Sins of the Father (7 page)

CHAPTER NINE

Brianna had called down for David to bring the car around, but before Alex had walked out of the office, his door was filled by his mother.

He forced the surprise off his face as quickly as possible. “Mother dearest,” he said, as Olivia shut the door behind her. “What brings you all the way down the hall? This event is very close to unprecedented.”

The older woman turned, and he had to fight again to keep his face calm.
Still waters
, he thought. The whites of his mother’s eyes were reddened, as if she’d been crying.
Or as if she’d put an irritating eyedrop in them. Don’t let her fool you.
“I want you to stop and think,” she said, her voice the calm, quiet tenor that had soothed him to sleep a thousand nights as a child, before she’d given up being caring in exchange for gathering more power for her children. “I want you to think about what will happen to your sister if you allow Miss Walden to tell her story to the press.”

He had to laugh, then; he couldn’t keep the sound inside any longer. “That’s your play? Not what will happen to me, or my fortune, but to my sister?”

Her eyes narrowed. “I thought your father taught you well enough to understand that proper negotiation always begins with offering something that means something to your opponent.”

“Why am I your opponent, Mother? We should be working together. This company—I know that everyone thinks that Father somehow resurrected it from the ashes, but the truth of it is that Grandpa’s patents were the only thing that kept Father from declaring bankruptcy in the 80s. Being able to license them got us through the tech boom, when we were behind the ball, and they’ve kept us afloat through the recession.” He shook his head. “The world becomes less violent every day, Mother. This choice isn’t about Cindy Walden. It’s about doing the right thing. It’s about making the choice that safeguards my money, my sister’s money, and moves us one step closer to the world in which I want to raise children.” It made his tongue sting to use words like Mother and Father to refer to Olivia and Philip Blankenship, but if it softened the old woman’s heart, so much the better.

His mother stared at him for another long moment, her expression becoming icier as each breath passed. “Do you think I don’t know what it’s been like for you?”

He tilted his head to the side, then leaned back a little to rest on his desk—the spot where Zoey’s ass had been, and he had to push that thought away fast and hard before it got a chance to dig in—crossing his arms over his chest and letting tolerance exude out of every pore. “I know that you know what it was like for you, Mother. I understand that it was a hard time, and that your marriage to Father was challenging on every possible level. But the life you think Claire and I have faced—” He fought for the right words. “It’s not that we haven’t had challenges. It’s not that there haven’t been hard things. It’s not that it might not have been easier. But it’s not what you think it was.”

“Not a single one of the other women were black, Alex. Have you noticed that trend yet?” He hadn’t, but of course the only one of his half-siblings he’d really met was Cindy. “He didn’t dirty his candlewick with anyone but me, and that only when I threatened to leave him and take my money with me. I could have gotten away from him, but I still had a foolish idea that his influence and power would open doors for you, and for my daughter. I thought that if I stayed—” She turned her head to the side. Alex felt a moment of genuine compassion for the woman, and a sincere regret that he didn’t trust the emotion, not even a little bit. “I thought that we would all three of us be better off. But then he wrote the will the way he did, and we don’t know if it will hold up or not in court and—” There was a ragged gasp, worthy of any actress, and he couldn’t feign calm now. He went to her, touching her shoulders gently, and she turned, clinging to him. “My beautiful boy,” she said, “I just want what’s best for you. I just want the thing that we all suffered for. I don’t want that man to be able to hurt us any more.”

“He can’t hurt us any more, Mother,” Alex said, struggling to keep his own voice calm and level. “We’ll get through this. Whatever comes next, we’ll manage. But we need to work together. We can’t be fighting each other right now.”

She pulled back, sharp and furious, all her jagged edges and poison tipped spines locked back into place. “You’re not listening,” she hissed at him. “You never listen. You make it sound so simple, as if all we need to do is wiggle our fingers, and everything will just be absolutely fine. Listen to me, Alexander. This woman will ruin us.” She crooked a perfect fingertip under his nose, and he willed himself to hold steady. “And that woman you were seen with last night; she’s not good enough for you.”

“No,” he said, surprised at the surge of his own anger. “No. Absolutely not. This is not something you and I are going to discuss. Not when you’re letting that rheumy old pig sniff around my sister. You don’t get a goddamn vote.” He picked up his briefcase and opened the door, standing back to allow her to leave the office first. “Thank you for the meeting, Mother. I appreciate the view into your priorities.”

She collected herself quickly, he had to give her that. If she felt the same sort of anger and rage that he did, she was doing a better job of hiding it than he ever had. “Stay away from her, Alex. She’ll ruin everything we’re working on.”

