Gilded Lily

by Hart, Staci

  Everything else, particularly anything regarding our permanence, I ignored like it was my duty.

  I just rounded the staircase to the second floor when I heard Mom’s voice floating up the stairwell.

  “I will not sign for that. I’ve told your kind before, and I’ll do it again—I refuse to accept that sanctimonious scrap of paper, and you can’t make me,” she said, ironically sanctimonious.

  I sped up, wondering whose face I needed to turn inside out.

  “Ma’am,” the weary voice on the porch said as I hurried into the entryway, “you can’t avoid this, so just do us all a favor and take the damn letter.”

  “I won’t!” she said petulantly as I approached. “Now, if you’ll excuse me—” She started to shut the door, but the courier stuck her boot in the doorjamb.

  “Take the letter, Mrs. Bennet, for God’s sake!”

  I stepped in front of my mother to open the door, glaring down at the sullen girl who looked just as unhappy as my mother did.

  “What’s this all about?” I asked the girl, ignoring my mother, who tugged uselessly at my arm.

  “Kassius, it’s nothing. Come, come, it’s almost dinner. Aren’t you hungry? Jett is making a nice—”

  I shot her a look over my shoulder. “Mom …”

  She flushed. “I’m not taking that letter!” she spouted. “I’m not!”

  “What is it, and why won’t you take it?”

  “Because,” the courier said, “it’s from Bower Bouquets.”

  The blood in my veins went cold at the mention of their name.

  “Marcus,” I called into the house. Then, to my mother, I said, “Sign for that letter. Now.”

  “B-but—”

  “Mother. You cannot run away from whatever this is. So sign the letter, let this poor girl go, and let’s see what’s inside.”

  She pursed her lips, shaking her head emphatically as she took a step back.

  “Ah, ah, ah,” Marcus said, hands on her shoulders as he steered her toward the door. “Sign it.”

  Her unadulterated fury at being handled was matched only by our insistence. But it was her knowledge that there was no way in hell she was getting out of it that finally broke her.

  With an illegible sweep of the pen, she practically threw said pen at the courier. “There. Are you quite happy now?”

  “Yes, thank you,” the girl said flatly, extending her hand with the letter in it.

  Mom reached out to take it, but I snatched it first.

  “Give that back, Kassius,” she scolded, jumping to scramble at my arm as I held the letter far out of her reach.

  “Oh, now you want it.” I kicked the door closed, my face grim and Marcus’s set to match.

  “What have you done, Mom?” he asked, sounding exhausted.

  “I’ve … done … nothing …” she said between hops, arms outstretched.

  Marcus and I made eye contact, and with the slightest of nods, I grabbed Mom with my free arm and set the other in Marcus’s direction for the handoff.

  He snatched the letter as Mom began to screech unintelligibly. I made a few words and phrases, including a variety of uses of don’t, grounded, your father, I didn’t, and don’t you dare. Otherwise, I couldn’t make anything out, just a garbled string of dissent by a seemingly mad woman.

  With every word he read, Marcus’s face drew tighter. Our entire family flooded the entryway, asking questions and trying to figure out why Mom had turned into a howler monkey, but when Marcus lowered his hands and laid his cool eyes on Mom, the entire room went silent as a tomb.

  “This is a cease and desist,” he said. “From Bower. They say that you, Mother, are in breach of contract.”

  The boom of shouting was instantaneous, every mouth in the room on fire except for Marcus, Dad, and Mom, who went half-limp in my arms.

  “Stop,” I finally shouted, loud enough that they actually listened, chests heaving and hands on their hips and glaring eyes on Mom.

  I put her firmly on her feet and took a step back. She looked smaller, older than she had only a moment before, her blue eyes shimmering and chin bent and wobbling.

  “You took out a contract with Bower?” I asked carefully, quietly.

  “I had no choice,” she said resolutely, albeit with a weak undertone and a sniffle. “Things were in disrepair before you all came home. When I put out word that we were filling wholesale orders, Bower signed on with the promise to overpay. What was I supposed to do, refuse? We couldn’t afford to refuse, Bower or not.”

  Marcus drew a long, loud breath through his nose, his gaze heavy on her. “Where is the contract?”

  “In storage. Give me a second and I’ll get it.” She patted her pockets until the jingle of keys sounded, then headed out the front door.

  We all shared a look, and I figured we all were imagining her running for the Christopher Street station.

  “I’ll go,” Laney offered, heading out on Mom’s heels.

  A collective sigh sounded before all our gazes turned to Dad.

  His hand framed his chin, fingers testing the consistency of his snowy white stubble, his unfocused gaze on the parquet.

  “You knew,” Marcus said.

  A nod. “Not until after she signed the cursed thing, but yes. I knew.”

  The hot flash of betrayal washed over me. “How could you not tell me?”

  “Because your mother asked me not to, and my loyalty is to her above all. Even you, son. We were determined to finish out the contract and be done with the whole thing, but it seems things are more complicated than we realized.”

  “Who read over the contract? Marty?” Marcus asked after their old incompetent lawyer, his brain firing behind his eyes like a machine gun.

  At that, Dad flinched. “Your mother.”

  This time, we all groaned.

  “Oh my God,” Luke breathed. “We are so screwed.”

  Marcus scrubbed a hand over his weary face. “We are. This letter says something about a noncompete. Why would she sign a noncompete with Bower?”

  “Because she believed she had no choice,” Dad said, defeated.

  “We could have helped,” Marcus shot. “All you had to do was ask, and we would have.”

