“I have a delivery for Bradford Steel.”
“I’m his wife. I can take it.”
“Okay.” He handed me the white envelope.
I closed the door and fingered the smooth paper.
Take it to his office.
Just take it to his office.
I walked through the foyer and down the hallway leading to Brad’s study. I opened the door and was about to lay the envelope on his desk, when—
Hmm. The seal had been broken and was only glued at the tip of the triangle. Without thinking, I ran my finger under the seal and broke it without tearing the paper.
Nicely done.
Don’t, Daphne. Don’t.
But as soon as I noticed the broken seal, I knew I was going to look inside.
I pulled out the single sheet of paper.
My heart was beating like a racehorse inside my chest. My ears thrummed with the beat, as if someone were pounding on a bass drum inside me.
I unfolded the paper.
“Miss Daphne?”
Belinda. I scrunched the paper up and hid it inside my fist. “Yes?”
“Who was at the door?”
“No one. I mean”—I held up the envelope—“a message for Brad. I’m taking it to the office.”
“Okay.” She smiled and went about her business.
I ran into the library and uncrumpled the wad of paper in my hand.
Dear Brad Steel,
* * *
How important is it to you that your wife never finds out what happened to her? How much are you willing to pay?
* * *
I’ll wait for your call.
* * *
A friend
I gulped.
His wife? I was Brad’s wife. Something had happened to me? Something I didn’t know about?
My heart dropped into my stomach.
My hands shook as I attempted to smooth out the crumpled paper. I couldn’t put it back in the envelope now. Why had I even looked?
What could I do?
Nothing had happened to me. Except…there was still a lot I didn’t remember. A phone number was written on the bottom of the paper.
There was one way to find out what this was about.
I’d call the number.
“Hello?”
“This is Daphne Steel. Brad Steel’s wife.”
A throat cleared. “Mrs. Steel. What can I do for you?”
“You can tell me where the hell you get off trying to extort money from my husband.”
The words left my throat before I could think about them. I wasn’t going to allow this to happen to my husband, to our family.
I became a lioness, fierce and protective.
I was no longer timid Daphne Wade, a colorless flower.
I was Daphne Steel, a full yellow bloom.
And I was angry.
Passionately angry.
“I beg your pardon?”
“I got your message. Let’s come to terms now.”
Chapter Fifty-Seven
Brad
I picked up the phone in my truck when it rang. I didn’t give this number out to just anyone, so I knew the call would be important.
“Steel,” I said.
“Mr. Steel, it’s Dr. Pelletier.”
“What’s the word, Doc?”
“Given your father has held me at gunpoint, I don’t think you should be calling me by a nickname.”
“I’m paying you a shit ton of money, so I’ll call you what I want. I hope you have good news for me. How much longer will Wendy be committed?”
“She won’t be. That hasn’t changed. She’s been a model patient, and she’s getting out sometime next month.”
Fuck. I’d tried everything, and no dice. “What do you want, then?”
“I want to talk to you about your wife.”
My heart softened. Daphne. “I’m sorry. Is she all right?”
“I told you after our first session that she had remembered some of the patients who were with her when she was hospitalized.”
“Yeah.”
“The facility finally got her old records to me. Apparently there was some turnover in the records department that caused the delay.”
Damn. I’d paid that department a lot to get those records unsealed and to Dr. Pelletier. Delay my ass. Good thing I hadn’t gone with my first instinct months ago and had them all destroyed.
“Some heads are going to roll. But at least you have them now. You can review them and help her even more.”
“I have reviewed them, Mr. Steel. That’s the issue.”
“Okay…” My stomach churned. “I assume there’s something in there I should know.”
“There’s a lot in there you should know,” he said, “but the most alarming is that your wife was heavily medicated.”
“I assumed so. That explains why she has such significant memory loss from that time.”
He cleared his throat. “That could be a partial explanation, yes.”
“What other explanation could there be?”
“Her diagnosis.”
“I know what her diagnosis was. Anxiety and depression.”
“Anxiety and depression were some of her symptoms, but her actual diagnosis was dissociative identity disorder.”
“Dissocia— What?”
“It’s also known as multiple personality disorder.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Did you read the book Sybil? It came out a few years ago.”
“I was in college for the last several years. I didn’t have time to read for pleasure, and I doubt I’d read some girlie book. What the hell are you talking about?”
“Dissociative identity disorder is the new name for split personality.”
“I’m still not following.”
