The Bastard

by Lisa Renee Jones

  “No. Never.”

  “Does it bother you that I know?”

  “No, it doesn’t. I don’t announce what I am, but I own it.”

  “When was the last time you had an episode?”

  I cover her hand with mine, tension sliding down my spine. “Why, Harper?”

  “You don’t have to tell me. Sorry.” She tries to get off of me and I hold onto her.

  “Why, Harper?” I ask again, intent on getting an answer from her.

  “I just—if something happened, if you had one, if being here triggers one, I want to know how to help. I want to know what to do and what not to do.”

  I’m aware on every level that this is information she could use to hurt me. But I can’t seem to home in on that part of the equation. No one has ever asked me what to do or not do besides my mother. “This,” I say, dragging her mouth a breath from mine. “Kiss me, and kiss me with all you are.”

  She presses her lips to mine and her cellphone starts to ring this time. She groans and settles her forehead to mine, her hand on my jaw. “Twenty dollars of your billion says that will be my mother.”

  I’m struck by her ability to talk about my money and have it not feel like a play for my money. That’s the thing about having money, I’ve learned. It comes with agendas, other people’s agendas.

  “Talk to her,” I say, stroking her hair. “I’ll be here when you’re done.”

  “Let me just make sure it’s her.” She leans to the nightstand and grabs her phone and almost falls. She yelps and I catch her, helping her settle back on top of me. “Yep,” she says. “It’s her. I think I need that wine we didn’t finish to survive her tonight.”

  I roll her to her back. “I’ll get it.” I kiss her and stand up, walking toward the door as her phone stops ringing without her answering it.

  I turn to find her staring at me. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t apologize. Talk to your mom.”

  “Not just about the interruption again. About how she acted earlier, Eric. You’re being really great about her and she doesn’t deserve it.”

  “You already said all this.”

  “I know. I just needed to say it again.”

  I soften with her concern, and I wonder how anyone that thinks about everyone else the way she does, me especially, has made it this long in this family. “Talk to your mom,” I order playfully and head down the stairs.

  Once I’m at the bottom of the stairs, I punch in a text to Adam, who I’ve had in my phonebook since a job Walker did for Bennett Enterprises a few months back: How do we look out there?

  Like we’re both in Denver instead of New York City, he replies. In other words, he’s a smart ass and everything is clear. I walk into the living room, snag our wine glasses and the bottle and head back upstairs, ready to dig into the data Blake sent me before grabbing a few hours of sleep.

  I re-enter the bedroom to find Harper missing and the bathroom door shut. I walk to the bed, set down our glasses and fill them before I sit down myself to wait on her, keying my MacBook to life. It’s just about ready for use when Harper’s phone buzzes on the bed next to me. My gaze lifts instinctively and lands on a flashing text message from Gigi that says: Do not tell him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Eric

  I’m standing at the bathroom door, my arm resting on the jamb when Harper opens it. She jolts. “Eric.”

  “Start talking, Harper. No more fucking lies.”

  “You read my text messages,” she says, and it’s not a question. She knows I did, but I go ahead and drive that point all the fucking way home.

  “Damn straight I did,” I say. “You left your phone on the bed to flash right at me.”

  “If I wasn’t going to tell you, do you think I’d leave my phone on the bed?” she challenges and yanks her phone from my hand and starts reading. “He has to know everything. You wanted him here. I’m telling him.” She looks at me. “Does that sound like I had something to keep from you?”

  “Looks to me like you ran to the bathroom to pull yourself together.”

  “I had to pee, Eric. I’m human like that. Do you want to listen to me or are you just going to attack?”

  “Talk.”

  “I sent Gigi the message and she freaked out. She thinks it’s a wire transfer number that points to her. She said she had wires into her account that were large and random. Isaac said they were bonuses, but then he asked for the money back as loans. And for the record, she just told me this. I didn’t have a secret to keep. I just found out.” She tries to duck around me.

