I didn’t want to open my eyes when I first woke the next morning. I could feel the heat of sunlight on my face and the warmth of the blankets resting over me. For a minute, I could make myself believe that I was at home in my own bed, that everything was safe and normal and perfect. But then my hand snaked across the mattress and found nothing but empty space.
Miles was gone.
I opened my eyes to confirm what my hand told me. There was still a satisfying dent in his pillow, but he was gone.
I didn’t get up right away. I lay there a little while longer, avoiding reality for just that little stretch of time. But then…my body stiff, my limbs sore, my face aching where the bruise marked my fair skin, I climbed out of bed and slipped into my favorite old bathrobe, a thin terrycloth thing my aunts gave me when I started high school.
Miles was sitting on the balcony that overlooked the city, a mug of coffee between both his hands. He was dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, his hair tousled in a way he would never allow anyone outside of his most intimate friends and family see. I stood there for a long minute, just enjoying the view. It reminded me of the few casual mornings we shared in the last month of our marriage, mornings when we woke together, made breakfast side by side, and shared it in the breakfast nook before curling up on the couch with the Sunday paper or a couple of good novels, so busy playing footsie or allowing our hands to wander that we never read a word.
The mornings I thought would last forever. Mornings that ended much too soon.
He looked up when I stepped out onto the balcony, immediately sliding over on the loveseat to make room for me. I sat beside him, tucking my feet up under my bottom as my gaze wandered out over the city.
“Where are we?”
“Rome.”
I nodded, remembering how much I’d wanted to come here since I was a small child and saw a documentary on the city in school. It seemed almost ordinary, this busy city with cars rushing here and there, pedestrians walking too quickly, just like any other city. It wasn’t how I’d imagined it would be.
“You sleep well?” Miles asked.
“Better than I thought I would.”
“You must be hungry. We can order something up, if you want.”
“In a little bit.”
I dragged my fingers through my hair, lifting the weight of it off my shoulders. I twisted into a knot, and then undid it. My hands were no longer shaking, but I could feel this deep vibration, almost as though my soul was trembling.
“I suppose you want to know everything that happened,” I said after a minute of heavy silence.
Miles’ shoulders moved ever so slightly. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”
“I don’t, really.”
He touched my hand lightly. “Then maybe I’m the one who should be telling a story.” I glanced at him and nodded. “I promised you the truth. I guess late is better than never.”
I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear what he had to say. What if his story was different from Dominic’s? What if he lied to me? Or he told the truth? What if he admitted that this had all been a scam, that he was still using me, even after all this time. Even after everything we shared in that last month of our marriage? What if…but I really couldn’t do that anymore, could I? I couldn’t keep pretending that not knowing was better than the truth.
He moved his hand away, holding his coffee with both hands again like he was trying to warm them. But it was warm out here, almost hot. A little breeze offered some relief, but only a little. Sweat dotted my forehead, but only some of it was caused by the temperature.
“Robert is something of a Lothario,” Miles began. “He’s always bounced from woman to woman, sometimes before the last knew that he’d moved on. And I was always bailing him out of trouble, ever since high school. He was a freshman the year I was a senior. I had to save him from a couple of cheerleaders who were determined to castrate him for cheating on them. And it just continued from there, year after year. I don’t think a month passed by when I wasn’t running interference between him and some woman.”
Miles set down his coffee and leaned forward, resting his chin in his hand. “It was all fun and games to him. It never crossed his mind that there would ever be consequences to his actions. And then he met Rebecca de Luca.”
I glanced at him as he said her name, catching something I hadn’t expected to hear in his voice. Sadness. Grief, almost. I couldn’t see his eyes, but the set of his jaw and the way his hands clenched when he sat up showed an emotion I didn’t understand.
He stood and walked to the railing, leaning over a little to look down at the street fifteen floors below us.
“She was twenty-two, newly arrived back in Massachusetts after spending most of her teens and young adulthood in Europe at some of the best prep schools and universities in the world. She was ready to stretch her legs, to live an adventure. And when she set eyes on Robert at a cocktail party my mother threw, you’d think Cinderella had just seen her prince for the first time.”
I tried to imagine that moment. Robert was a good-looking man, but he had a cockiness about him that I disliked. But I could see how a young, sheltered girl would find him very attractive. Adventurous, even. Reckless was the word that came to my mind when I thought of Robert, but maybe my vision of him was a little jaded by all I knew.
“They began seeing each other soon after. I didn’t find out about it until more than a month later. By then, all the warnings and admonitions I laid on him fell on deaf ears. He was beyond smitten. It was the first time I ever believed my brother when he said he was in love. And it had to be with her.
“I knew her family would be trouble, so I wasn’t surprised when Robert came to my place one night and told me that Dominic de Luca had warned him to stay away from Rebecca. He wanted me to talk to him, to try to smooth the way for him. He wanted me to make the de Lucas see that he loved her. But they weren’t having any of it.”
“You actually spoke to them?”
Miles turned to face me, leaning back against the railing with his ankles crossed. He studied my face for a minute, then his eyes fell to the ground.
