No More Masquerade

by Angel Payne

  Lance’s murmur flowed out on the air. “Why don’t we give Mom and Dad some time alone? Maybe we can find Zack and Britta downstairs. That espresso is sounding better by the minute.”

  I wanted to hug the man for his brilliance. I didn’t give Killian any doubt about where I stood on his brother’s suggestion, grabbing my bag and heading for the door. The walls were closing in. We all needed a break.

  Kil and Lance took turns kissing Willa on the cheek then patting their dad on the shoulder. Once we left the room and were about to enter the stairwell again, I turned to them both, again overwhelmed by the need to embrace them. “Are you guys okay?”

  They both blinked and stared like I’d spawned a second head. Clearly, it wasn’t a question you asked a Stone male.

  “Of course,” Killian muttered. “We’re fine.”

  Lance gave his brother a shoulder check before filling in, “What he means to say is that we’ll figure out what the hell is really the truth, after Father stabilizes and we determine what shit was the drugs talking instead of him. Then we’ll go from there.”

  Though I liked Lance more with every passing minute, I wondered about his sanity now—the same way I wondered when or if Josiah would ever “stabilize.”

  “Andrea didn’t look surprised by anything your dad said,” I replied, glancing to Killian to gauge if he agreed with my take. “She really just seemed pissed that she wasn’t the one in control of the announcement.”

  Though Kil nodded carefully at my assertion, he didn’t say anything. He looked more tired than I’d ever seen him, and the expression got worse as he watched Trey reappear down the hall, making his way back toward Josiah’s room. “I swear to God, if he gets back in there and upsets Fath—Josia—” He dragged a hand through his hair. “Fuck.”

  “You need some fresh air, brother.” Lance deliberately emphasized the last word, renewing my desire to kiss his big, booted toes. “Come on. Let’s get out of here for a few minutes.”

  But just as we cleared the bottom of our “private exit,” Lance and Killian reached for their phones, suddenly vibrating in tandem with incoming texts.

  “Trey,” Lance said.

  “Crap,” Kil growled.

  I peered over his shoulder at the missive.

  Old man stroking out. Get ur asses back here.

  He wasn’t a wordsmith but we didn’t need one. We took the stairs back up at a sprint, crashing through the doors at the top before wheeling around to witness an instant replay of what we’d experienced less than eighteen hours before—outside Ban’s room.

  A small army of doctors and nurses rushed in and out of the room. Willa and Trey were pressed against the wall outside, clinging to each other. The poor woman looked helpless and horrified at the same time.

  What kind of nightmare was I waiting to wake up from?

  Lance and Killian’s long strides had me running to keep up as we approached. Through her tears, Willa choked out that Josiah was apparently having a severe stroke. The medical team was doing everything they could do to keep him comfortable and safe—and alive.

  Through the window, the man appeared to be sleeping peacefully. The only new addition was an oxygen mask over his nose and mouth. But as additions went, it was significant.

  I pulled Willa into a hug. The woman returned my embrace with fierce but trembling force. I whispered into her ear, “What can we do for you?”

  She stepped back and shook her head. “You sweet girl. There’s nothing we can do, Claire. It’s all in God’s hands now…a matter of time, I suppose. We just have to wait.”

  My gaze fell to the delicate gold cross hanging around her frail neck. The jewelry seemed a part of her, so natural that I’d never thought about it before now. That was probably because she was such an unstoppable force of nature. And today, though nature had turned the tables on the woman, Willa was definitely at an odd peace with everything.

  That didn’t stop me from wishing her husband hadn’t dropped such a bomb on her, as what seemed to be his final act. What a despicable way to go out. But Josiah was an original, fully living up to the famous—and infamous—legacy of the Stone family name. This was how the man rolled. Always on his terms, and always in a blaze of glory.

  Chapter Eight

  Killian

  While Chicago bustled its way through another frantic lunch hour, I took the hand of the man who’d just dropped a bombshell in the middle of this hospital room. They’d finally let us back in with Father…and urged us to say our goodbyes.

