I love this man.
I love him, I love him, I love him.
Forty-Six
Bennett
* * *
“You sitting down?” My attorney asks Wednesday afternoon. “I’ve got some news.”
“What’s going on?”
James breathes heavy into the other end. “Your brother has filed a suit to establish paternity.”
I sink into my desk chair, eyeing the drawer containing the stack of text transcripts. With everything going on this past week, I hadn’t had a chance to figure out exactly how I intended to use them, but now I know.
“Thanks for the information.” I try to end the call, but James protests. “James, it’s fine. I’ve got this. I’ll call you if I need anything else.”
I press the red button, pull up my contacts, and select Errol’s name. The line rings three times before the bastard answers.
“Come over,” I say. “We need to talk.”
“Thought that would get your attention.” Errol’s been standing in my doorway for a mere five seconds when I’m forced to restrain myself from knocking him to the floor. While I’d love to give him the beating he deserves, I invited him here for a discussion. For now, I’ll have to replay the fond memory of breaking his nose in the pool house back in high school, when I caught him trying to take advantage of some drunk girl from Worthington Heights High who was two seconds from blacking out and clearly unable to consent.
Besides, I’m not in the mood to wipe his pathetic blood off my foyer floor.
“Follow me. There’s something I need to show you.” I stride to my study, shoulders back, head high. My head swells with confidence because I’ve got the bastard and now he’s going to pay.
“What? What’s this about?” Errol asks when he steps inside.
I yank the transcripts from my top desk drawer and shove them at him. “Any of this look familiar to you?”
He straightens the stack, eyes narrowing as they glide over the disgusting discourse.
“What is this made-up garbage?”
“This garbage is proof of the sordid affair you led with your adopted sister. And while it’s merely a snapshot of your disgusting perversion, there’s more than enough evidence to show you’d been grooming her, you psychologically and emotionally abused her, you manipulated her, and you knew damn well about the pregnancy.” I point to the stack. “I’m sure Beth would love to read the sweet and wonderful things you said about her when you were nailing your sister behind her back.”
Errol stares at the papers, but his eyes stop scanning. He’s lost in thought, it would seem. His complexion tints a sickly shade of grey, his lips pressing flat, like he could be sick at any moment.
I always knew my mother’s intentions in keeping Honor out of this family, but I realize now that I had it all wrong with Errol. He wasn’t trying to protect his marriage so much as he was trying to erase any and all reminders of the man he is inside.
The sick, sordid monster of a man.
The part of him he hates.
And even if he were never to see Honor again (and he won’t), knowing that his younger brother is raising her, doing the right thing—would kill him. It would eat away at him, little by little, day by day.
“Little backstory for you,” I say, relishing in the opportunity to kick the man when he’s down. “Since no one in this family ever thought to throw the poor girl a bone, I had the decency to at least provide her with a cell phone. For safety reasons. Since I owned the line, all it took was a few phone calls and the carrier was able to provide me with transcripts of every message—text and picture—sent between the two of you. It’s all here. Every twisted little secret you thought you could bury.”
My words are ripe with self-righteousness, and I couldn’t care less.
“I’ve got everything in an email. I’m literally a single click away from sending this to your wife, to our mother, to literally anyone who might find any of this salacious enough to write a cover story or make a newspaper headline out of it,” I say. “Your life, as you know it, would be over, Errol. No beautiful, loyal wife. No infant son. No check-writing mother to afford your cushy lifestyle. No robust social circle. No one buying your art. No more reaping the benefits of your last name. You’d be a laughingstock, a joke. For the rest of your life.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“I would.”
“You’d do that to the kid? Put her through all of that?”
“If it means protecting her from you and our mother, then yes.” I come around the desk, closing the distance between us, nose to nose. “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”
“Speaking of heartbeats,” he says, squinting, “I hear you haven’t been doing too well lately.”
My gaze narrows. “I know exactly what you’re getting at, Errol, and it’s irrelevant to this discussion. Do me a favor and let’s stay on track. I’ve got more important things than you to tend to this afternoon.”
I check the clock. Honor and Eulalia should be home from school any minute, and I don’t want him near either of them.
“So what’ll it be, Errol?” I ask. “Knowing that I can take your house of cards down with the click of a button, do you still feel the need to move forward with your ridiculous paternity suit? Or are you going to do the right thing for once in your pathetic life?”
“Get over yourself,” he spits.
“Excuse me?”
“Don’t stand there and talk like you’re that much better than me. You’re thirty years old, but you might as well be a miserable old man. You think saving this kid and giving her some privileged life is going to redeem you? Erase all the shitty things you’ve done? Not how it works, Bennett.”
“I’ve never claimed to be perfect, but I’m sure as hell not going to put myself on your level. You fucked your sister.”
“Adopted sister.”
I throw my hands up, chuffing. “Like that makes it better.”
“That girl deserves a family,” Errol says. “Let her stay in the system. Let a family who actually wants her adopt her.”
“I want her. And I’ve already adopted her. The papers have been filed. She’s officially a Schoenbach, legally and otherwise.”
He groans. “You can hardly take care of yourself, how are you going to take care of a kid?”
“I’ve got help, not that it’s any of your business.”
“What, that baby-voiced blonde you’re screwing? That’s your help?” He’s got way too much to lose here to be so damn smug, but I know what he’s trying to do. “You and I both know you’ll screw that up sooner or later. There’s a reason you can’t keep ‘em longer than a few months. They find out what a coldhearted bastard you are and they leave you like they found you—miserable and alone.”
“Anything else you want to add?” I remain unfazed—the opposite of the effect he’s going for. He can spew all the vitriol he wants about Astaire. I’m not giving him a reaction. I’m not giving him any indication of how much she means to me because he’ll find a way to use it against me.