Give in to Me (20 page)

She looked down at me and smiled. “I guess Tristan is ready to go, Daryl.” Leaning down, she whispered, “And I think you look more like Johnny Depp than the Biebs with your hair like that.”

“What?”

“You know. In that movie Chocolat. He wore his hair like yours is now.”

I had no idea what she was talking about, but she looked so sweet that I didn’t have the heart to tell her. “Daryl, let’s get back to what you found out.”

“You bet. So the two drugs are the same from the same company. Rider Pharmaceutical. The problem is that Rider is just a front. It’s a company in name only. I knew there had to be a much bigger company behind it, so I set about looking for what that could be. Take a guess what the name of the company controlling Rider is.”

“One of the major pharma companies?” I guessed.

Daryl shook his head. “No. Much closer to home.”

“Don’t tell me I own Rider Pharmaceutical.”

He made a smacking noise with his lips and grinned. “Yep. I’m looking at the proud owner of Rider right now. Seems your little business was a gift to none other than Karl himself.”

“Who gave him a company?” Nina asked.

I could have told her. As soon as I heard it was a gift, I knew my father had given it to Karl. Why I could only imagine. I let Daryl continue his story, though.

“Courtesy of Victor Stone, the former CEO of Stone Worldwide and the father of your intended, Nina.”

“So what’s the big deal? Karl runs Rider, which Tristan owns. All he has to do is fire Karl, right?”

Nina’s eyes searched mine for the answer. “It’s not that easy. Since legally, my father made him the director of Rider, which is what he must be if he’s been given the company to run, I can’t simply get rid of him. The board of directors will have to get involved.”

“And Karl’s likely been hard at work on them in your absence. They’re unlikely to just let you make that huge change and once they get involved, Karl’s going to have the upper hand, “ Daryl added.

“I don’t understand. Why would he have the upper hand?” she asked.

Daryl stroked his beard, pulling it to a point. “Because we have no proof that he’s doing anything wrong with the company. Without that, there’s no legal basis for getting rid of him.”

“What I need to know is what’s happening with Cardiell.”

“Nothing yet. Hopefully, we can find out what’s going on and stop Karl before anything bad starts again,” Daryl said more seriously than I’d ever heard him before.

“I don’t care what’s going on. If Cardiell hurts one person and I could have stopped it, I won’t be able to forgive myself.”

Nina slipped her fingers through mine and squeezed my hand. “Then we just have to figure out what he’s up to and stop him.”

Daryl nodded his agreement. “It’s my guess he’s looking for that notebook because he thinks there’s something in there that might cause him a problem. Now we know that’s not the case, but that means that we need to find that missing sheet of paper someone tore out of your father’s notebook.”

That was easier said than done. If ever there was a case of trying to find a needle in a haystack, this was it. We had no idea where to even start looking. “Daryl, we need to eliminate any place we can if we ever want to find this piece of paper, assuming it even exists at all.”

“I agree, so let’s tick them off one by one. Your offices. Any chance it’s there?”

Shaking my head, I dismissed this idea quickly. “No. The only files in my office are ones that I’ve been through hundreds of times before. I can promise you it’s not there.”

“Okay. Your penthouse. Any chance his goons have missed it there?”

“No. I had the place cleaned out before I moved in. Until I met Nina, there wasn’t anything but a few suits, shirts, and ties.”

Daryl took out a pencil and began crossing things off in his little notebook. “Miami and LA are out. The places are basically empty. No files there.”

“What if we aren’t supposed to be looking for files? What if that sheet of paper is in an envelope or something?” Nina asked.

Looking up from his notes, Daryl cocked one eyebrow. “What do you mean?”

Nina stood and walked over to the painting hanging on the far wall. Lifting it, she held it up for Daryl and me to see. “What if the paper was hidden someplace like this, like you see in mysteries? Not a file cabinet or anything like that but just someplace it could be hidden where no one could find it.”

As she ran her hand across the back of the picture frame, Daryl nodded. “She might have something there. Can we still cross off the penthouse, the other houses, and your office if we think about things that way?”

I ran through each place in my mind, mentally scanning each room of each location. My office had no artwork or anything hanging on the walls. I had no diploma or commendations to replace my father’s, so once I took his down, the spots they’d once covered remained bare. Only the art Nina had chosen hung in the penthouse, and there was nothing left in the other houses.

That only left this house.

“I don’t think there’s anything in those places, Daryl. I think if it exists, it could be here.”

Nina walked back to stand next to me. Sitting on the arm of the chair again, she said, “Then we need to check every room in this house. Just that one room alone with the secret room next to it has at least half a dozen pieces that could be hiding what we’re looking for. And don’t forget the attic.”

I shook my head. “There’s nothing in the attic. Trust me. Just some old things that were my mother’s.”

“No, Tristan, that’s not right. There are all sorts of letters and pictures up there. And that’s just in one trunk. I bet there are tons of places we can look.”

Nina and Daryl began to draw up a plan of attack for searching the house as I wondered why she knew so much about the attic. I hadn’t been up there since I’d moved in. Rogers had been responsible for storing things, so I’d had no reason to even think about it.

“Let’s head upstairs,” Nina said in a chipper voice as she pulled me from my chair. “I feel like Sherlock Holmes.”

“Does that make me Dr. Watson?”

Standing on her toes, she kissed me and smiled. “A very sexy Dr. Watson. Now let’s go find this evidence so you can nail that bastard to the wall.”

Her blue eyes were ablaze with determination. I’d missed her presence in every part of my life. Even when she tried to be tough, she was still my Nina—sweet and gentle, no matter what.

