There was no point in lying.
“It’s all a matter of degrees,” I told him with a tight smile. “And it’s about to get worse. Where is she?”
He angled his head. “In her salon. Shall I bring refreshments?”
“No.” I gave a grim shake of my head. If I tried to eat anything at the moment, I was afraid I'd be sick. “See to it that we’re not interrupted.”
George acknowledged my words with a quick dip of his head. “Of course.”
My mother’s salon faced out on the sprawling gardens of the estate. She sat on a sofa that was more elegant than comfortable and she reclined there like a queen holding court. A queen of a desolate kingdom, I thought.
When she saw me, she inclined her head. I thought I saw a smile in her eyes, but it was gone so fast, I couldn’t be sure.
“How lovely to see you, Dominic.”
“Mom.” I remained where I was, near the doorway, ten feet away. It felt like an entire universe separated us. Tucking my hands into my pockets, I clenched my jaw. I didn’t know what to say or how to start. When she went to rise, I held out a hand and blurted out, “Did you steal me?”
Okay, that was a little more blunt than I had planned.
Her eyes were wide. All the blood drained out of her face.
“I beg your pardon.”
She sounded offended, but I’d seen something. A flicker in her eyes. Not…guilt, really. But something. Knowledge, maybe.
Taking a step forward, I forced my voice to stay calm. “You heard me. Did you steal me? Was I taken from some girl without her knowledge? Without her consent? Was I stolen?” I said the last three words slowly.
She laughed then. It was a nervous, fraudulent sound.
I was dazed, feeling like I had been cut adrift. I dropped down onto the chair behind me, but I was too far away and stumbled, off balance, almost falling onto my ass. I just barely managed to catch myself, hauling myself more firmly onto the seat. Then I just sat there and stared. She must have seen something on my face because her laughter faded and she jerked her eyes away.
“I hired a private investigator,” I said. The flat, almost lifeless tone of my voice struck me as being out of place. There was a raging inferno of emotion within me, but none of it showed in my voice. I sounded dead.
My mother lifted a hand to her mouth. “But…” She stopped, then tried again, her voice shaking. “I don’t understand. Haven’t we done our best to take care of you? I’ve loved you the best I can.”
“I know that.” Pity welled inside me. Pity and misery. She was telling the truth. Jacqueline St. James-Snow had loved me the best that she'd been able. But it was her kind of love and it wasn’t enough. Her idea of love was based on approval and living up to her set expectations.
I had always failed.
The fact that she'd twisted this around to be about her just showed how completely fucked up that had been.
“Look,” I said and then stopped because I didn’t even know what I wanted to say to her. After a moment, I shook my head. “I’m going to find the truth. I don’t care if it takes a hundred years and every cent I have to my name. I am going to find out the truth.”
Her gaze fell away, lingering on the hands she had knotted in her laps.
“It’s up to you,” I said. “But I’ve got a feeling I’m going to find out some ugly things. Are you going to tell me what you know and maybe, just maybe, come out of this with some dignity? Or am I going to have to find out everything on my own?”
A silence fell, one so heavy, so awful, I didn’t know if she was going to say anything, but she did.
“You have to understand,” she said, each word halting and slow. “I never meant to hurt anybody. And if you were taken from somebody without her consent, I had no knowledge of it. That was never my intention. I did not ask for that and I did not want that.”
I just nodded. So far, it seemed like she was telling the truth.
She didn’t speak for such a long time, I started to wonder if she was done. I was beginning to get restless. I needed to move things along. Leaning forward, I prodded, “What did you want?”
She shrugged, a gesture that was so out of place, so casual, so not Jacqueline St. James that I didn’t know what to make of it. A faint smile crossed her lips and she looked at me with more emotion in her eyes than I'd seen in twenty-eight years.
“I wanted you, Dominic. I wanted a baby, a child. Your father and I had tried for years to have a baby of our own, but we couldn’t.” She looked away. “I couldn't.”
With the two children my father and his new, much younger, wife had, I'd figured that one out on my own, but this was the first time I'd heard her say it.
“We were approached by somebody who told us they could help. Maybe we couldn’t have a biological child, but we could adopt. It could be quiet, completely private. Nobody had to know. They specialized in such matters. Placing children and families...people in…unique situations.”
Unique situations. What the hell did that mean?
She laughed, and it was that nervous laugh again.
“What are you talking about?” I had to fight not to yell now. That’s strange emotionless tone was gone. I feel like my control was slipping fast. I needed answers before I lost it. “What unique situations?”
“Why, what do you think?” She stared at me with an expression that was almost pity. “Dominic, this man worked with families like ours. He found babies from...” Her words trailed away and I could see her struggling to find a way to explain this in a fashion that wouldn’t infuriate me.
My stomach was churning. “Let me see if I can figure it out for myself,” I said, my voice soft, almost polite. “Girls from rich families. Rich white girls who found themselves holding a little stick with two pink lines, right?”
The weak smile on her face told me I was right.
“He made the pregnancies go away,” I continued.
“Yes.” The word was soft.