“Martin de Luca and I had done some business together. We knew each other fairly well.”
“You did business with Martin de Luca?”
“Nothing illegal,” he said quickly. “Martin had a legitimate construction business just outside of Boston. I was working for my father at the time, with his business clients. Martin’s company was one of the clients I worked with. I learned a hell of a lot from Martin.”
“So you talked to him about Rebecca and Robert.”
“I wanted to. But he came to me first. Told me that Dominic had caught them together and he was worried he might do something to Robert. Told me to keep them apart.”
“That went well, I suppose.”
Miles looked up. “We Thorns don’t listen very well when someone is trying to keep us from the women we love.”
My eyes dropped from his, tears filling mine. There was a lot of implication in those words. And I was pretty sure he wasn’t thinking of me when he said it.
“One night, Robert shows up at my place. He’s bleeding from a gash on his forehead, blood smeared all over the front of his tuxedo shirt. There’d been an accident, he’d said. They were arguing, she was drunk, she grabbed the steering wheel, and his Porsche slammed into a tree less than a mile from her father’s house. She didn’t have a seatbelt on.”
I shook my head. “He just left her?”
“He thought she was dead. He thought her brother would kill him if he found him there. And he was right. Dominic was insanely possessive of his sister. I truly believe Robert would be dead if he had stayed there that night.”
“But to just leave her…”
“It wasn’t right.” Miles dragged his fingers through his hair as he leaned back, a sigh slipping from his lips. “I woke Claire and asked her to take Robert to the family home in the Berkshires. I figured it wo
uld take a day or two to smooth things over with Martin. I never imagined that things would explode the way they did. I honestly thought she might be injured, but she more likely passed out from alcohol than anything else. I never imagined she’d die. I thought Robert was exaggerating the extent of her injuries.
“I got a call from Martin not even an hour later. He wanted to know where Robert was. Wanted to know why he was with his daughter that night. He was slightly incoherent, jumping from subject to subject without making a lot of sense. The next morning, news of the accident was all over the local news. Rebecca was reported to be in a coma with severe head injuries. Robert called me in a panic; he wanted to come back; he wanted to go see her. I had to drive out there and calm him down in person.”
Emotion danced over his face as the memories played themselves out in his mind. He focused on me for a long second, then looked away again, almost as though he couldn’t stand to look at me as he relived some of the darkest moments of his recent past.
“Rebecca died a week later. Martin was inconsolable. My father and I went to the funeral, out of respect for Martin as a client. He took one look at me and…I have never seen such naked hatred before or since. He confronted me afterward, in his house, told me he was going to tell the police everything he knew; he told me he wanted to see Robert pay for what he’d done. But the police were already investigating the accident. I spoke to them. They’d had a reconstruction completed, taken fingerprints, and spoke to people at the local bar. As far as they were concerned, Rebecca was driving the car. And her blood alcohol levels upon entering the hospital were three times the legal limit. They were ready to close the book on the whole thing. But Martin…he wasn’t going to let that happen.
“I had to do something. I couldn’t let my brother go to jail. But I also couldn’t let my father know the role Robert played in the accident. My father was already put out with Robert. He’d warned him over and over again that he would cut him off if he screwed up again. I mean, this wasn’t the first time Robert did something stupid, or had some girl’s father chasing after him. This was just the most serious thing he’d ever done.”
I remembered the things Jackson had said at the hospital the night his wife collapsed. I remembered how his wrath was not just focused on Miles, but Robert, too.
My wife is dying. She might die tonight. And my children—my legacy—consists of a son who thought nothing of stealing his brother’s fiancée, and a son who ran when things got to hot. Some legacy I’ll leave behind when it’s my turn to go.
Jackson was clearly disappointed in his sons. And this definitely explained some of that.
“What did you do?”
Miles shrugged. “The same thing I’d always done. I protected my brother.”
Again he ran his fingers through his hair, making the tangled curls even more unruly. I wanted to go to him, to run my own fingers through his hair, to smooth away the worry lines between his eyes, to feel the roughness of his five o’clock shadow under my palm. But I didn’t. I stayed where I was, waiting for him to finish his story.
“I told Martin that I was driving the car that night. That I’d taken Robert’s car to his house so that Rebecca would come out with me, so that I could tell her that they had to stop seeing each other for their own safety. I told him that Rebecca had been drinking already and that she became so distraught with what I had to say that she grabbed the wheel and caused the accident.”
“Did he believe you?”
“Not at first. He had some of his people searching for Robert. They found him some weeks later, and Martin confronted him. But, of course, by then I’d told Robert what I’d done. He backed up my story. I don’t think Martin really believed him, but he went along with it. He needed to believe something. He needed something to hang it all on, someone to blame. And I gave him that.”
“But he would have wanted revenge.”