The attic was very much like every other attic in the world. Stacks of boxes, some reaching nearly to the beams that transected the ceiling, and trunks ranging in size from small to enormous lined virtually every square inch of space. A seamstress’s mannequin stood silently watching guard in the corner near the south window, giving that area an eerie feeling despite the rays of light that brightened up that section of the space.

Nina lowered herself to the wood floor in front of a large trunk and looked up at me. “I think we should start here.”

Looking down, I watched as she lifted the lid and began rummaging through stacks of papers and pictures. “How did you know these were here?”

A sheepish look crossed her face, and she held her hand out. “Sit with me. I want you to tell me about these pictures. I hope you’re not mad at me for coming up here.”

I lowered myself to the floor next to her. “When were you up here?”

She stopped looking through the trunk and sighed. “Right after I moved here last year. I swear I wasn’t snooping. It was just that I was lonely out here all alone with no one but Rogers and Jensen to talk to and I went exploring.”

The mention of Rogers’ name made a flood of memories rush back into my brain, and I saw by the look on Nina’s face that my expression had changed. Taking her hand in mine, I brought it to my lips in a kiss. “I don’t think you were snooping. It’s okay.”

My forced smile didn’t fool her, and she took my hand to kiss it in return. “You’re still hurting over him, aren’t you?”

I shook my head, trying to lie. “It’s okay.”

She kissed the back of my hand again and gave it a gentle squeeze. “I’m looking forward to hearing about these pictures. I want to know if the stories I made up were anywhere close to the truth.”

Taking the largest photo out, she held it up and looked over at me. “How old were you when this was taken?”

I studied the portrait of my parents, Taylor, and me posing when I was no older than four or five. As with every picture ever taken with the four of us, I sat in front of my mother and Taylor sat in front of my father. Dressed identically, I grinned for the camera while Taylor sat looking so serious, as he always did, and our parents’ expressions told the story of their marriage. Self-satisfied and smug looking, my father’s presence in the picture bordered on overwhelming, too much strength and not enough kindness. My mother’s expression was the one she wore nearly every waking moment of her days. Her mouth appeared to form a smile, but on closer inspection, anyone who knew her could see the sadness in her face.

“I think we were five then,” I answered, struggling to remember anything of that day.

“Your mother was beautiful. You have her eyes, but your brother doesn’t.”

I turned to look at Nina and chuckled at her comment. “Taylor and I were identical twins. I think if I had eyes like hers, then he did too.”

She shook her head and smiled. “Nope. Look closely. See your mother’s eyes? They’re brown, like yours and Taylor’s, but they’re softer than his. Yours are like that. His eyes look a little harsher. Not yours, though.”

For a long moment, I stared at that picture and finally saw what Nina had seen. So many people had always told Taylor and me that they couldn’t tell us apart, but now I saw that it was a simple matter of looking into our eyes. “You’re right. How did you see that?”

Nina stroked her palm over my cheek. “How could I not? It’s impossible to miss. You look like your mother, at least in your eyes. The rest of your face may look much more like your father’s side, but those eyes are all her.”

Propping the portrait up against the back wall of the trunk, she looked for another picture while I kept my gaze on the four of us. I didn’t remember the day we sat for that picture, but the fact that my father even appeared in it was noteworthy. Only formal portraits included him. Any other time a picture might be taken, he was absent, at work or on a business trip that was likely anything but.

“I have a confession to make, though. I didn’t notice how much like your mother you were until now. The first time I saw this picture, I thought you looked like your father.”

“I did,” I admitted, knowing Nina had every right to hate that in me after what my father had done. I didn’t like that truth any more than she likely did, but it was the truth. Taylor and I both looked more like Stones than my mother’s family.

“It’s expected that you’d look like your parents, Tristan. It’s okay.”

Happy to avoid the comparison between the man who had her father murdered and myself, I reached inside the trunk to lift out a stack of photographs I recognized as pictures from when I played sports as a child. Each one showed me smiling and happy, a winner every time.

“You looked so cute with all your trophies. It’s hard to imagine this guy who wears a suit all the time playing anything.”

“Then I’ll have to take these pictures when we leave so I can remind you from time to time,” I joked. “Right now, we need to look through the rest of this trunk.”

Nina picked up a pile of letters wrapped in a red ribbon. Holding them up to show me, she read the name on the top envelope. “Tressa. Were these your mother’s? I’m guessing from your father. At least you’re like him in that.”

I shook my head, unable to believe my father had ever written my mother anything. He couldn’t even be bothered to call her on most days, so the thought of him writing love letters seemed unlikely. “My father wasn’t the type of man to write anything down, unless it made him money.”

Handing them to me, she smiled. “Well, just in case, I don’t feel right looking through them. It’s more appropriate you do it. But why are they here?”

“I took a lot of their things after the crash. Rogers must have brought them here.” I looked down at the letters sitting in my palm and wondered if they’d been from an old boyfriend before my mother and father married. The idea of my mother happily in love with someone made me happy. All those years with my father had been so filled with misery for her. The neglect. The rumors of infidelity. The coldness he seemed to enjoy showing only her. That she might have been in love with someone who cared enough for her to write his feelings down so she could forever look back and remember their time together gave me hope that at some point she’d truly been happy.

I unwrapped the bow and slid the first envelope from the top of the pile. Turning it over, I slipped my finger under the flap and easily opened it to find a single sheet of paper inside. Unfolding it, I scanned the page and found the words of a lover. Had it been my father, after all? Maybe before they’d married he’d been the kind of man she deserved.

I hated having to leave you last night, Tressa. I know it’s not forever, but it’s away from you all the same. Write me and let me know when we can see each other again.