My head was reeling. Rising, I moved over to the window. My muscles felt like they were locking down on me, so rigid, so tight. “Did the girls know?”
People who specialized in placing babies from problem pregnancies. The New York elite was compromised of some of the most conservative imaginable. Even now, a fifteen or sixteen year-old girl who ended up pregnant caused such a ripple of sensation, it was almost laughable. Except it wasn’t funny.
A memory came to me. One of my father’s old friends had a daughter who was five or six years younger than me. I remembered her because she'd had a crush on me when I was a senior in high school.
About five years ago, rumors started that she was pregnant, fairly far along. Then she was in France. A few months later, she was back. And she wasn’t pregnant.
I ran into her at a party over the holidays about a year later. She was young, had her whole life ahead of her. But she was just a shadow of herself. Haunted, almost gray by the misery that weighed her down. She was also a far cry away from the girl I remembered. She had been bright, happy, and now she was a shadow.
My mother was still fiddling with her skirt and I asked her again, “Did the girls know?”
“Dominic, you must understand—”
I shot up from the chair, glaring down at her. “Well, I don’t! I don’t understand. I don’t understand anything. All I wanted to do was feel like I belonged somewhere. It was never here.” She flinched at my words and I tried to soften my voice. “I know you love me. I know you tried. Solomon never did. He never cared and he certainly never tried. He couldn’t make his disgust with me more obvious. It was almost a relief when he turned his back on me.”
“You and I both.”
At my mother’s soft words, I lifted my head, studying her. She couldn’t have caught me more off-guard if she had slapped me.
“Do you think that was easy?” She rose and moved to the small bar tucked in the corner. After she poured herself a glass of sherry, she tipped it in my direction. “Please pardon the
rudeness. I realize it’s early.”
She took a sip, sighed, then tipped her head back.
I'd never seen her look more human.
“You can't know what that year did to me. But Solomon…” When she said my father’s name, her face twisted in a scowl. “He acted like nothing had happened. Oh, he put on a good show when people asked about you, when the police came around, when it was expected of him. But when I was lying in bed at night, crying, grieving, worrying? He carried on, business as usual. He told me things sometimes just weren’t meant to be and if it was that hard on me, we could always get another baby.” She laughed again, but it sounded more like a sob this time. “As if you could be replaced.”
I took a moment to process the words, to understand that my feelings of anger and abandonment towards my father were justified, that they weren't just in my head. Then I pushed it aside. I already knew what an asshole Solomon Snow was. I needed things I didn't know.
“I need to know how it worked.”
Slowly, she lifted her head and gazed at me. After a moment, she nodded. “I don’t know any details or specifics. It never occurred to me to ask. When they told me they could help me get a baby, a newborn, all I cared about was getting you.”
“Okay.” I nodded. If there was something illegal going on, they probably weren’t going to let out a bunch of information, anyway. “Who were they, what did they want, how did it happen?”
She looked away. “It was easy. They wanted five hundred thousand dollars and I paid them. Not all of it up front, of course. I wasn’t a fool. It was twenty percent up front. I offered to provide for medical care when it arose, but they said it wasn’t necessary. The girl’s family was to provide for the prenatal care. They just wanted to make sure the baby had a good home and would be loved and cared for.” She took another sip of sherry, her eyes distant. She was smiling now. “Three weeks later, they brought you to me. I spoke with several people, but there was one man who seemed to be in charge. I gave him the rest of the money. He left.” She glanced at me. “That was it. I never heard from them again.”
“That was it? Just as easy as that? What about background checks, documentation, anything?” I'd heard of people going through more to adopt a pet.
My mother shrugged. “There were some documents. I was asked never to seek information on the birth parents. As it was never my intention to do so, that was easy enough to do.”
She took a deep, shuddering sigh and then she rose. There was a credenza near the door and she went straight to it.
I was still struggling to figure out what to ask, how to get the information I knew she had to have. She had to know something. My mother was self-involved, self-absorbed, and selfish. But she wasn’t stupid. Even as I was racking my brain, she wrote something down and then turned to me.
“This is the name I have. It’s the only name.” Then she looked down at the paper, folding it as she spoke. “Whatever you find out, please don’t hate me. I only wanted a child, Dominic.”
Chapter Five
Aleena
“Is she telling the truth?”
I sat across from Dominic and a piece of paper lay on the table between us. It was elegant, the palest of ivory and the handwriting on it was a sweeping, flowery scrawl.
Dominic hadn’t answered yet. He was still staring at the name as though that alone would force it to reveal its secrets.
“Dominic?”
Slowly, he dragged his gaze away from the paper and looked at me.
He shrugged and rose from the table. I watched as he moved over to the bar and splashed some scotch into a glass. He paused, then shrugged and splashed in more. He tossed it back, grimaced and then I watched as he refilled the glass and tossed back the same healthy serving again.
When he went to repeat it a third time, I pushed back from the table. “You think getting wasted is going to help?”
“Can’t hurt.” He shrugged.
“No.” I put my hand on his wrist and caught the bottle, tugged it away. He glared at me as I put the stopper back in the bottle and wrapped my arms around his neck. “If you need to lose yourself in vice, use me instead.”
