“Apparently.”
I give my head a slow shake. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear this. I should expect nothing less of my mother. I always assumed Armstrong’s sociopathic tendencies were an anomaly, now I’m not so sure. “I’m sorry. I’m really fucking confused right now. I think you need to back this bus up and start over, so I can understand why the hell my mother is blackmailing you.”
“Have a seat. We’ll start at the beginning.” She motions to the cushion beside her, so I take it.
By the time she finishes, I’m both horrified and devastated for her. “I’m so sorry, Wren, about all of this, but especially about what happened to your family. I can’t imagine how difficult that would’ve been.”
“I wasn’t even three at the time. I don’t really remember Robyn. I mean, I have pictures of me standing by her incubator in the NICU, but she only survived a few days.”
“That would’ve been awful.” All those months spent waiting for a life to come into the world, only to lose the baby days after she was born. I can’t fathom how painful that would be.
“It was. My only real memories of that time are how sad my mother was. Obviously she blamed herself for it. First she unknowingly conceives me with someone who wasn’t her husband, and then she loses the child she did conceive with him. Our relationship suffered when I was a teenager because that’s when I found out I wasn’t my father’s biological child.”
I take her hand in mine. “Wren, I’m so—”
“Sorry. I know. Me too. I wasn’t keeping this from you on purpose. It’s just not something I tend to talk about with anyone. I’m sorry I didn’t come to you as soon as your mother threatened blackmail. I needed to think. I didn’t know how to handle it, and I don’t want to drag you into my circus.”
I sit dumbly for a moment, absorbing her words. “Are you kidding me right now?”
She looks down at her hands for a moment before she lifts her chin. “I had to make a difficult choice today, Lincoln, and I needed time to sort that out before I could come to you.”
“You don’t have to make any choices. There’s no way I’m going to sit back and let my mother blackmail you.”
“There’s nothing you can do to stop her, though. If she finds out I told you, she’s going to go public with my family scandal. If I can’t get you to stop looking into that damn penthouse, she’s going to expose us. Either way, it’s coming out. There’s no way I’m going to stop you from finding out the truth about what was going on with your father. You deserve to know.”
“There has to be a way to stop her. We have to be able to do something.”
“I’ve already done something. I went to my dad this morning and explained the situation.”
“Explained how?”
“I told him I couldn’t keep this from you. That you deserved to know, and I was prepared to handle whatever the consequences might be. I care about you too much to let your mother try to scare me with blackmail.”
“You’re putting me in front of your family?” I’m pretty freaking stunned, to be honest, because the only people in my family I’d do that for are G-mom and Griffin. And maybe Bane and Lex, context depending.
“I love you. It sort of trumps everything and everyone else, doesn’t it?” Her confidence wavers for a moment, and her throat bobs with a nervous swallow. She opens her mouth and ducks her head, as if maybe she wants to call those words back.
“Yes, it does.” I cup her face in my hands, smooth my thumbs over her damp cheeks, and lean in closer. “I love you right back, Wren.” I press my lips to hers briefly. “But I’ll be honest, I really wanted to be the one to say that first, so I’m a little annoyed that you beat me to it. But considering the circumstances, I’ll let you get away with it.”
Her incredulous laugh turns into a surprised gasp when I kiss her again. I wish this moment were framed in something other than conflict, but I’ll take it, because whatever happens next, at least we’re facing it together.
I reluctantly pull back. “I’d really like this to follow up on that kiss with more of the same, but I think we have to deal with some crap. We need to find a way to stop Gwendolyn.”
“My father’s taking care of that,” Wren says darkly.
“How?”
“You can’t blackmail someone if you don’t have anything to hold over them, can you?”
“And that means what, exactly?”
“He’s planning to make a statement before Gwendolyn can.”
I run my hand through my hair. “He’s going to go public about your mother’s affair?”
