Hidden Seams

by Alessandra Torre

  “Is it?” She spins her chair to face me, her eyebrows raising. “What do you think, Mr. Lent?”

  I say nothing, but I don’t like where this is going.

  “Do you think it’s ‘very unlikely’ for a gay man to have sex with a woman?” God, I want to stuff my cock past those lips. I want to grip the back of her head and go slowly, her nails digging into the cheeks of my ass, her eyes on mine as her tongue presses against my shaft.

  “I think alcohol can make a lot of people do unlikely things,” I speak evenly, but feel the scratch of the tally as she gains another point.

  “I mean—” she shrugs, her hands raising in an innocent gesture. “You’re a gay man, right?” She glances at the other men around the table. “I’m new to this situation, but I believe that you and Mr. Horace were—”

  “Partners.” I clear my throat and pick up the gold pen that sits on the portfolio before me. “Yes. We were.”

  “So, you’re gay. Right?” She leans forward, perching her elbow on the table and resting her chin on her fist, looking at me with mock interest.

  “I’m not sure what the relevance is, Miss McKenna.” John clears his throat. “Mr. Lent is not the subject of today’s meeting. You are.”

  I hold up a hand to stop him. “If you don’t mind, I’d like to speak to her alone.”

  John looks at me as if I’ve lost my damn mind. “Marco,” he lowers his voice and leans forward. “I strongly suggest—”

  “Wait outside.” I nod to the other men. “I’ll let you know when you can come back in.”

  I don’t look at her. I stare down the table and watch as the men, one by one, rise to their feet and leave the conference room. John is the last to go, and he takes his dear sweet time, buttoning his jacket and fixing me with a long look of warning. I don’t know what damage he thinks I could do. This situation, unbeknownst to him, is already fucked up beyond belief. When he shuts the door, the heavy oak clicking into place with a finality that echoes, I swivel my chair until I face her fully.

  “Drop the act. What do you want?”

  “I told you. I want to know—”

  “Bullshit.” My hands tighten on the arm of the chair, and I fight the urge to stand. “You’re a blackmailer.”

  “What?!” She seems bewildered, and I don’t buy it. “I’m not here to blackmail you.”

  “So, you genuinely think that you are Vince Horace’s daughter?”

  “Yes.” Her eyes dart to the side, and I can smell the lie. She doesn’t think she’s his daughter. Or, she’s not convinced of it.

  “And you wanted to fuck Daddy’s boyfriend? Is that what last night was?”

  “Gross!” She pushes away from the table and stands. “No.” She crosses her arms in front of her. “Last night was … I just wanted to know more about him.”

  “Funny, I don’t remember you asking many questions about him.”

  “Yeah, well.” She turns her head away, as if the far end of the conference room was interesting.

  “Yeah, well… what?” I move closer, and despite the clothes, the hair, she smells the same. If I strip her naked, pull out her bun, and kiss the lipstick off that mouth, she’ll look the same as yesterday. Gasp the same. Come the same.

  “Nothing.” She tightens the cross of her arms over her chest. “You’re very … distracting. I’m sure you know that.”

  Distracting. Vince had called me that more than a few times. From him, it’d been a playful compliment. From her, it’s an excuse, one designed to elude.

  “Besides, I thought you were gay.” She turns to me, and the bump of her elbows brushes against my chest.

  “I am gay.”

  “Are you sure?” She lifts her chin and the desire to kiss her is overwhelming.

  “What were you doing in that alley behind the house?”

  “Trying to get inside.”

  I blink at the quick honesty, then stab out while she is telling the truth.

  “Did you get hit by the Rolls on purpose?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did you like it when I fucked you?”

  She inhales, a quick intake before she answers. “Very much.”

  Two words that destroy my world. I step back and slide my hands into the pockets of my pants. Turn away from her and fight to find my bearings.