  I catch both of her wrists and pull her to me. “Why the fuck are you telling Gigi anything?”

  “I thought she might know what the sequence was. I thought she could help.”

  “Don’t tell Gigi anything you don’t talk to me about first. Do you understand?”

  She sucks in a breath and nods. “Yes,” she whispers. “I get it. You hate her. You have reason to hate her. I just—”

  “Don’t say another word. I don’t want to hear anything but your promise that it won’t happen again because I want to trust you, Harper, but I can’t if you’re with her.”

  “I’m not. I’m not with her. You know that. We’ve talked about this.”

  “And yet you were texting with her about the note.”

  “I was trying to help. I thought—I thought she could help.”

  I stare down at her, searching her eyes for the truth that is hers, but all I find is the one that’s mine. I release her and leave her there, exiting the bedroom to the hallway and my hands come down on the railing, the past playing in my mind. Gigi. That fucking bitch Gigi. I squeeze my eyes shut with a flashback, me at sixteen, my mother barely forty and sick, but all she thought of was me. I’d gotten a ride home from a buddy. I’m back there now and I never go there:

  Kevin pulls his Jeep into the drive, in front of our trailer that seems more broken down these days since my mother got sick. “Who’s the old lady with your mom?” Kevin asks of the woman standing with my mom on the wooden porch a neighbor built us a few years back.

  The answer to that question punches me in the chest and I stare, squeezing the stress ball in my hand that the special teacher I’m seeing swears will calm my mind. “No idea,” I say, squeezing harder now, fighting the assault of numbers threatening my mind, “but the church has been coming around a lot lately.”

  “They helping you guys?”

  I shrug and crush the ball, holding onto it. “I guess. See you tomorrow.” I open the door and get out, slamming the door behind me, and worried my mother needs my support, I head up the stairs.

  A wrinkled woman with orange-ish hair is standing in profile to me, facing my mother, and God, my mother looks so thin. She hugs herself and speaks to the woman. “You need to leave.”

  “Mom?” I say, uncertain about this reaction. My mother is a kind person. She doesn’t speak to people like that.

  The old lady turns her attention to me. “Is this the little bastard you want to call a Kingston?” She looks me up and down before eyeing my mother. “He’s no Kingston. He will never be a Kingston. Stay away, you little con artist.” She charges down the steps, passing me, and when my eyes meet my mother’s, I see the pain slicing through her stare.

  I rotate and charge after the old lady. “My mom is no con artist. She’s dying, you bitch! You’re horrible. Who are you?”

  “No one you will ever know. No one to you ever. Remember that in case she doesn’t. You are nothing. You will never be anything to me or us.” She climbs in the car and I rotate again and run toward my mother who is now inside the trailer.

  I enter to find her waiting for me, her arms folded in front of her chest again. “We need to talk,” she says.

  I shut the door. “Who was that woman?”

  “I have lied to you your entire life.”

  I clutch the ball in my hand. “What?”

  “Y
our father wasn’t a Navy SEAL. He didn’t die serving his country. That was your uncle, my youngest brother.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  She grabs another stress ball from the bar behind her and walks to me, pressing it into my free hand. “I had an affair. I slept with a married man, but I swear I didn’t know he was married until I was pregnant. He called me a slut and a liar and—” She sobs and covers her face with her hands.

  I know on some level I should comfort her, but I can’t do it. Numbers begin to stream and speak to me, they speak in ways I can’t explain, in ways I can’t calm. They tell me what to ask, what to think. “Who was that woman?”

  “Your grandmother. You’re a Kingston, son, and before I die, you will be claimed. That will be my gift to you. A ticket out of this hellhole.”

