“Who’s financing him?” I ask.
“I don’t know. I texted Charles during that dog-and-pony show asking the very same question. His people are looking into it.” His phone pings, and Damien raises an eyebrow. “And that’s why I pay them that ridiculous hourly rate.”
He opens the text, and from the way his expression shifts, I know it’s more bad news. “Carl Rosenfeld,” he says, making my stomach turn. “The attorneys are negotiating the final terms right now. Charles says he guesses they’ll have the deal papers signed within the week.”
I shudder. “He has no idea what he’s walking away from,” I say. “And into. Rosenfeld is a snake.”
Damien knows exactly how I feel about Carl Rosenfeld. He may be a brilliant entrepreneur, but he’s unethical as shit. He was my first boss in Los Angeles, and I learned that one the hard way. Most of all, he resents the hell out of Damien, who declined to work with him on what Carl considered a make-or-break deal.
Every once in a while, Carl manages to do the right thing, but it’s rare, and probably accidental. On top of that, a system for capturing and storing atmospheric energy is not within his regular field of expertise, so the fact that he’s involved at all seems incredibly odd to me.
“To me as well,” Damien says when I tell him as much. I pull my knees up and hug them. “I really thought you’d gotten through to him.”
“I thought I had, too.” He frowns, clearly considering something.
“What?”
“He said Jeremiah hadn’t been in contact, but this has my father’s scent all over it.”
“You think he lied?” The cat jumps back up onto the bed, and I stroke her fur, the sweetness of her purr counteracting the harsh reality that’s begun to fill the room.
“I think Ashton doesn’t trust me. And if my father’s been around since day one….”
He trails off, and I’m about to ask him to continue when his phone pings with another text.
He glances down, and I watch as his eyes go wide, this time not with surprise at the message, but with anger.
I start to ask what it is, but he passes me his phone, and I read it myself. It’s a text from the same number that has been sending the horrible videos. The number we now assume Ashton is using:
Did you hear my good news?
Of course, it’s not final yet. If you want to put up the financing—a non-equity position of course—I can publicly retract. Say I misunderstood my daddy. Do whatever I need to do to suggest you’re not the ass you are. Say the word and I’ll send you the wiring instructions.
“This doesn’t make sense,” I say.
“I know.” He doesn’t elaborate. Instead, he makes a call. He has the phone on speaker, and I know it’s for my benefit. I hear the ring, then Ryan’s voice.
“I just got a blackmail text from Ashton Stone,” Damien says. “At least it’s supposedly from him.”
“You think someone’s pretending to be him?” Ryan asks.
“It’s a theory.”
“Well, let me add some more information to the mix,” Ryan says. “I put a team on your father last night. Basic surveillance. Damien, I know Ashton told you he didn’t know the man. But apparently that’s not true. Hang on.”
A second later, there’s another ping signaling an incoming text. Damien switches to that app, and I climb off the bed so that I can look over his shoulder.
It’s a time-stamped photo from eleven last night, and it shows Jeremiah Stark and Ashton Stone deep in a conversation.
“Shit,” Damien says.
“I know.” Ryan clears his throat. “This is a still from the video. We don’t have any audio, but I can tell you that Stone looks agitated. About what, though, I couldn’t say.”
“Maybe he looked Jeremiah up after I talked with him,” Damien suggests.
“Sorry,” Ryan says. “You can’t give him the benefit of the doubt on this one. He lied to you. They’ve known each other for years.”
“How the hell do you know that?” Damien asks as his hand reaches for mine.
“Winston and Linda reported in this morning. They were able to get inside his childhood home yesterday evening. They talked to his mother. And they saw a picture of the two of them on her mantle. Jeremiah and Ashton looking pretty damn cozy.”
As he speaks, another ping hits Damien’s phone. Damien swipes, and the existing picture is replaced by another one. It’s far away, and slightly blurry, but it’s obvious that the men in the picture are Jeremiah and Ashton Stone.
“Linda was able to take a surreptitious picture. There’s no doubt about it. They know each other.”
I look at Damien’s face, and I see the sadness there. He thought that he’d made progress with the son he didn’t know he had. But now it seems like we’ve taken a million steps backwards.
This man’s heart has been poisoned against Damien. And I don’t know if there’s any way to fix that.
Under the circumstances, I’m surprised that Ashton lets us in to his hotel room so easily. It’s my first time up close with this man, and the moment is surreal. This is Damien’s son, after all.
As the door closes behind us, Damien walks past me. He passes Ashton the phone with the screen open to the blackmail demand.
I watch as Ashton’s eyes move as he reads the text. He looks up at Damien. “I didn’t send this,” he says. “But you already know that.”
“Do I?” Damien’s face is a mask, showing no emotion at all. Even I can’t read it. And I have no idea what Ashton’s talking about. Damien had been silent in the car, and I hadn’t wanted to press as he works through all the pieces of this family drama.
Ashton scoffs. “If you really thought I’d sent this, you’d release it to the press. Reveal me as a hypocrite.”
“Would I?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Maybe I believe you had a shit childhood, and I’m sorry about that. Maybe I wish I’d known you existed, and I’m sorry about that, too. Maybe that’s something you and I will both have to live with for the rest of our lives.”
He pauses, drawing a breath. “I know you’re hurt, and I get that. You’re pissed, and I get that, too. You want to know why someone kept you a secret from me, and so do I.”
He reaches for me, and I take his hand. “But I don’t think you sent that note. On the drive over, I wasn’t completely sure. Now, I think I am.”
“Think?”
“When Nikki got pregnant for the first time, we had a talk about how we would raise our kids,” he says, in what seems to be a complete non sequitur. “Ashley didn’t survive to birth, but everything we talked about that day was reiterated when we adopted Lara, then again when Anne and Bradley were born. Your sisters and brother.”
Ashton is slowly shaking his head, clearly confused by the direction of Damien’s thoughts. “What does that—”
“We swore we would tell them the truth. Always. We might pull it back to a kid-friendly truth, but we weren’t going to lie to our children. I figure you fall within parameters.”