My stomach clenches as if it’s just been kicked by the sharp end of a boot. “What? What does that mean? She and your dad…he’s her brother.” I jump out of my chair, my coffee cup crashes to the floor, shattering against the concrete floor.
Scalding-hot coffee splatters all over my legs and I register the pain somewhere behind the loud rush of blood in my ears.
“Jason Rivers wasn’t my biological father. Gigi was married, got pregnant with me, but my father…her husband went missing before I was born.”
“What?”
“She was alone, disowned by my grandfather and shunned by her husband’s family. So, she gave me to her brother to raise as his own. And she moved to Italy to start her new life.” He sounds like he’s reading from a script, but the devastation in his eyes is very real.
I barely feel the bite of the ceramic shards digging into the soles of my bare feet as I walk back into my apartment and grab my jeans and a t-shirt from my closet. I don’t know why I’m getting dressed but I feel the need to be ready
“I don’t…How? When… did you find out?” I stumble around the questions and rifle through my drawers for a t-shirt.
He lets out a long, weary sigh and grips the back of his neck with his hand and closes his eyes. I trap the phone between my shoulder and cheek so I can step into my jeans while I wait for him to answer.
“Two weeks before Gigi was shot.”
I stop in mid-motion and the phone clatters to the floor and spins halfway across the room.
“Shit, hold on,” I call and run to scoop it up, but my heart feels like it paused at his answer. “Before we saw you in Mexico?”
“Yes.” His expression is regretful, but unapologetic. “I couldn’t say anything, Stone. Not without talking to Remi first. And until last week, I didn’t even know where he was.”
A chill of dread washes over me at the mention of Regan’s twin.
“What has Remi Wilde got to….” The answer to my question comes to me before I can finish asking it. One of the curses of a quick mind is that nothing comes to me in a soft cloud of thought. Thunderbolts are more my mind’s style, and this one packs the punch of a thousand of them at once.
Hayes stares at me and waits for me to say what is so obvious.
“Not Lucas Wilde?” I ask it, but it’s less of a question and more of a desperate plea for him to say I’m wrong.
He nods and my head starts to spin.
“How is that even fucking possible.”
“Stone, I’m not finished, please,” he shouts to cut off my senseless stream of questions. But it’s not his raised voice that ties my tongue. Hayes, never, ever says please.
I brace myself for whatever could be worse than the bomb he just dropped.
I close my eyes, drop my head into my hands. “Go on,”
“Lucas Wilde is my father. Also, he’s not dead.”
I drop back into my chair and stare at my brother in total disbelief.
“He barely survived an attempt on his life. And when he was found, he had no memory of who he was. He’s been homeless since.”
“Someone tried to kill him?”
He nods gravely.
“Who? Do you know?” I press when he doesn’t look at me.
When he does, I wish I hadn’t asked. His eyes are wet with tears.
“His father, Stone. His own father. Because he married a Rivers. I thought our grandfather was an evil son of a bitch for cutting off his own daughter…Old Man Wilde was a fucking maniac. How Remi and the rest of them survived living with that monster is beyond me.”
I blink in disbelief. “That can’t be. He and Regan were really close.”
“He fooled everyone.” His voice is laced with disgust.
“How’s Regan?”
He shrugs, his eyes grow wary. “I don’t know. I haven’t really had a chance to talk to her.”
“Well, what about Remi, or Tyson?”
A small smile lifts the corner of his mouth, and it plucks a nerve to see that when he showed no feeling when I asked about Regan. “They’re okay. Remi’s back in town and holed up with his girl. Tyson is…Tyson. He was pissed, blew off steam, and now he’s thrown himself into his work.”
“And what about Regan? Or does she not count because you disapprove of her?”
His eyes narrow. “Remi and I were close before this. Regan and Confidence are friends. Maybe, she’ll go see her. If you’re hoping that somehow this will make me more inclined to forgive her for your little…whatever, don’t hold your breath. Marcel is a friend, and he deserves better.”
I want to tell him what I know about that man, but I doubt he’d believe me, and I don’t want to betray her confidence. “I’m not sure why you think she’s done anything you need to forgive her for. And you have no idea what kind of husband he is.”
“The kind she’s still married to,” he snaps, his expression hardening with annoyance.
“For now,” I say and hate how petulant I sound and how clueless I am. We haven’t been in touch at all But, I haven’t let myself imagine anything other than her getting her ducks in a row to divorce him.
“Stone, think about what would happen if people found out about your... thing in Mexico.”
“It wasn’t a thing,” I say between clenched teeth.
The damnable pity returns to his eyes. “For your sake, I hope it was. I don’t want you coming home thinking that you’re going to take Marcel Landel’s wife from him.”
His demands make my skin feel one size too small for my body. “She’s not a thing to be taken.”
His expression grows rigid and his eyes narrow. “You listen to me. I’ve been busting my ass to restore some of the good faith our uncle squandered while I was away. Your mother is still a pain in my ass. Dare is just barely back on his feet; I don’t have the bandwidth for another crisis. Especially not one that has anyone with my last name in the center of it. Please, think about what it will mean. And not just to me. But to our family. To your career. Stop thinking with your dick,” he growls.