She nods. “If your mother exposes my family, it will be a PR nightmare. At least this way, he’ll have control over how it comes out. I don’t think it’ll be fantastic, no matter how it shakes down, because let’s face it, having a daughter who’s the product of an affair when your whole campaign is based on ‘Family First’ is less than ideal, but it’s better than the alternative.”
I can see exactly how my mother would spin it to crumble Wren’s father’s platform, much like the way they tried to make it look like Armstrong had been set up at his wedding, and that Imogen had made false accusations regarding her pregnancy. “How is he going frame it?”
“I don’t know. But it’s going to get messy. We may want to avoid being seen in public until it blows over, the media will probably have a field day with it.” Of course she’s already going into PR-triage mode.
“Screw that. I mean, I get it if you want stay out the public eye, but I’m the very last person who cares how this will reflect on me or my asshole family. And frankly, I’m not above airing all of my family’s dirty laundry as counter-blackmail, so let’s not worry about the optics.”
“I think we need a strategy going forward. A plan on how we’re going to handle this, should it blow up.”
“My plan is to rip my mother a new asshole for threatening to blackmail you.” I’ve never had the warm fuzzies for my mother, but this seems like a new level of low for her. Or maybe I haven’t been around her enough to experience how low she really can go.
“While I appreciate your desire to stand up for me, you can’t do that. We need to buy time until my dad makes a statement.”
“So, just let her get away with this? She has to be hiding something, and it has to be bigger than your mother’s affair, otherwise she wouldn’t be blackmailing you in the first place.”
“And it has to be connected somehow to the penthouse,” Wren adds.
“So if we find that link, maybe we can stalemate Gwendolyn, and your dad doesn’t have to make a statement,” I finish.
“It doesn’t matter what we find. He’ll make a statement anyway, but you deserve to know what secrets she’s keeping from you.”
I trace the edge of her jaw. “Can we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?”
“Until last night, you’ve always been straight with me. I grew up in a house full of lies and deception. My parents’ relationship seems to have been a complete farce, and I never want to be like that. Can we promise each other that we’ll keep being honest, even if it’s difficult?”
Wren pulls her knees up and shifts so she’s facing me. “Of course. I just needed to process everything, and I’m used to doing that on my own.”
“Next time, we figure it out together.”
CHAPTER 23
ADD IT UP
WREN
We spend the rest of the evening going through the files Lincoln found in the Manhattan penthouse, cross-checking numbers and looking for any oddities or links that might give us a lead. I have no idea how Dani does this all day, every day. My eyes feel like they’re going to be crossed forever.
By the time Lincoln and I fall into bed, it’s the wee hours of the morning. Even though we should be too tired for anything but sleep, he still manages to make love to me, whispering those words against my lips. And I know that no matter what happens, I made the right choice.
At five thirty in the morning, my
mind turns on. I sneak out of bed, not that I need to do much sneaking, Lincoln can sleep like the dead. I make myself a coffee and leaf through my notes from last night while the sun rises.
I keep flipping back through the statements from August more than a decade ago with those large withdrawals in similar amounts. They continue for four years, and double for the two years following it before they disappear. They could be tuition payments for a four-year undergrad and a two-year MBA. I make a note to check it out when I’m done going through the rest of these statements. Based on the timing, it seems like it could be Lincoln’s tuition.
Lincoln wakes up around seven—I might’ve crept back into bed at six fifty-five after freshening up and acted as his personal alarm clock. Relieving stress before we create more seemed like a smart idea. We order in breakfast, make fresh coffee, and sit at the kitchen table where I’ve spread all the files out.
“Okay, question, how old were you when you graduated from Harvard?”
“Undergrad or MBA?”
“Either? Both?”
“I was twenty-two for my undergrad and twenty-four for my MBA, why?” He bites the end off the sausage speared on his fork.
I refrain from commenting on the semi-phallicness of it. “Hold on, I’m trying to see if something connects.” I filter through the dates on the bank statements, looking for the ones I highlighted. “Okay. So that’s about a decade ago, and you went there for six years, correct?”