“Have a lovely night, Mother,” he said, pulling the door shut as soon as she was clear of the door. “I’ll see you tomorrow at the board meeting.”

Brianna sat at her desk, her eyes unprofessionally wide. She managed to keep her eyes on her computer monitor as Olivia swept past her, her high heels clicking down the hallway, but Alex got the idea it was a struggle. “Call me,” Alex said, “if anything happens tonight that threatens the meeting. I need you to polish up the talking points we established around the clean water initiatives and the vaccine distributions. I’m going home for dinner, but if you need me back in the office, let me know.”

“No,” she said, her eyes still nervous. He’d never seen her this rattled. “No, in fact, I’d really like to get out of here, if you don’t mind.”

The way she said it flipped a red flag in his mind. “Brianna. What happened?”

“Everything’s fine,” she said. “I’ll get you those talking points in a couple hours. I’d just—um—really like to do it from my laptop at home. If that’s okay. Because I need to pick up my son. At daycare. They’re closing early. Flu.”

Her eyes were wide, and she wanted something from him. She had been his unflappable assistant long enough to know when something was going on. “Of course,” he said. “Take the rest of the evening. Be with your son. Send me the files, I’ll prep what I need tonight.” He paused, doing everything he could to channel the perfect image of the sympathetic boss. “In fact, you usually have to take the subway, right?” Brianna nodded. “Let me give you a ride to pick up your son, and a ride home. If he’s not well, the last thing he’s going to want to do is bounce around on the subway.”

“Would you?” She gave him a big, grateful, and completely fake smile. He knew her grateful smile. He’d seen it enough time over the years. She leaned down and picked up her bag. “I really appreciate this, Mr. Blankenship. It’s a huge help.”

They took the elevator down to the car, making small talk that didn’t leave any real impression on his brain.

As soon as the car door closed, Brianna deflated, as if she’d been pricked with a pin. David glanced in the rear view mirror. “Just drive for now, David, if you don’t mind.” Alex rolled up the partition and glanced at his assistant. “Tell me what’s going on. You don’t have a son.”

“Schwartz,” she said. “After you closed the door, I went to get some water and speak to Joe in IT for a minute. When I came back, Aaron Schwartz was listening at your door with another man. A really greasy looking guy. And when they saw me, Schwartz—the other guy—” She bit her lip fiercely, and the tears that had started to threaten in her eyes cleared. “I don’t have a son, but I do have a mother,” she said.

“Okay,” Alex said, trying to keep calm, trying to keep his hands from clenching into fists. She didn’t need to deal with his anger on top of her own fear. “Where can I take you? What can I do?” She shook her head, and he put a hand gently on her knee. Not in a sexual way—he’d never tried it with her, and he’d never really wanted to—but just to reassure her. To tell her that she wasn’t alone. She gave him a watery smile. “There are things going on right now. It’s—problematic.”

“Hence the board meeting.”

“Yes,” he said. “Tell me what I can do to help.”

She shook her head. “I just need to get to my mother’s. You don’t need to take me there, just—if you can get me to the trains. That’ll save me time in rush hour.”

“Of course,” he said, and gave David directions. “Put the trip on the company card. Anything you need. If you get to her, and you have the feeling you two need to be scarce for a few days, take out some cash, and use that instead. All right?”

“Is it that bad?”

He thought of Arturo. Of Thalia. Of the way Cindy had hung up on him this afternoon. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I’d rather play it safe than ask you to stick around and be responsible. Get a burner phone, call me from that if you need additional help. Or call Leo. Hell, if anyone knows how to make someone disappear, it’s that man.”

“Okay,” Brianna said. Her hands were still shaking, but her face had stilled, and her gaze was quiet, determined. “Thank you.”

They were silent as the car dropped her off at the train station, and then he kept his silence as David drove back to the penthouse.

This morning, things had seemed hopeful, positive, moving entirely in the right direction. Now, it had all fallen entirely to pieces.

As the elevator doors to the penthouse opened, though, he heard the thick, drum and bass-heavy strains of progressive rock bursting out of the den area of the apartment. He heard Claire’s bubbly laughter, mixing with an earthier strain that he had to imagine was Zoey’s. His heart lifted a little as he set down his briefcase and strode through the apartment. The two of them were slam dancing around, laughing raucously. He leaned against the door jamb, watching them for a couple minutes as the lead singer cursed. Zoey broke into an impressive air bass guitar solo, and Claire nearly bowled her over. They collapsed in a fit of giggles.

And finally noticed him in the doorway.