  Chapter 26

  AVERY

  I don’t understand this man. He turns away, and I can’t tell if he wants to kiss or throttle me. I’ve been off kilter since I walked in and saw him sitting at the end of the table, as if on a throne. I look down at the photo I’ve memorized every inch of. Before walking in, I’d been sure that the man had favored Vince Horace. But now, seeing the way that Marco had scoffed at it, I see it in another light. A faded photo, three decades old. A flimsy thing to build a paternity case on.

  “I came to New York to stop the letter.” I turn and he stills, his hands in his pocket, his head lifting to listen. “My attorney sent the letter, and I panicked. I thought I was being stupid, and…” I search for the right word. “Naive. So, I came here to try and get the package before it was delivered this morning.”

  He stays in place, and I hate his silence. I hate the stupid look of that suit, the way it hugs his build, the slick sheen of the fabric, the way it falls perfectly without a flaw.

  “Go on.”

  I swallow. “I wasn’t expecting you to be in the alley. When your car pulled out of the garage, I didn’t think. I just…”

  “You just jumped in front of a moving vehicle.” He turns, but keeps his distance, stepping closer to the window.

  I grimace. When put like that, it sounds stupid. “Kind of.”

  “That’s exactly what you did.”

  “Okay, yes,” I amend. “I jumped in front of the car.”

  “You lied to me.”

  “You told me you were an architect!” I sputter out the words. “And you failed to mention that you were GAY!”

  “Which you already knew,” he counters.

  “But you didn’t know I knew.”

  He looks up at the ceiling and blows out a frustrated breath. “If you came to New York to stop the letter, then … what? You overslept?”

  “Yes.”

  He shrugs. “So, then I kill the letter. Shred it. You can take our jet home. Problem solved.”

  He’s right. My panic from earlier, my mad rush across Spring Lake to get the package—we could just pretend it all never happened. I could be back home in a few hours, pulling on a pair of fuzzy socks, releasing my hair from this hell of a bun, and life could be back to normal.

  Except I still wouldn’t know who my father was.

  Except I’d still always wonder.

  Except that BE BOLD doesn’t mean a free ride home on the Horace jet.

  “What? You don’t like that idea?”

  I shake my head and don’t trust my voice. What can I even say? That I promised a brick poster that I’d try harder?

  “God, you’re infuriating.” He stops in front of a bank of windows and rests his hands on the ledge of the sill. Looks out the window and says nothing.

  I am infuriating. God, I’m infuriating myself. I don’t know what I want, other than I want to know something. I want to know, without a doubt, that Vince Horace is, or isn’t, my father. And I thought that could be easy, thought that one letter from Andrei could start some process in motion and I could just wait a few weeks and then get a letter in the mail. Task done. Question answered.

  But now, with the stack of attorneys in this meeting, with him glaring at me as if I’ve killed his puppy, it doesn’t seem simple.

  “Are you wearing the panties that match that bra?”

  He is still facing away from me when he asks the question.

  I shift and swallow, thinking of the small Vince Horace VH boutique I’d found, their lingerie department dominated by a life-size poster of Marco, one where he grinned at the camera, a bra hanging from his mouth. Emboldened, I’d skipped their cotton conserv
ation options and gone straight for the sinful section.

  I’d considered the selections and thought that the red and gold number would bring me courage. I hadn’t planned for his eyes to find the bra. I hadn’t expected my skin to heat, our eyes to hold, my mind to go haywire.

  I’d thought we were past that, and back on solid footing that moves toward a common goal. He asks that question and we are right back at his house, in the crazy mindset where hands yank at clothing, lips find each other, and sensibilities fly out the window.

  “I’m just curious.” He straightens and steps away from the window, swiveling on the soles of his dress boots. Wandering around the conference table, the space between us widens.

  “Curious?” I follow him with my eyes.

  “I’m curious how far you plan to take this ridiculous seduction attempt.”

  My jaw literally drops. I can feel the gap of my mouth and I snap it shut. “You think I wore this to seduce you? I didn’t even know you would be here.”