Heat flashed in his eyes. Then, with a heavy sigh, he tugged me against him, tucking my head under his chin. “Part of me wishes I’d never started looking into this,” he said softly.
I tilted my head back and kissed his chin. “You want the truth. It’s who you are.”
His hands kneaded my waist and I arched closer, rubbing my body against his like a cat. He slid one hand down my back, bringing me flush against him. My body instantly responded to his, desire and heat flooding through me.
“Let me make you feel better,” I said softly. “Let me take care of you.”
I pressed against his chest, holding him at bay as I eased back. Watching him, I went to my knees. His eyes, hooded and dark, rested on my face. Without looking away from him, I loosened his belt and undid the buckle. I lowered the zipper and pulled him free. I wrapped my hand around the base of his thick shaft and watched as it swelled.
I leaned forward and took the head between my lips. He made a sound as I swirled my tongue around the tip. He fisted a hand in my hair, my name coming out as a growl.
I hummed in the back of my throat as I took him deeper. He was only half-hard, so I was able to take all of him without any problem. He rolled his hips forward, forcing his cock deeper until he was bumping the back of my throat.
We fell into a rhythm as his cock grew, me swaying forward while he drove himself into my mouth. My breasts were full, heavy. My belly ached and my clit pulsed with each thrust of his cock against the back of my throat. I cupped his balls with one hand, balancing myself against his hip with the other hand.
He groaned and I felt his balls tighten. He was close. He fisted both his hands in my hair and pushed deep, deeper than he had before, holding himself steady.
“Relax, baby,” he said, his voice ragged, panting as he held my head in place.
I fought not to gag, fought to relax the muscles in my throat as he came. My fingers flexed against his pants as I swallowed.
A few minutes later, he held me on the couch, his face buried in my hair. His arms tightened around me. “Thank you,” he whispered.
“Any time.” My voice sounded hoarse and I reached for my wine, taking another sip of it before I changed the subject. “What are you going to do?” I asked him, knowing I didn't need to elaborate as to what I was talking about.
“Give the name to Kowalski.” His breath tickled my cheek as he spoke. “That’s the investigator. I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“Call him now,” I suggested. I angled my head up and studied him. “You’ll feel better once you do.”
Resting my hand on his chest, I waited for him to respond.
Instead of saying anything, he shifted around, removing one arm from around my waist. From the corner of my eye, I could see him holding his phone. He used his thumb to pull up the contacts and scroll until he found a number. I listened to the one-sided conversation and then looked up when Dominic said, “Hold on. I’m not sure…” He glanced down at me. “When is my schedule free tomorrow?”
“You don’t ask for much, do you? The sun, the moon, the stars…” I sighed and leaned forward, grabbing my own phone. After a moment, I found pretty much what I’d expected. “You’re free after five-thirty.”
“Thanks.” He started talking to the investigator again. “How about six?” Then he fired off the address to the penthouse.
I blew out a breath and tried to figure out if having an investigator over to the house was something that required dinner…or just hors d’oeuvres. Or if it required my presence at all.
He hung up a few minutes later and wrapped both arms around me. As he rested his chin on my shoulder, he answered my unasked question. “I want you there tomorrow.”
“I'll be there,” I promised. I felt some of the tension ease from his body.
After a moment, he spoke again, “I
don’t think my mother knew—Jacqueline, I mean.”
“She is your mother.” I didn’t let the personal dislike of the woman show in my voice. She might be an ice-edged bitch, but she did love her son. She’d stood by him when others hadn’t and she done what she could to make him safe, to make him feel safe after a terrible trauma. For that, I could put up with a lot of shit from her. “Whether she gave birth to you or not, she’s loved you as her son for almost three decades, Dominic.”
“I know.” He kissed my shoulder. “I don’t think she knew. She’s manipulative. She can be cruel. She’s very self-centered. But she’s not self-destructive and while she’s too caught up in her own worldview to see outside of it, she wouldn’t be deliberately cruel, not like that.”
I knew where he was going with this. “You don’t think she could be party to stealing a child from his parents.”
He was quiet for a long moment. Then he asked, “Am I being naïve?”
“No.” I turned my face to his. He was so close, I could kiss him. So I did. “I think you’re being a son.”
* * *
Stanley Kowalski looked like the former cop Dominic had said he was. He had a thin, intelligent face and dark, shrewd eyes behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. I liked him almost immediately. He sat across from me and carefully selected a canapé from the tray Francisco had put together.
The chef had graciously agreed to come in and help put together some light fare for the evening. I’d told him I’d love him forever and he had laughed, told me that I already did. He wasn’t wrong. The man was quickly becoming one of my favorite people.
“Is this something that’s going to make me nauseated if I find out what’s inside?” Kowalski asked, studying the colorful bit of food he held.
“It’s cream cheese and shrimp.” I grinned at him. “On a cracker. There’s a fancier name for it, but that’s basically all it is.”
“Okay.” He popped it into his mouth. “Good. Fancy name or no.”
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