  My temples start to throb and data punches at my mind like fists on a bag. I start to lose reality and I can’t hold onto the balls anymore. I try. I try to squeeze them, but they tumble to the ground. I can’t think. I can’t see beyond what the numbers want to say to me. I sink to my knees and in the depths of thousands of numbers, I see only one thing. That old lady with the red hair’s disdainful look as she’d looked at my mother and called her a con artist right before she turned her attention to me, “The little bastard?”

  I blink back to the present, my knuckles white where I hold the banister. I’m not a little bastard now. I’m a big fucking bastard that could hurt that woman. Harper slides under my arms in front of me, her hand settling on my chest, heat radiating from her palm and down my arms. “I’m sorry,” she says. “She just—”

  “Choose now. Her or me.”

  “You,” she says immediately. “There’s no question there. You, Eric. If you would have given me the chance, I would have shown you that a long time ago.”

  “You were always one of them.”

  Pain darts through her eyes. “I was never one of them, but clearly I’m a fool. You’ll never believe that.” She tries to duck under my arms again and my leg captures hers, blocking her way.

  “Actions speak louder than words.”

  “Exactly,” she says. “I made a mistake tonight. I know that, but you give me no room to be human. I’m perfect or I’m a Kingston. I can’t do this. I can’t feel what I feel for you and have you destroy me the way you want to destroy them.” She tries to move away again but I don’t even think about letting her free.

  “Let me go,” she demands, her voice trembling. “Let me go and maybe this time I'll have the reality check to finally let you go.”

  “What do you feel, Harper?”

  “Anger.”

  I cup her face and cage her against the railing, my legs shackling hers. “You said you can’t feel what you feel if I’m going to destroy you. What do you feel?”

  “Too damn much for a man who doesn’t even know his own hatred. For a man who wants to destroy everyone attached to this family, and that means me.”

  “If anyone can destroy anyone, it’s you. You could, if I gave you the opportunity, if I trusted you enough, you could destroy me like no one else ever dreamt of destroying me.”

  “If you trust me? Because you don’t?”

  “Why should I give you that power? Why, Harper?”

  “Because,” she whispers, her voice a rasp of emotion, “if you don’t, then it’s too much. My too much is just that—too much and I can’t do this.”

  Her words radiate through me and shift something inside me. I need this woman and damn it, I know she could destroy me, but the bottom line is I don’t fucking care. “And if too much isn’t enough?” I demand, twining her hair around my hand.

  “Stop pushing me away.”

  “Does this feel like I’m pushing you away?” I cover her mouth with mine, and I don’t just kiss her. I demand more, because I finally understand the way Grayson craves his woman, the way he will do anything for her, risk anything for her. There is no such thing as too much with this woman; even if she does destroy me in the end.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Harper

  With the banister at my back and Eric in front of me, kissing me, his hands all over my body, it’s like something has snapped between us. It’s a matter of seconds, it seems, before my pants are off and his are open, a condom in his hand. It’s the condom that gets to me again, driving home how much I need to talk to him about certain things I haven’t yet, but now doesn’t feel like the time. Now really isn’t the time because he’s already kissing me again, lifting my knee to his hip and pressing inside me.

  Another few seconds and he’s lifting me instead of my leg, cupping my backside. My legs wrap around his hips, and he’s holding my weight, thrusting into me even as he kisses me. His tongue thrusting deep like his cock, and this is no gentle encounter between us. It’s wild, fast and hard and we’re both shuddering to release far too quickly, and yet it’s somehow perfect. I come back to reality with my face in his neck and he’s carrying me to the bathroom. He sits me on the sink and presses his hands on the counter on either side of me, anger burning in his eyes that sex clearly did nothing to tame. In fact, if anything, the opposite. He’s angrier now, like he’s pissed that he wanted and needed to fuck me. “Eric—”

  “Me or Gigi,” he says roughly, his face all hard lines and shadows.

  “You. You, Eric. You can read the messages. All of them.”

  “I will. Don’t tell her anything without talking to me first.”

  “I won’t.”