  “Plenty of other men in the room.” He smiles in the most condescending manner possible, and it’d be a waste to break that beautiful nose, but I’d do it. A quick upward jab would do wonders for that smirk.

  I’m not going to take his bait. I know that’s what this is. He’s goading me and a reaction other than cool dismissal would be wrong.

  “Fuck you.” Okay, so cool dismissal didn’t win out that time. That’s okay. I smooth down the front of my dress shirt and take a deep breath, irritated with his easy ability to get under my skin and fuck everything up. I shouldn’t be the one flustered. He’s the one who has acted inappropriately. He’s the one who—well. Maybe last night had been a joint event.

  “Fuck you…” he repeats slowly. “An interesting notion, but I’ve done that. The experience wasn’t good enough for a repeat performance. I think I’ll just go back to men.”

  The comment, deliberately meant to provoke, still stings like a hot knife. I turn away, walking to the same window he had looked out of, and release a breath. “Are you always such an ass?”

  “Yes.” I hear the squeak of a chair. “And it is in the interest of continuity that I must insist that you go back to your shithole of a city and let the big boys handle it from here.”

  I turn and stare at him, wondering if he is intentionally goading me into digging my heels into the New York City ground and stay, or if he genuinely expects that directive to get him somewhere. “The big boys?” I repeat.

  “Yes.” He smiles. “You know what big means, right?” He tilts his head to the side as if he’s thinking. “I think that’s the word you used last night. Big? Or was it huge?”

  “Your dick has nothing to do with this conversation.”

  “It doesn’t?” He frowns. “That’s interesting. So, what exactly was the purpose of getting me drunk and forcing yourself on me last night?”

  “Whaaat? I-I-I-” My words jumble into a knot, unable to string together a coherent response. “That’s a joke, right? You’re joking.”

  “Oh, I’m not joking.” His smile drops and he looks at me as if he is actually serious. “I don’t know whether to blame it on the alcohol or on pity, but whatever you pulled on me last night was bullshit, and I don’t appreciate it.”

  “You don’t appreciate it? You seemed to appreciate it just fine when you were breaking me in half with your cock!” The response explodes out of me, louder than I had intended, and we both glance toward the closed conference room door. When our eyes meet again, his jaw is tight, his lips thin, and any humor is gone from his features.

  “Vince is—was—gay. Not gay like me, where I can manage to fuck a girl and come. Gay. I spent ten years in his bed. Ten. Years. I ate breakfast with him every morning. Traveled the world with him. Listened to every story and chimed in on every decision. We went to orgies together, for fuck’s sake. All male fuckfests. He was GAY. He wanted me, not…” He reaches forward and jabs a finger onto the photo, onto my mother’s face. “Not this corn-fed hick.”

  Not gay like me, where I can manage to fuck a girl and come.

  I think of his fingers between my legs, the hungry way his mouth had met mine, the pant of his breath in the dark, the rigid bob of that cock, the hiss he had made when he pushed inside of me.

  I’m not crazy. He can say whatever he wants, but I’m still sore from him, I can still remember every detail of last night, and he didn’t manage to fuck me and come. He’d been desperate for it.

  “I think…” He closes his eyes and collects himself. When he opens them, his voice is calm and measured, with almost an eerie level of control. “I think that you are taking this as some sort of a game. This is not a game. This is my life and your intrusion in it has seriously fucked things up for me. If all that you care about is whether Vince is your father, then you need to step away from the situation now. Let the estate settle and then come back to me in a few months and we can determine paternity.”

  I don’t know how to respond. I don’t really even know what I want anymore. Is my paternity the only thing that I am here for? Will I be fine with getting the news that Vince is my father and walking away? He may not be, and that will end everything. But if he is… if he is my father, then what?

