Virginia’s face paled, body shivering despite the warmth. She fingered her pearls, close to dropping her drink with the other hand. “You won’t say a thing. I see how you look at Emery.”
“How I look at Emery is none of your concern, considering if you continue to test my patience, the only thing you’ll be able to look at is the other side of prison bars.” His fingertips met, forming a steeple. He could have been talking about the weather with that tone. “In the interest of time, let’s cut to the chase. You’ll leave Eastridge. No one will see you again.”
Why? Why would she do that? What did he have on her? And my biggest question: why didn't he tell me anything?
A lie of omission still counted as a lie.
Betrayal sliced a path up my throat with the finesse of a machete hacking through a jungle. None of this made any sense. I wanted to interrupt with questions, but I feared nothing would be as candid as this moment here.
Without me.
Lies.
Four letters caused so much damage.
Virginia clenched her champagne glass until her knuckles turned white. “You have nothing but wild accusations. A thug with empty threats. So, why would I listen to anything you have to say?”
Ah.
The thug card. My favorite. Mostly, because I’d identified Virginia as a hypocrite from day one. I just never realized how accurate I'd been in my assessment.
“Because you’re scared.” My eyes scratched a path down her body. I sneered at her balled fist. Unnerved by the help’s son. I fucking thrived on karmic justice. “Look at you. You’re shaking at the very thought of being someone’s prison bitch.”
“No one will believe you.” Her head shook, but so did her whole body. “You are nothing but the son of my help—”
“Whom will people believe?” My hand made a sweeping gesture at her. “A washed-up has-been, no one in the history of Eastridge has ever liked, or me”—I pointed to myself, flashing her a charming-as-fuck smile that could win every woman over—“the self-made billionaire, who frequently gives back to the community and is referred to as the Patron Saint of Eastridge?”
I almost wished Emery could see the downfall of her mother. This hadn’t been my intention tonight. Gideon wanted me to keep quiet. As in, no feathers ruffled. A waiting game he'd endured for four years, suffering without his daughter.
Not your secret to tell, Nash.
True.
Didn't mean I had to sustain a healthy relationship with Virginia. It wouldn’t do anyone any favors, and she needed out of Emery’s life like I needed to seal the Singapore deal, quit this soul-sucking job, and confess everything to Emery.
At least, that’s what I told myself to justify skirting the boundaries of the promise I’d made Gideon.
Virginia resembled a toddler post-tantrum, the moment she realized she wouldn’t get her way.
I pulled my handkerchief from my pocket, wiped it across the bottom of my shoe, and tossed it at her face. “You okay there, Virginia? You look like someone who just learned she got knocked up by her high school health teacher. Sounds like the plot to a D-grade flick I’ve seen before. Spoiler alert: both the student and the teacher are fucked.”
Virginia clutched the cotton. “I—You—” She tossed it to the ground and stomped on it, determination so fierce, I actually appreciated it for reminding me of Emery. “You can't do this to me. Literally speaking, you cannot. Gideon wasn’t able to and neither are you.”
“Here’s what's going to happen.” I leaned up in my seat, knowing I appeared more formidable than any predator in the animal kingdom. “You’ll take your gaudy ass away from Emery, remove yourself as the settlor of her trust fund, round up your clown car of corrupt friends, and leave this town.”
“I will do no such thing!” The point of her toe scuffed the hardwood flooring. “You can’t talk to me like this!”
“I can talk to you however I’d like. Unless you do exactly as I say, you’ll experience worse in prison.” In fact, I looked forward to it. I toyed with a pen, nonchalant with my ruthlessness. “Wave goodbye to your chilled fennel soups that taste like armpits, your shitty orange spray tans, and your uneven haircuts, Virginia. Your life in Eastridge is over. Your life as you know it is over.”
“I'll tell Emery.”
That gave me pause.
The only thing she could have possibly said to give me hesitation.
“You won’t.” I considered the ledger, more than willing to turn it—and myself—in if it came to that. “I have something Gideon doesn’t. Proof.”
A smile curved up Virginia’s lips. She could’ve been pretty. Beautiful, even. Too bad she conducted herself with the moral compass of the wicked stepmothers in every Brothers Grimm fairy tale. “You’re bluffing, otherwise it wouldn't have taken four years for this conversation to transpire.”
The switch flipped. Her shoulders pulled back. So dumb for thinking I would ever relent. If she thought this was over, she’d never met persistence like mine before. Especially when it came to protecting people I cared about.
Virginia turned. I would have parted with the final threat, but when we both shifted our attention to the doorframe, we encountered my blue-gray storm.
Emery.
Virginia carried herself with an authority she’d never been granted. I would have admired her for it, except she’d raised me to be as cutthroat as herself. That, and I reeled from the revelations, struggling to take them all in.
I needed that moment where everything clicked. It didn’t come, and trying to make sense of their fight reminded me of trying to catch rain with my fingertips. Pointless.
Bottom line—I’d been lied to.
It stabbed me in a place I thought had scabbed over. The last big lie in my life spiraled out of control. I barely recovered from the Winthrop Scandal. How many more lies did I have to endure?
“Oh, Emery, honey.” That smile looked demented on Virginia’s face. “Let’s get this dinner started. Why don’t you go hug your father?”
My eyes burned with the effort it took not to glance at Nash. I scrunched my nose. “God, Virginia, don’t call him that.”
“Why not?” So smug, her face reminded me of Basil’s after she’d left our A.P. Spanish exam, having cheated.
“Virginia,” Nash warned.
His tone brought chills to my body, so much venom, it should have killed her on the spot. I stared at him, eyes slanted, trying to figure everything out.
And here was the crux of it all. I loved listening to Nash fight for me, but I was capable of fighting for myself. Especially when he kept secrets everyone but me seemed to know. Who lied to someone they cared about? If he could lie so easily to me, what else had he lied about?
“Why wouldn’t I call him your father?” She downed her champagne, leaving a blood-colored lipstick stain around the glass’s rim. “He is, after all, your biological father.”
She’d shocked me into silence, but it wasn’t her words or their cold delivery that pained me. It was the lack of surprise in Nash’s eyes.
He’d known, and he'd kept it from me.