“Your wife was kept heavily medicated,” he said. “And even when she wasn’t medicated, she had limited interaction with other patients. I always thought it odd that she remembered the patients but not their actual names. Now I have an explanation.”
My heart dropped into my stomach. “What’s the explanation, then?”
“The patients are all her. Aspects of her. Different personalities.”
The receiver dropped out of my hand and thudded onto my lap. I quickly picked it up and put it back to my ear.
“Mr. Steel? Are you there?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’m here.”
“It’s a classic case. She has memories of these so-called separate people. The memories are becoming more vivid.”
Multiple personalities. My Daphne. My Daphne whose own personality was the sweetest in the world. Why hadn’t Jonathan told me?
Jonathan Wade isn’t who you think he is, son. Be careful.
I swallowed. “What does this all mean?”
“It means”—he cleared his throat—“she’s likely to dissociate again.”
Epilogue
Brad
Present Day…
The guard clanked his key against my cell. “You have a visitor, Steel.”
“It’s not visiting day.”
“What can I say? He made it clear he had to see you.” The guard pointed to his pocket.
Of course. Money talked. How well my father had taught me that lesson.
It had to be Talon. He was the only person who ever visited me, and I hadn’t seen him in over a month.
I held out my hands to be cuffed—one of the prices I’d paid so those who’d helped me over the years could go free. No minimum security for Brad Steel. I was treated like a serial killer, except I didn’t have to wear a Hannibal Lecter mask and be rolled around on a dolly.
The guard led me to the visitor area and cuffed my left hand to the bar so my right was free to use the phone.
I picked up the receiver. “Talon,” I said.
&nb
sp; I jolted when the voice on the other end spoke back.
“It’s not Talon.”
Only then did I focus my gaze on the person on the other side of the glass.
Jonah.
My firstborn.
Like looking in a mirror twenty-something years ago.
The son for whom I’d created my legacy—my legacy that had turned to nothing more than smoldering ash.
Oh, the money was still there. My family was set for many lifetimes.
But at what cost?
“Joe,” I said simply.
“I’m here for only one reason,” he said, “and it’s not to make peace.”
I cleared my throat. His attitude didn’t surprise me, and I’d given up hope long ago that my firstborn would ever forgive my indiscretions. Not even a glimmer of hope remained.
“Understood.”
This time he cleared his throat. “I just had an interesting conversation with my mother.”
I lifted my eyebrows at his use of the word interesting. I’d taken care of Daphne since her complete break with reality over twenty years ago. Conversations with her were always the same, centered on her two sons away at camp—even though we’d never sent our children to camp—and her baby, Angela, which was Marjorie’s original given name until we changed it after she defied all odds and lived—not becoming an angel—despite being born prematurely.
I said simply, “Interesting?”
“Yes. Very interesting.”
“I assume you didn’t come here only to tell me it was interesting.”
He paused a moment. Then, “I debated coming at all. I almost didn’t.”
Did he expect me to commend him? Tell him I was glad he’d come? I was, but what was he truly after?
“Just say what you came to say, son.”
He winced when I said “son.”
Too bad. He was still my son, and I was still his father. That would never change, nor did I want it to.
“Sometimes Mom seems to come back to reality,” he said.
“She has a minute of lucidity every once in a while,” I said. “Unfortunately, they never last long.”
“Marj and Talon have seen them a few times. I’ve only witnessed one, and it happened today.”
I nodded. “And you’ve come to tell me about it.”
“Yes. It was…troubling.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He cleared his throat once more. “She said she’d been keeping a secret. A big secret. One that was destroying her.”
I widened my eyes. Daphne had never said anything to me about a secret before. “Did she say what it was?”
“No. She faded out into her own little world before I could get any more information.”
“I see.”
“You say she’s had moments of lucidity in the past.”
“Yes.”
“Has she mentioned a secret?”
“No, she hasn’t.”
“What kind of things has she said?”
“Usually she recognized me and got angry for things I’d done in the past.”
He rolled his eyes. “There was certainly no shortage of those.”
I couldn’t fault him for his not-so-subtle dig. He was right.
“Through everything, I always loved her,” I said. “I still love her.”
“You had a strange way of showing it.”
“Everything I did was for—”
“Her protection. I know. I’ve heard it all before. I didn’t come here to rehash old news. I came here to find out what you’re still hiding.”
“I’m not hiding anything,” I said.
“Bullshit.”
“All I have is my word.”
“Your word sucks.”
“I’ve lied in the past. I’m not lying now.”
“That’s what a liar would say.”