  “I can’t do that,” I say. “I can’t walk away right now. I’ve spent the last two days with this hope—” My voice cracks on the word and I hate showing him that bit of weakness. “You don’t know what it’s like to spend years searching every stranger’s face to see if they are your father, to see if they bear any resemblance to him. I realize that I look crazy. I realize that this is a long shot. You probably think that last night was some attempt to coerce you in some way, but even if this is a slim chance, it’s the only one I have. This is—he is—the only man, in the years since I got this photo, that actually looks like him. All I’m asking is for you to help me cross him off as a possibility.”

  He studies my face and I watch a muscle in his jaw twitch. He looks down at the photo, my finger still pinned to the man’s face, and then back up at me. “We can’t just give DNA samples to every person who shows up. Not when all that you have is a photo, and some story that we can’t validate. And what if we knew, with absolute certainty, that this was Vince?” He shrugs. “So, what? He’s sitting on a log with three other people. And your mother, who supposedly told you this story, is dead. Right? Didn’t even know his name, right?”

  He spits out the words as if they are arrows, and they land where he points them, deflating my hope, piercing my heart, and wounding my pride.

  “He was gay. Your mother probably fucked five guys that weekend and came home with one photo. Pointed out a guy and told you he’s your father. You’ve got one story and I’ve got ten years, plus forty more of a well-documented lifestyle, one that never mentions LiveAid, or a random fling with a woman. So, no. I’m not giving you his blood. And I’m not letting you ruin his legacy.”

  He steps closer, and where I felt sexual tension before, I only feel threatened now. “You chase this down, Avery, and tomorrow I’ll have a team in Detroit. They’ll pull apart every piece of your life, and dig out every secret you’ve got buried. They’ll find your mother and your adoptive parents, and do the same thing there. I’ve got eight hundred and fifty million reasons to bury you and your photo in a scandal. Give your mother, and whoever your real father is, some respect. Give up this stupid theory and go home.”

  He pushes the photo against my chest, the force of it almost pushing me back. Turning away, he strides to the door and leaves.

  Chapter 27

  MARCO

  Friday nights used to be reserved for orgies. It always started in the basement grotto, around and in the pool, the blue stretch of sexual perversion, the cool depths filled with Manhattan’s most beautiful bodies—men and women alike, their naked figures glowing in the pale lighting, their playful shrieks growing more carnal as the night progressed and more champagne popped. Vince loved it all, the beauty of a woman’s body, the strength of a m
an’s—and he would drink and flirt and swim until the moment when we would move upstairs and leave them all to their debauchery.

  I hated Fridays, grew bored with the constant buffet of naked bodies and men, the offers, the pressures, the harassment that comes with having a body and cock that no one is allowed to play with. Tell a woman or gay man they can’t touch something? Might as well dip it in gold and dust cocaine over it.

  And I was always untouchable, that rule established from that first moment in that bathroom. I was Vince’s, no one else’s. And he was mine. We were not a couple that swapped or shared. And it was, as he so often told me, none of their fucking business what we did with each other when we were alone.

  Now, I step into the pool area and try to remember the last Friday party we had. It was before that France trip, the one where Vince got dizzy, and I got worried, and we visited that clinic in Paris. That was the trip where a cautionary MRI delivered bad news, and we came back home with a ticking timeline. A timeline that had been wrong, overly optimistic, his expiration date one that all the money in the world couldn’t extend.

  Ten months ago? Was that all that it had been? The door behind me opens and I see Paul, one of the house butlers, pause in the opening. “Will you be taking a swim?” He hesitates. “I can heat towels and prepare the sauna.”

  “No.” I shake my head. “I’m going to head to bed.”

  “Certainly. Shall I close the kitchen for the evening?”

  I nod, turning back to the pool and watching the water lazily spin. Vince had loved this pool, used to swim laps each evening in it. We’d often settled painful decisions with a race, our talent closely matched despite the differences in our age. He had called it his ‘fountain of youth’, a phrase always delivered with a wry smile, the joke as much about the parties as the health benefits.

  Now, the joke falls flat. I look up and think of the six floors above me, the staff on every level, plumping pillows, dusting surfaces, and waiting for their next service opportunity.