“He did. He wanted…”—Miles stopped, his eyes coming up to mine again—“…he wanted to destroy my family. He wanted to use my father’s company to promote his illegal dealings, to turn our family legacy into something dark and twisted and…” He shook his head. “Robert dropped a bomb on us, and I was the only thing standing between detonation and destruction. I couldn’t go to my father because it would have devastated him. I couldn’t go to Robert because he was so lost those months after Rebecca died. I really do believe he loved her. And I believe it had everything to do with what happened next.”
“With Claire?”
“Yeah.”
He came back over and sat beside me. “Everyone thinks that I left Massachusetts because of Claire and Robert. But that’s not true. I saw what was happening between them when I went up there to calm him down when the news hit the fan. Even then it was obvious that something was going on. As the weeks passed and they spent more and more time up in the Berkshires alone, it just became more obvious. And, to be honest, I was heartsick over it. And angry. And resentful. But I wasn’t surprised. I would have been okay with it, eventually. Maybe. But I wouldn’t have run out on everyone just because of that.”
“Then why did you leave?”
“To buy time. I had to find a way to stop Martin. I couldn’t let him destroy my father’s company or a reputation my family had built over many generations. We’ve been a lot of things, we Thorns, but none of it was ever illegal. And I wasn’t about to be the first to take us down that road.” He shook his head. “I simply didn’t know what else to do. I thought if I resigned from the company, if I disappeared for a while, Martin would finish grieving and start to see reason. Unfortunately, I was only partially correct.
“So, I took all the money I could scrap together, and I went to Joan. I told her everything, about Robert and Rebecca, about Robert and Claire, about Martin. Everything. She was the one who suggested we start a business. She said we needed to be able to show everyone that I hadn’t run away, that I was simply going out on my own. And construction was something I’d always been interested in, particularly green construction. So it made sense. And it worked, for a while. My father was none too pleased and my mother…she was heartbroken, but she insisted she understood. Robert assumed it was because of Claire. He tried to reach out a few times, to apologize. He never knew what Martin had threatened, not until I told him two days ago.”
“Why didn’t you tell him?”
Miles shrugged. “Didn’t see the point.”
“And me? What role did I play in this charade?”
Miles lifted his hand, like he was going to touch me, maybe hold my hand. But then he let it fall again, resting on his own thigh.
“It didn’t take long for Martin to find me. He was pissed that I resigned from the family business, removing access to the things he needed: client files, bank account numbers, inside information. But then he saw how well my construction business was going and figured it would be a good cover for his westward expansion. He’d wanted to expand his business for years, sending guys out to Colorado and California to test the waters there. He’d never considered Texas. But when he found me there, he decided there couldn’t be a better setup than a Thorn running an easily corruptible business—at least traditionally. It was part of the reason he’d gotten into construction in the first place. It just stopped being profitable as a front, so he took it legit. But my business could be highly lucrative, especially in a state that shared a border with Mexico. The only thing that would have been better would have been if I’d begun my business in El Paso, but he figured beggars couldn’t be choosers.”
He sat back and crossed his arms over his chest. “I needed an excuse in a hurry. So I told him that I was in the process of getting married and would need a few months to settle in with my new bride. He gave me six months. But I wasn’t even dating anyone at the time. And then you, quite literally, ran into me, and it just seemed to fall into place. I marry this naive girl who would never be the wiser, keep Martin on the ropes until I figured something out, then get out from under it all and go bac
k to my life like none of it ever happened. But then my mom got sick, and I got distracted, and it all fell apart.”
“And Martin came after you again.”
“Yeah.” There was real sorrow when he looked at me then. “He came to my office one afternoon with pictures. Picture of you at your aunts’ house, of you shopping with Lisa, of you visiting your friends at Starbuck’s. He said you were beautiful, and so vulnerable. How easy it would be for one of his men to simply pluck you off the street, make you disappear like you never existed. And that’s when I realized I’d not only not found a way to get out from under the pile of shit I’d pulled down on myself, but I’d dragged you into it alongside me. And you had no clue.”
I slid my hand into his. “You should have told me. I would have—”
“What? There wasn’t anything to do. He was very clear about his threat. And I couldn’t let anything happen to you.”
“Is that why you sent me away?”
He squeezed my hand, then stood again, pacing for a minute. “I didn’t know what else to do. I couldn’t let him hurt you. And it seemed to me you were safer far away from me.”
“What about you?”
“I wasn’t in danger. As long as Martin thought he could use me, I was safe.”
“Then how did you get him off your back?”
“I went to the FBI.”
Chapter 27
His story sounded like the plot for a bad television crime show.
He went back to Massachusetts and met with an FBI agent. A friend of a friend of Joan’s had arranged the meeting. They put a wire on him and had him arrange a group of meetings with Martin. And Martin apparently never suspected a thing. They met on three different occasions in Waco, each time in public, each time with Martin’s goons hanging around, guns obvious under their jackets, each time with unspoken threats hanging in the air. Martin described in clear detail at each of the meetings what, exactly, he wanted Miles to do with his business, how he was to transact these illegal acts, and who he was to do it with. It couldn’t have gone better if it had been scripted.
Billionaires In Love: 5 Books Billionaire Romance Bundle Page 58