  Father started wheezing again, to the point that a nurse rushed in to adjust the oxygen flow to his mask. The fix…wasn’t one. Even with the extra air, he struggled for breath.

  Lance grabbed Father’s other hand. Mother was with him, tears coursing down her cheeks. Looking at her face, so beautiful yet wrecked, made it impossible for anyone to accept that the two of them had said vows forty-two years ago in a marriage that was more business merger than matrimony. Maybe that was why Mother accepted the blow about Margaux with the peace of a fucking saint, though it was clear that somewhere along the way, she’d given her own heart completely to the man. It also made every minute of the next hour more complicated—and heartbreaking.

  At last, his breathing evened.

  Then slowed.

  And shortly after one o’clock that day, the second man I’d called Father for most of my life slipped into the stars.

  That night, the impending storm moved in fully over the city. Perfect. The sky shed the tears I refused to indulge anymore. At least that was the story I threw at myself. Deep—very deep—inside, my heart battered my soul with the truth. I was fucking terrified of those tears. They’d dissolve the last threads of the parchment inside, not an option no matter how appealing the idea seemed now. The strangest image kept appearing in my head, of a little framed plaque Britta kept on her desk in the office. It was an image of an ocean wave bashing a cliff, with the words What you resist, persists.

  As usual, fate was getting the last laugh.

  How long had I spent on the illusion that I’d get to take a pass on this day? That the great and mighty Killian Stone got to take a pass on this fucking pain?

  Somehow, I had to keep putting the steps in front of each other. Keeping up this shell of a person, so nobody saw the crumbling core beneath.

  Fortunately, automaton status wasn’t anything new to me. From MIT finals to all-night contract negotiations to putting on a face for the paparazzi, I was very adept at pretending I was somebody else—which was damn good now, since I wasn’t sure who the fuck that was anymore. The mask of the dutiful family representative fit better than ever as I followed Josiah Benjamin Stone’s precise instructions for his post-mortem fanfare. But making arrangements for Nolan Banyan Klarke that possessed the dignity and discretion the man deserved? The feat was finally managed, but only with Claire and Lance’s help. Numerous times a day, God and his deity friends received an earful of my thanks for my woman and my brother.

  The heavens continued to cry on the city. Which was just fucking fine by me.

  By three the next morning, Claire stumbled into the bedroom at the condo and fell into bed. She was asleep before her head hit the pillow.

  I felt like a caged animal.

  I prowled the length of the condo. Attempted some work. Prowled again. Tried napping on the couch. Prowled more. Cued up one of my favorite movies, a classic James Bond. Connery didn’t help. Neither did switching to Daniel Craig.

  At eight-thirty, I quietly changed into running gear. After scribbling a note to Claire, I was out the door.

  Without a route in mind, I took off into the rain. The freezing lashes were the perfect pain against my face, collecting in my stubble, running down my neck and chest. I took a circuitous route before finding myself on the lakefront trail, the waves calling to me in the dark kinship of like spirits. My heavy steps splatted the pavement in strange syncopation with the freezing waters churning beneath the black clouds, an incarnation of m
y chaos-driven thoughts.

  After a while, I stopped to recover and looked up. Oddly, or maybe not so, the logo on the side of Margaux’s hotel beamed through the mist at me. Less than thirty minutes later, I found myself dripping in the hallway outside her suite door, rapping on the portal with soft but steady pressure.

  A long minute passed. I heard rustling from inside then noticed the peephole darkening before a soft “Oh, my God” punched the air. Margaux wasn’t the source. It belonged to a man.

  Correction. A boy. The portal swung open to reveal a kid who looked about twelve. That meant I’d either aged a lot in the last two days or the pretty young thing was really barely through puberty. Logic dictated the truth was probably somewhere in between.

  “Mr. Stone,” he bade with chilly politeness. “Won’t you please come in?” After I stepped inside, he fingered the long bangs off his face and declared, “I’m Sorrelle, Margaux’s Midwest assistant.”

  I schooled my features into neutrality. “Of course you are.”

  “Can I take your—errrmm—jacket? Looks like it’s still a mess outside.”