  He pulls out of me and tosses the condom in a trashcan, scrubbing his jaw before he looks at me. “You do know she could be setting you up, right?”

  “I know what she’s capable of,” I say. “I was going to tell you what she said.” I hop off the counter. “I want you to read the messages.” I start walking and he shackles my wrist and pulls me back to him.

  “I need to be able to trust you, Harper. There is no in between for us.”

  “You can. I swear to you, Eric, on my father’s life, on all that I am, that you can trust me. I’m sorry. You went downstairs and she texted me to see if we had any news and I just—I asked her about the number.”

  “How long have you known about the wire transfers?”

  “Just read the messages, Eric. I want to get you my phone.”

  He reaches into his pocket and produces my phone. “I have it, remember?”

  “Right. Good. Read the messages. Read any of my messages.”

  His stares at me, ignoring the messages, searching my face, and I don’t look away. I want him to see the truth in my eyes. “I will not ever go to Gigi or anyone without talking to you first. I know what she did to you and your mom. I should have thought—”

  “Yes. You should have.” He releases me and walks into the bedroom. I grab my pink silk robe from behind the door and quickly slip it on, entering the bedroom as he sits on one of the chairs and starts reading through my messages.

  I cross to sit in the chair angled his direction, right across from him. He finishes the thread with Gigi and then hands me my phone and reaches for his. He punches in an auto-dial and then it starts ringing on speakerphone. “Blake,” he says when a man answers. “Meet Harper.”

  “How the fuck are you, Harper?”

  I laugh. “Well you made me laugh, but otherwise”—my eyes meet Eric’s—“I’m not very fucking good, actually.”

  “Talk to me,” he says. “I’m everyone’s therapist. Well, my wife’s at least, or maybe she’s mine.”

  Eric leans toward me, his elbows on his knees. “Gigi freaked out when Harper told her about the message we got tonight. She thought it was a wire transfer number. Seems she’s been getting some large wires and then pulling the cash for Isaac.”

  “Indeed she has,” he says. “I sent you proof of those transactions. As for her pulling the cash and giving it to Isaac, I reserve judgment on that idea. If I can’t prove it, I don’t believe it.”

  “Agree
d,” Eric says. “What do you know about the wires she’s been getting?”

  “The identifier as you called it, is not a bank transaction, a foreign exchange number, or anything that pulls up electronically with any ease at all. I’ll dig into personal emails and documents over the next few days. I’ll let you know what I find.”

  Eric eyes me. “Questions for Blake?”

  “A very broad one. Do you have any idea what’s going on?”

  “A cover-up for sure,” he says. “My concern is that it could be a set-up with Eric as the target.”

  “I’m not setting him up. Eric, I’m not setting you up. I’m not part of this.”

  “We’ll talk later, Blake,” Eric says, disconnecting the line. “I know you’re not setting me up, but they may be setting me up through you and I can’t allow that to touch Grayson Bennett. He’s been too damn good to me.”

  Panic rushes over me and I pop to my feet. Eric is there with me, his hands settling on my arms. “I’m not going to let them hurt me or you. I’m here. I have a world of resources, which means you have a world of resources.”

  “There’s something weird about Isaac having me take over this union negotiation.”

  “Meaning what?”

  “Involving me came out of nowhere. It’s not what I do and it could have been to keep me busy, but it feels like more. My instinct, the first thing that came to my mind, was that he was setting me up in some way.”

  “Never disregard your instincts,” he says. “And I’d already planned on going to the union meeting with you.”

  “Maybe that’s the idea. Connect you and me to something unsavory. Don’t go with me.”

  “I’m going with you, Harper. End of subject.”

  “Eric—”

  He drags me closer and kisses me. “It’ll be fine.”

  “We don’t even know what’s going on. We don’t know where the bullets are coming from. Blake’s assumption feels right. This is a set-up. I brought you into a set-up. You have to leave.”

  “I’ll leave if you’ll come with me.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”