His favorite thing about them both was that neither of them rushed to straighten their hair or check their makeup. Claire threw her arms around him in a quick hug, and Zoey picked her solo back up, this time adding squinty eyes and a dramatic duck face.

“Very nice,” he said, clapping as the song ended. “What in the name of everything did I just interrupt?”

“Tool, apparently,” Claire said.

“Your sister educated me on the finer points of hip-hop today, so I shared a little of my prog rock heritage,” Zoey said.

“Interesting,” Alex replied.

“What?”

He shrugged. “I would have pegged you as a classical fan.”

For the first time, a shadow crossed her face in response to something he’d said. “At least you didn’t say country,” she said, and reached down for her laptop, slapping the screen down with a little more force than seemed necessary. “Sophia just let us know that dinner was ready. She even danced with us.”

CHAPTER TEN

Dinner was quiet, and Alex found himself okay with that. He was going to have to apologize to Zoey and figure out what had gone wrong, but he wasn
’t going to do it in front of Claire, if he could help it.

“Have you spoken to Olivia?” he asked his sister instead.

“Did I forget to call her?” He wanted to kick his sister under the table, like he had when they were kids. He thought he might have done it, if it would have made any difference. “So sorry.”

“I get it,” he said. “I really do. But at the same time, we need to not make this harder for either one of us.”

“I’ll call her tonight.”

“You don’t have to. She knows you’re here, now. But let’s keep things on the up-and-up, okay?”

Claire nodded. “But I can still stay here, right?”

A flash went through his mind, of Schwartz and his wet blue eyes listening at his office door as he and Olivia fought. It turned his stomach, somehow, the invasion of privacy and the sheer rudeness of the display. “Absolutely,” he said. “So long as you keep going to school.”

The girl stared down at her plate for a moment, and he saw Zoey watching the his sister with more intensity than he was. That was saying something. Perhaps Claire had confided in her during their day together. He could think of much worse things than that, really. Claire needed a maternal figure like she’d needed a father figure. He’d done his best to be emotionally available and intelligent with his little sister—he’d argued regularly that it had made him a better man—but it wasn’t the same, and he knew it.

He couldn’t think of Zoey in those terms. He was moving too fast, pushed forward by the intense circumstances of everything around him. He knew it, and he didn’t care. He barely tasted the thick and delicious lamb stew that Sophia had made, barely heard Claire’s conversation.

He waited as long as seemed even remotely decent, then hustled Zoey back to his room. He heard Claire’s giggles as they left her in the living room, and he didn’t care. He hadn’t talked to his sister about any of the important things that were happening, which could affect her if he wasn’t careful, and right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care.

As soon as the door closed, she was on him. He hadn’t expected that, hadn’t expected Zoey to be the one to throw her arms around his neck and press her warm and confident lips against his. This was nothing like that first kiss that they’d shared at Chez Vous, just a few days ago. That had been emotionally tentative but physically excited. This was open, trusting, and thrilling. His hands wrapped around her waist, snugging her body tightly against his. He was rock hard, and the way she pressed her hips against his, he thought she was luxuriating in the heat spilling from his body. “Hello,” he said.

“Fuck me,” she replied before she pulled his mouth down to hers for another heated kiss.

He laughed and tweaked her nipple hard enough to make her gasp. “All in due time. Were you a good girl today?”

She bit her lip, glancing up at him through her thick, light eye lashes, and the emotion he felt for her dropped into his guts like a stone. It was too soon to call it love—he wasn’t entirely sure he would ever really be able to call it love—but in that moment, he would have laid down on train tracks for her. He thought she knew it too, and he trusted her not to ask for something he couldn’t give her. It was a completely novel sensation, and he took a moment to revel in it. “I was,” she said, “but I have to tell you the truth. If I hadn’t found Claire here?”

His hands tightened on her waist, swaying them gently back and forth as he traced a heated path up the line of her throat as his hand cupped her breast less than gently. “What then?”

She let out a breathy sigh, her fingernails tracing over the short hair on the back of his neck. “I would have tried to be good, I think. But it wouldn’t have taken me long to be all hot and bothered again, and I would have been staring at the clock, counting down the minutes until you were home. I don’t think I would have made it.”

He hummed as his lips brushed the sensitive skin under her ear, feeling her shiver in response. “So what you’re saying is that you were very very good, even though you didn’t want to be at all.” He slid a hand down her stomach, cupping her cunt through her jeans, and she rose up on her toes with an eager little sigh. “I think you should get a very special reward, if you’re up to it.”

She leaned back so she could look into his eyes, her pupils wide and full of smoldering heat. “I’m up for it.”

“Oh, I hope you are,” he said.