  I unzipped my jacket and handed it over, if only for the brief amusement of watching the kid try to handle the soggy thing. “Thanks.”

  “Miss Asher will be out in a minute. She—ummm—wasn’t expecting anyone.”

  “I know. I won’t be long. I just—”

  “Wanted to come and check on the fallout status from Josiah’s blast?”

  The accusation was hurled by the woman who pushed back the slider to the bedroom with a glare stamped on her face and tension defining every inch of her stance. Though the expression and the posture weren’t anything new for Margaux, I was still compelled to give her a stunned once-over. It was the first time I’d seen her out of designer heels and three inches of makeup. Granted, her sweat outfit was some kind of designer thing, with rhinestones up one leg and a gold zipper pull, but it was her eyes that really stopped me. Normally alert and mischievous as a cat, they were now sunken and red-rimmed, indicating she’d had as little luck with sleep as I had last night.

  “I was out for a run, and found myself in the neighborhood,” I finally said. “Thought I’d come see how you’re doing.”

  “‘Found yourself in the neighborhood’?” She spurted out a laugh. “Is that really what Josiah told you to say, brother dear?”

  I almost boomeranged the laugh back. If she only knew about the deception that canceled out the one she’d been hit with. The skeletons in the Stone family closet got more interesting by the day.

  “You know I’ve never played messenger boy for my father, Margaux.” I folded my arms and squared my jaw, emphasizing that I wouldn’t take her lip even with shock and pain as its inspiration. “Besides…he’s gone. You might have already heard. We prepped a statement for all the morning news feeds.”

  She popped out a hip and folded her arms, too. “In case it’s not evident, I’m not feeling Miss Mary Sunshine about dealing with the world right now. But I’m sorry for your loss.” Her tone was taut but sincere. “Well…our loss, I guess.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I hope you don’t expect me to attend the service or anything.”

  I leveled my head and studied her. Really looked. I took in the depths of her green eyes with a strange new understanding. From the start, I’d written Margaux off as a desperate clone of her mother, engaged in a daily competition with Andrea by fighting to be a bolder, bitchier version of the woman. But now that I knew the ice floes in Andrea’s veins were literally not the same stuff as in Margaux’s, I saw things differently. Margaux’s stockpile of selfishness was learned, not inherited. Her life had been a series of expectations in strict black and white, good and bad, with love itself withheld if she made the “wrong” choice. A person’s world became a narrow place with programming like that. A miserable place.

  Now I really had to hold back from hugging her.

  “Chill, sister.” I injected half a grin to attempt setting her at ease. “Nobody’s expecting a thing from you right now.”

  “Except a request for a check.” She added her own sarcastic snort, until new comprehension seemed to slam her face. “Wait a second. That’s your angle, isn’t it? That’s why you’re here…to start the ball rolling on buying off my silence.”

  I wished I could’ve admitted her statement shocked me. But the words were classic, caustic Margaux. “I’m going to allow you credit for the reasoning behind that,” I answered tightly. “But I’m also going to tell you that it’s wrong. Margaux…listen…”

  “I don’t need your damn money, Killian, okay? I won’t let you control me just because Josiah Stone didn’t know the right hole for his dick twenty-seven years ago. I have my own money and my own life, and have done just fine with both. I won’t dance on the Stones’ puppet strings simply for a few extra zeroes in my bank account.”

  That did it. I cut loose with an incensed growl and advanced on her. “Dammit, Margaux! Lower your safety shields for one minute.” She skittered backward by a few steps. Good. She’d come out of that bedroom thinking she could keep her cool-girl center intact but she’d never listen to me that way. “Sometimes, it’s about more than money.” I grunted. “Fuck. A lot of times, it’s about more than money. For the record, I don’t care if you keep your life and your bank account and all five hundred pairs of your shoes, but what you may need, at some point, is a brother. Perhaps even three.”

  Brother.

  The word weighted the air between us—right after it punched a hard breath out of her. It was impossible not to notice the unsteady sheen in her gaze now, or the way her fingers shook as she refolded her arms.