“Yup, sounds about right.”
“Do you know what tuition cost back then, and how much was covered by your scholarship?”
“Umm.” Lincoln taps on his chin, right where his little dimple is. I don’t know why I’m so obsessed with that particular feature. “Wren?”
“Yeah?” I drag my eyes back up to his.
“Distracted by the sexy?” He points to the dimple. “Maybe I should consider growing a beard again to keep it from being such a problem.”
“I was thinking. And don’t you dare or that laser appointment will happen faster than you can blink.”
“You’d think after all the orgasms you’ve had in the past twenty-four hours, you’d be nicer to me.”
“I was fully responsible for making my own orgasm happen this morning. You just laid back and enjoyed the ride.” I point to the computer screen. “Now focus, please. Your scholarship, what did it cover?” I pull up a browser on my phone and look up tuition costs at Harvard for an undergrad ten years ago. I get a list of top Ivy League colleges and their rising tuition costs over the past decade.
“My undergrad scholarship covered tuition in full, and I’m pretty sure it covered fifty percent of my MBA.”
I glance up. “That’s impressive.”
He shrugs, cheeks flushing. His embarrassment is cute. “School and me got along. I liked learning.”
“Me too.” I probably would’ve had the biggest crush on him if we’d met in high school. Smart, and a chin dimple. All the ovaries exploding everywhere.
“So, it looks like tuition would’ve been about thirty-five grand a year, but your scholarship would’ve negated that, so it doesn’t line up the way I want it to.”
“Doesn’t line up how?”
“These withdrawals. I wondered if they were tuition-based. They start the same time you went to Harvard, but the numbers don’t add up.” I turn the files toward him, so he can see what I’m talking about.
While he looks them over, I check out the tuition costs associated with the top schools in the country. “Hold on a second.” I grab the files, nearly knocking over Lincoln’s coffee. “Here! Oh my God! Look as this!” I stab the highlighted withdrawal and the tuition for Princeton. “These match exactly.”
“I didn’t go to Princeton.”
“Did Armstrong?”
“No. He went to Harvard too, and this is four years too early for him.”
I slump back in my seat. “Dammit. It’s probably a coincidence.”
“Maybe.” Lincoln flips through the bank statements and scrolls through the chart on yearly tuition hikes. “Except it matches the cost of tuition four years in a row. One year I can see being a coincidence, but four?”
“It seems highly unlikely.” I shift closer. “So, whose education was he paying for? What about Gwendolyn?”
He shakes his head. “She was involved in charity stuff and event planning when I was a teenager. Her and my aunt used to host all the events for Moorehead and Mills Hotels.” He rubs between his eyes. “Who would you put through college, especially Ivy League, apart from your kids?”
“I don’t know, Linc, but I know someone who might be able to find out for us.”
CHAPTER 24
DIG DEEPER
LINCOLN
My head is spinning as we make the short trip to Dani’s—who I haven’t met in person yet. I’m shocked when she opens the door. She doesn’t appear old enough to be a PI, but then maybe the innocent look is exactly what makes her a good one. I guess I’m about to find out.
She throws open the door. “Girl, I have a drama llama dancing around my apartment!” She looks past Wren to me, and she lets out a low whistle. “Wow. I thought all those pictures were airbrushed or something, but clearly you really are this hot without any help.” She makes a circle motion in the air beside her head, maybe referring to my face. “You’ve got some excellent genetic engineering going on. Good work, bestie.” Her hand shoots out. “I’m Dani, Wren’s best friend for forever. If you happen to have any single family members apart from your asswipe of a brother, I am totally available. I’m not looking for anything serious either. Straight hookup is fine with me.”
“Dani, dial it back a little,” Wren says, but there’s laughter in her voice.