His words slip under my skin, rub against my insecurity, my guilt, and my pride. They burn away the final veneer of civility I was clinging to.
“You’ve always been good at turning a challenge into an opportunity. It shouldn’t surprise me that you’re doing it now,” I sneer.
“What the fuck do you mean by that?” Hayes’ eyes narrow.
I mimic his expression and bring the phone closer to my face. “You just dropped the mother of all bombs on me. Yet, the first thing on your mind is Regan and me?”
His anger erupts. “Of course, it’s been on my mind. You’re my brother. I want what’s best for you, and another man’s wife isn’t it. This isn’t an opportunity, Stone. It’s a fucking tragedy, and I’m just trying to stem the bleeding.”
“And you think asking me to subvert my happiness for the greater good of a family that has deceived you your whole life is what’s best for me?”
He winces, and color blooms on his cheeks, and he drops his gaze from mine.
“Exactly.” I take no joy in being right.
“Stone, that’s not fair.”
“What is?” I bark, and he closes his eyes in a bid to find his calm.
He sighs and runs a weary hand over his face. “I know you like her. She’s beautiful and smart, I get it. But you have no idea the hornets’ nest you’ll be kicking, if you don’t let it be. Please.” There’s that word again.
I walk back to my room and stare at my bed. I should lie down and close my eyes and just, for once, say fuck it.
But the sun has started to rise, and it’s too late to indulge in the confessional of sleep. Self-indulgence will have to wait until the moon comes back. Someone’s life depends on me showing up. Even on days when my own life feels like it’s up for grabs.
I turn my back on temptation and my ire on my brother. “Beautiful and smart are tame words to describe what she is. And I don’t like her, I love her. And I know I owe you a lot, b
ut that you’d call me to remind me of it, pisses me off.”
Hayes blinks in surprise “Love her? You don’t even know her.”
“I know her better than I’ve ever known anyone.” And, saying it out loud, I realize how true it is.
Hayes gapes at me. “What the hell did I miss?”
I laugh, but it’s bitter and short. “My formative years.”
He looks like I punched him. “Stone—”
“I have to go. I’ve got more patients to see than I have hours in a day.”
“Wait,” he barks.
“Can’t. But feel free to continue worrying about who I’m fucking. And I hope you and Remi have an awesome reunion with your dad,” I expel the last word like a curse propelled by anger and jealousy.
I wish both of my dads would come back from the dead.
Yeah, and people in hell wish they had ice water.
Nobody cares.
I hear him call my name, right as I hang up.
“Buenos noches,” I call over my shoulder to the guard at the front of the refugee camp, and then jog over to the white van that’s waiting to take me back to my apartment. This is my last week here, and I feel guilty at how glad I am of that.
The conditions here are bleak. This refugee crisis is the worst of its kind in our hemisphere. But for the news coverage it receives, you’d be hard pressed to even know it’s happening.
But teams like mine, from all over the world, have come to help serve the people who are caught in the crossfire of political stagecraft. It’s easy to feel a sense of helplessness, because there’s no hope in sight for an end to the problem.
I climb aboard the van, and before I can buckle up, we’re off. It’s dark in the van, and everyone else is asleep. I pull out my phone and scroll to my favorite torture devices.
Pictures of Regan - a couple of us, but, mostly, just her.
My screen saver is one of her on a paddle board the afternoon we explored the mangroves. She looks like she’s eighteen. Her hair is braided into plaits that run down either side of her head and dangle over her shoulders. Her bikini is a mismatched black bandeau top and bright green bottoms. She’s grinning wildly, her hands lifted in the air over her head, an oar clutched in the left one. Her expression is triumphant.
Worry makes my heart skip a beat every time I think about her alone right now. The upheaval must feel endless.
I’ve started to call her so many times, and each time, I’ve stopped.
She’s so off limits, it’s not even funny. And despite lashing out at Hayes, I don’t want to make things harder for him.
I gaze out at the scenery as we wind our way through the valley. The horizon doesn’t calm me the way it used to. Now, when I gaze out at the place where the sky and earth kiss, all I see is her.
Regan, for me, is what that spot in the distance must have been for the men who were inspired to sail toward it, even though they fully expected to fall off the edge of the world. And just like them, I can’t resist that call.
I shouldn’t even attempt it. I’m not on a ship by myself. My brother is breaking his back to repair what my mother has broken. If I make a mess of things, I’ll take him with me.
And what if Regan never leaves her husband?
Can I risk so much when I’m not sure that the horizon isn’t just an illusion?
So, whenever I’ve had the urge to call her, I write it down in a letter. I’ve got a couple dozen notes that I never planned to mail.
The shuttle drops me off and I trudge into my apartment. I head straight to my desk and pull out the paper and pen I’ve been using and start another letter.
When my ink runs dry, I go in search of another pen. I feel around on the top of my bookcase where I keep my supplies and my hand brushes against a book. I grasp it and pull it down.
It’s my copy of Cosmos. The one thing that I always take everywhere with me. It’s like a Talisman. I open and read the inscription I wrote in my ten-year-old scrawl - “You’re my Venus, I’m your Mars.”