“For Christ’s sake, Jonah, do you really think I’d be here, rotting in prison for the rest of my life, if I still had any lies left in me? I’m paying the price for my sins, and it’s no less than I deserve. But I did it all—”
“For us. Spare me.”
“Think what you want. I have no control over you. I haven’t since that bastard Tom Simpson first taught you how to handle a gun.”
“I’m no fan of Tom Simpson. He was a psycho degenerate, but at least he taught me. It’s been a useful skill over the years. For the life of me, I never understood why you wouldn’t.”
“I had my reasons.”
“Reasons that are no longer relevant. Come clean, why don’t you?”
I sighed. “I once taught someone, and it was the worst thing I ever did.”
“Worst thing? To teach someone how to shoot? That was worse than faking your own death not once but twice?”
“It was one of the first dominoes to fall. Teaching her had disastrous consequences.”
“Her? Fuck. You’re talking about Wendy Madigan.”
“If I hadn’t taught her how to handle a gun, she wouldn’t have—”
“Save it, Dad. Wendy Madigan was a psychopath. She would have still been a psychopath if you hadn’t taught her to shoot a gun.”
“Everything she did can be traced back to me teaching her.”
He shook his head. “I can’t believe I’m about to say this, but give yourself a break. You didn’t turn her psycho.”
Maybe I hadn’t, but I’d had more than a hand in it. Jonah didn’t know all that had transpired between Wendy and me, and now was not the time to get into it. I’d lied when I told him and his siblings about Wendy moving away after sophomore year.
I hadn’t been able to bear telling them I’d stayed with her during high school, that I’d been at her side when she’d miscarried. Instead, I’d fabricated a story about her almost dying from a ruptured fallopian tube due to an ectopic pregnancy. Had I been trying to gain sympathy?
No one was more unworthy of sympathy than I was, yet I couldn’t resist trying to get a little from my children.
I’d admitted to them that I’d sold my soul, but I hadn’t been able to admit that I’d stayed willingly and returned to her again and again. That hadn’t changed until I’d met Daphne.
When had lying become so easy?
Many, many years ago.
I said nothing for another minute, and then, “How’s my grandson?”
“He’s good.”
“And Melanie?”
“She’s good as well.”
“Your brothers and sister? Spouses and kids?”
“We’re all fine, Dad. We’re dealing with everything.” He shook his head. “This was a waste of time.”
Again I said nothing. It hadn’t been a waste of my time. I’d seen my firstborn—the child for whom I’d begun creating my legacy—and I was thankful. I gazed at his handsome face now beginning to show some signs of age. Gray at his temples, crow’s feet in the outer corners of his dark eyes. Silver lacing his stubble.
I memorized every inch.
For I knew, deep in my soul, that this was the last time I’d ever gaze upon it.
Continue reading the Steel Brothers Saga with Book Fifteen
Coming October 20, 2020!
* * *
Enjoy Steel Brothers: Legacy?
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Message from Helen Hardt
Dear Reader,
Thank you for reading Legacy. If you want to find out about my current backlist and future releases, please like my Facebook page and join my mailing list: http://helenhardt.com/signup/. I often do giveaways. If you’re a fan and would like to join my street team to help spread the word about my books, you can do so here. I regularly do awesome giveaways for my street team members.
If you enjoyed the story, please take the time to leave a review on a site like Amazon or Goodreads. I welcome all feedback.
I wish you all the best!
Helen
Also By Helen Hardt
The Steel Brothers Saga:
Craving
Possession
Melt
Burn
Surrender
Shattered
Twisted
Unraveled
Breathless
Ravenous
Insatiable
Fate
Legacy
Descent
* * *
Blood Bond Saga:
Unchained: Volume One
Unhinged: Volume Two
Undaunted: Volume Three
Unmasked: Volume Four
Undefeated: Volume Five
* * *
Misadventures:
Misadventures of a Good Wife (with Meredith Wild)
Misadventures with a Rock Star
* * *
The Temptation Saga:
Tempting Dusty
Teasing Annie
Taking Catie
Taming Angelina
Treasuring Amber
Trusting Sydney
Tantalizing Maria
* * *
The Sex and the Season Series:
Lily and the Duke
Rose in Bloom
Lady Alexandra’s Lover
Sophie’s Voice
* * *
Daughters of the Prairie:
The Outlaw’s Angel
Lessons of the Heart
Song of the Raven
* * *
The Cougar Chronicles:
The Cowboy and the Cougar
Calendar Boy
* * *
Collections:
Destination Desire
Her Two Lovers
* * *
Non-Fiction:
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