“Right. Yeah. Sorry. It’s nice to meet you outside of social media posts. Come on in.” She leads the way into her small studio apartment. There’s a desk in the corner, foot-high stacks of paper surrounding a laptop, and three huge monitors. “Excuse the mess. I work from home, obviously.”
She offers us something to drink, and I accept a glass of water. My mouth is dry, and my palms are sweaty.
Wren puts a hand on my knee. “It’ll be okay.”
I nod, but my stomach is doing that churning thing again.
Dani drops down on the chair across from us. “Soooo…” She motions to the papers strewn across the coffee table. “After Wren told me about the blackmail threat, I looked into Fredrick’s properties, since that’s the impetus, right?”
“Right.” I squeeze Wren’s hand.
“Now, Fredrick had what appears to be quite a few investment properties, which isn’t uncommon for people with lots of money. Real estate is usually a good place to store your dollar bills. But, then I started researching the properties, and I noticed something interesting.” She taps a picture of the high-rise where my parents’ penthouse is. “His condo in the city is a Mills Property, which makes sense since you’re related to them, correct?”
“Yeah, by marriage. My aunt is married to Harrison Mills.”
“Right. So, of course, you’d buy from family, which I totally get. And over the years, most of your father’s condos have been associated with Mills real estate. But there are four properties over the past three decades that aren’t related to Mills buildings, which again, wouldn’t be a red flag, since some of them are houses and the Mills only do condos and hotels.” Dani’s knee bounces, and she gets this odd gleam in her eye. “But here’s where it gets interesting. Fredrick used a different account to purchase those four properties. And based on the statements I’ve been looking at, he strategically funneled money into that account through Moorehead Media. He was actually really sneaky about it. It’s pretty genius.”
I rub my temples, already feeling lost. I get buying the Manhattan condo on the sly, since that’s where he met with his mistress, but what would be the purpose of the other properties? Unless he had multiple mistresses or fetishes that required their own place. “Can you explain that further?�
�
“Yup. For sure. Let me start at the beginning.” Dani slaps her thighs and then rubs her hands together. “A little over three decades ago, your father bought a five-bedroom house in Jersey.”
“As an investment property?” I ask.
“That’s what I thought, until I checked into the deed. At first he was the sole owner, but a couple of years ago Jacqueline Mercier was added to it.”
“I don’t recognize that name.”
Dani nods. “I wouldn’t expect you to, but we’ll come back to that. Seven years after he bought the house in Jersey, he purchased the condo you discovered in Lower Manhattan. And about a decade ago, he purchased an apartment in Princeton, very close to the university.”
“Was this one an investment property?”
“At first I thought maybe he’d bought it for you or brother, but neither of you attended Princeton. Also, he sold it four years later, so roughly how long it would take to earn an undergrad. Then he bought another condo, this time in the city.”
“So, there are four properties my dad kept a secret?”
“It looks that way, unless maybe your mother knew and never said anything.”
“Well, she knew about the Manhattan penthouse, but I don’t know about the other properties,” I say.
Dani’s knee continues to bounce. It’s making me anxious. “I figured it might be a good idea to look into this Jacqueline Mercier woman, because she seems to hold the Jersey connection. And this is what I found.” Dani opens a folder and spreads a series of images out over the table.
“Holy shit.” It isn’t the woman in her late fifties who catches my attention. It’s the woman beside her who does. Because as much as she resembles her mother, she also bears a lot of similarities to me.
The woman in the photo has the same mouth, chin dimple, and a more feminine version of my nose, but the features are there. She’s a total hybrid between my father and this woman. “He had another family? Jesus. Do you think my mother knew about this? This has to be what she’s trying to hide.” I look to Wren, as if she’ll have the answers. “This is unreal, right? Like this whole thing is just … nuts.” I pick up the picture of the Jacqueline woman and the younger woman who looks to be close to my age. “This isn’t, like, some photoshopped trick?”
Handle with Care Page 22