How true that turned out to be - just not the way I’d hoped. Like the actual planets, it feels like we have the whole world between us.
Yet, she’s still my Venus - that out of reach, elusive star. My goddess of love, my ultimate woman.
But am I her Mars? Didn’t I tell her that how the god fought for the love of his goddess even though she was completely off limits to him?
In three months, I’ll be headed on an expedition that will take me away from any modern conveniences for a whole month. If I didn’t come back, wouldn’t I regret not telling her that until my last breath, I loved her?
I make a decision, one that feels slightly premature and that I’m certain I’m not prepared for. But that’s never stopped me from trying before.
It certainly won’t stop me now.
Not when I think that loving Regan Wilde the way she was born to be loved - the way I know no one is loving her now - is also my calling.
There is nothing about a life with her that is as I imagined my life would be - the children I thought I didn’t want to raise, the domestic stasis of cohabitation - but after just that week with her, I know I’d live in hell if it meant she was by my side.
So, I package everything up and I make this last note a question. One I hope she’ll answer when she’s ready. And until then, I’ll take a measure of comfort in knowing that she’ll have these to remind her that I’m thinking about her.
Chapter 35
Walls Come Tumbling Down
Regan
“When you punish a child for telling the truth, you teach them to lie.” That was one of my grandfather’s most common refrains. I stare unseeing at his undisturbed, meticulously arranged desk and wonder what else he taught me but didn’t really believe.
He made me think he loved me. He made me think I could trust him. And because I was so desperate for a loving father figure, I didn’t ask questions that I should have. I just… followed his rules and gave whatever he asked of me.
Even when it cost me everything.
In the week since Remi’s bombshell about our father’s disappearance and the role my grandfather played in it, I’ve been plagued by something deeper, more corrosive than guilt. There are huge fissures in my consciousness.
I can’t change any of it. I can’t disown my family and as far as I’m concerned at the most basic level, we’re all victims of one person’s God complex. But, if Matty could see it, that means I chose not to.
I came to the belly of the beast today, not even sure what I was looking for. I don’t know what, if anything at all, from all those years ago would even be here.
So far, I’ve looked through the filing cabinets built into the desk. But there’s nothing, at least nothing that means anything to me. My mother has only let the cleaning lady in here to dust and vacuum since he died.
The book he was reading the morning he had his stroke lays open on the wood lacquered side table next to his dark brown leather recliner.
I don’t even know what I’m looking for. But there’s no one left to ask. Dan, his assistant, retired to Costa Rica, the year my grandfather died and hasn’t responded to the email I sent him. I want to have some answers before I call Matty. Or maybe, I’m just putting it off because I don’t know how to apologize for the wrong I’ve done.
I shove away from his desk and walk over to the bookshelf, where dozens of sterling silver frames line the shelves, with as much prolificacy as the books they were built to house.
Most of the photos are of him and me. There’s only one of him with my father. I used to think it was because he found looking at him painful. The truth of it makes bile rise in my throat. I pick up the picture and look at it through this new lens. It’s from the day of my father’s high school graduation. I run a finger over my father’s broad, handsome smile. Remi, minus the blue eyes, is his spitting image.
I wish I’d known him. So much so now that I know that he was brave enough to do what I haven’t been able to -
choose his happiness over everything else. And in letters he left for Remi, ones that Gigi has held on to all these years, he said he was coming back for us. Was it selfish of him to leave us? Yes. But it’s not like he left us in a ditch to die. Not the way his own father did to him.
He may have loved Gigi, but he loved us too. And he would have been there for us if my grandfather hadn’t seen to it that he wasn’t.
I drag my eyes to the face of the other man in the picture.
Emotions batter my chest with the blunt force trauma of a steel-toe boot. I can’t believe the man who raised me so gently, who plucked me out of trouble, who literally saved my life, could do the things that we know for certain he did.
His smile is full of a smug pride that he always wore when one of us accomplished something. He saw them as his accomplishments, too.
I start to put the silver framed photo back on the shelf when the shadow of something on his wrist catches my eye. My chest tightens like it’s been placed in a vice grip and I grasp the edge of the bookshelf to steady myself.
I bring the picture closer to my face.
There’s a tattoo on his wrist.…one that wasn’t there when I was growing up.
A flaming blue lightning bolt.
Like the ones on the wrists of the men who held me down while my body was used in ways that transformed my very soul. Like the one above the nightclub where his assistant was seen by Matty and Jack.
I barely make it to the bathroom before I lose the contents of my stomach.
In the last few years of his life, when he couldn’t do it for himself, I dressed him. I fastened the burgundy leather straps of his Piaget watch to his wrist every single morning. There was nothing but his smooth, freckled, freakishly unwrinkled skin in the space underneath it. It didn’t even leave a scar. Or was it just that I wasn’t looking?
Because, there it is. Clear as day on the wrist of the arm he has slung over my father’s shoulder.
Before I know what I’m doing, I raise the frame over my head and slam it down with as much force as I can gather and nearly howl with satisfaction when it shatters.
The Rivals Page 89