  “Right,” she returned. “Because I haven’t survived twenty-seven years without the ‘loving’ torment of a few siblings, right?” Her awkward laugh betrayed how she’d likely fantasized about exactly that.

  “It’s not all that bad.” I feigned a wince. “Except when the asshats turn off your alarm so they can get the last two bowlfuls of Cap’n Crunch in the pantry and make you late for school.”

  That garnered a genuine smile, perhaps the first I’d ever seen on the woman’s face. Damn. Margaux was actually stunning when she was sincere. “So…you going to start beating up on my boyfriends now or something?”

  Sorrelle looked up from where he’d been nursing a cappuccino at the work desk. “If he doesn’t, goddess, I will.”

  I rolled my eyes for Margaux’s benefit only, inciting a silent snicker from her. The moment lasted for two seconds. She cut herself off with a sharp gasp and a horrified gape. “Ohmigod!”

  “What?” I asked.

  “Shit. Killian, I seduced you last year! We almost slept together. Ew!”

  I didn’t bother with the amendment that her “almost” was my “not if we were the last two people on earth.” I also decided it better to let her keep thinking her “seduction” had been a near-miss interrupted by Claire’s arrival at the condo than inform her that even if things had developed between us, she wouldn’t have really slept with her brother. One messy secret at a time.

  “Well, we didn’t.” It felt like a sufficient enough ice breaker. Before she could protest, I stepped over and yanked her into a hug. As I expected, she stiffened. As I didn’t expect, she finally relaxed enough to sheepishly pat my back. “So maybe now, we can be friends.” As I pulled away, I gave her the sincerity of my own gaze. “Believe it or not, I might understand a thing or two about this maze called the Stone clan.”

  For a second, Margaux let herself smile back. All too quickly, she returned to her comfort zone of sarcastic and snotty, despite the affectionate jab she delivered to my shoulder. “Yeah. Whatever. And for the record, I hate Capn’ Crunch.”

  I grinned, enjoying this repartee. Maybe, just maybe, it would be semi-cool to have a little sister around. “You’ve clearly never had it my way.”

  “Oh?”

  “On top of ice cream.”

  “For breakfast?”

>   “I had special pull with the kitchen staff.”

  My chest tightened. Dad…I miss you.

  Another knock on the door rescued me from wallowing in any more of that shit.

  “Hell,” Margaux muttered. “Two wrong room service deliveries and one soaked brother later, my room has become Grand Central Station.”

  Sorrelle peeked through the peephole then backed from the door with both hands cupping his mouth. “Cheese and rice, M. It’s your mother!”

  I was unsurprised that the announcement pressed the rewind button on Margaux. Her laughter faded and the haughty angle to her chin returned as if our conversation hadn’t happened. She dipped a determined nod at Sorrelle. “Let’s just get it over with. She’ll only come back if we don’t.”

  Andrea hardly acknowledged the assistant on her way into the room. Unlike Margaux and me, the woman was already coifed to the eyelash. Her tailored navy blue pantsuit was layered over a white turtleneck with flecks of silver woven through it. Her stilt-level ankle boots matched the suit. Ah, my world was right again. I’d journeyed to the land of the Ashers and could brag at least one moment of will-she-die-from-the-next-step-or-not thrills for the effort.

  “Margaux darling, did you lose your cell? I’ve been trying to—” Andrea halted in her tracks. Damn, even that move didn’t topple the woman. “Oh. Killian. Hello there. I—well, I barely recognized you. You’re a bit soggy.”

  “It would seem so.” I looked down but raised my gaze back up with clear confusion. Was this the same woman I’d hauled off of Father yesterday as she spat her vow for revenge on him during his last breaths of life? The same person who’d watched her daughter run from her because of a heart-stabbing truth revealed? She looked like she’d strolled in from a week at a spa retreat.

  Andrea smoothed the front of her pants, realigned her features into a poised smile, and offered, “Well, I did hear the press release about Josiah this morning. It received excellent coverage. All the local affiliates, of course, and many of the major networks.” She looked me directly in the eyes when adding smoothly, “It was beautifully written.”