  The door opened again, marking the entrance of Mom, a banker box overflowing with papers nestled in her arms. Her face bent in pain, eyes accusing when they met Marcus’s.

  “This wasn’t your responsibility. It was my fault, and I wouldn’t drag you, my children, into the mess I made. I know I’m not smart, and I have no head for business, as evidenced by my gratuitous mismanagement of the business that is my legacy. I have enough regrets without drowning you all with me. If you hadn’t discovered it, Marcus, if you all hadn’t insisted on taking over, I would have just let Longbourne die. It might have put me into the ground to do it, but there is no world that exists in which I would willingly put my children in danger, financial or otherwise.”

  But Marcus shook his head at her tearful plea. “Don’t you understand the position this puts us in? If you had just told us from the beginning, all of this could have been avoided. Every time you keep a secret from us, the danger multiplies. Running away from it only makes things worse. Case in point.” He held up the letter in display.

  Mom’s chin rose, nose in the air as she strode toward him. “It must be very fulfilling to look down at me from up there on your high horse, Marcus Bennet.” She shoved the box into his hands.

  “Nothing about this fulfills me, Mother,” was his reply. “I’ll start with the contract, figure out what we’re dealing with. Until then, it’s business as usual. No more surprises,” he said with a hard look around the room. “As your investor and the current owner of Longbourne, that’s not a suggestion.”

  And with that, he headed for the door, opening and closing it with more force than was necessary.

  Mom sniffed again, nose still up but her eyes full of tears as she moved for my father. He opened his arms, and she curled into him ge
ntly, her defenses gone slack as her spine.

  “I can’t believe you kept this from us,” I said quietly, locking eyes with my father again. “How long has it been going on?”

  “A year,” he admitted. “You have to understand, your mother was just trying to help. To save things as best she could.”

  “She should have come to us,” Laney insisted. “Marcus is right. This all could have been avoided.”

  “How bad is it?” Jett asked carefully.

  Dad’s eyes grew sad. “There are quite a few more surprises waiting in that box, I’m afraid.”

  “Did you even read the letters, Mom?” Laney asked. “Did you know what you signed? How could they make Longbourne cease business?”

  “The noncompete,” Dad answered for her, his arm around her shoulders protectively but his face apologetic and heavy with remorse. “If the shop made over a certain amount of money, we would be in breach. They’ve been sending requests for our financials, and those requests have been ignored.”

  “Have we exceeded their terms?” I asked, not wanting the answer.

  With a sigh, Dad nodded. “I think it’s likely.”

  “Everything we’ve worked for,” Luke said, half to himself. “Everything we’ve done to save Longbourne, and now they’re going to shut us down? I can’t believe this. I cannot believe you didn’t tell us.”

  Mom hiccuped a sob into Dad’s chest. “I’m so s-sorry,” she said miserably, the sound muffled by his shirt. “You have a right to be a-ashamed of me. My mother turned over in her grave when my pen touched that contract. And n-now I’ve r-ruined everything.” The word dissolved into a wail.

  And that was just about all I could take.

  I stepped toward them, cupping Mom’s shoulder. At the gesture, she spun into my arms, launching herself at me as a fresh trail of sobbing escaped her. Her fists, gnarled from arthritis, twisted my shirt.

  One by one, my siblings joined until we were a knot of arms and torsos, Mom in the middle.

  “We’ll fix this,” I promised. “We’ll figure it out.”

  And I hoped with all my heart that I could make good on it.

  18

  Birthday Bitch

  KASH

  A week passed in a whirl. Days in the greenhouse, afternoons with Marcus as he sifted through the unholy amount of paperwork our mother had dutifully ignored for months. Nights in Lila’s arms, the distance between us always slim.

  It had become impossible, in fact, to maintain any form of detachment. I’d become accustomed to ignoring our looming end, a constant presence that took up a dark space in my heart. But I happily pretended as if it wasn’t silently waiting to be acknowledged.

  Pretending felt good.

  Being with me had proven to be as easy as I’d promised, and she was happy. And her happiness made me happy, the infectious feeling fuel for my denial. Neither of us had broached the subject of our status, maintaining the front that there were still no strings, exclusive or not. But both of us knew we were in trouble. Whether it was because she had feelings for me or because she was worried I did remained to be seen. And I’d rather live in ignorance in order to keep her than to uncover that particular truth.

  It was a trait I shared with my mother, it seemed.

  The uncovering of my mother’s secret turned into a massive excavation, resulting in horrifying discoveries. The noncompete in the wholesale contract she’d signed was a five year deal, one that Dad had been filling from the greenhouse unbeknownst to any of us. I’d thought it strange he’d taken to the occasional delivery, citing back or knee pain as a reason to drive rather than dig. But I couldn’t have guessed he was delivering our crops to Bower. Of course, I’d never had a reason to be suspicious before now. Per the contracts, the shop could not gross two hundred thousand dollars in a calendar year, or we would have to either cease business or give the remaining profit to Bower. There was an escape hatch, a clause that said we could buy ourselves out of the contract.

  The purchase amount: two million dollars.

  Marcus might have been able to pay it had he not sunk all his money into saving the shop. The clause didn’t specify profit, of which there was none—all of the money we’d made in the last few months went straight back in to pay off the debts accrued during the shop’s downturn, with no small thanks to our horrible old accountant. Marcus had a lawyer friend, Ben, who’d taken us on, and the two of them were knee deep in the process of determining the legitimacy of the claim and running through our finances—a complex process involving a decade of improperly filed paperwork, invoices, and tax returns.

  Either way, we had a minute before we had to close Longbourne’s doors or turn over every penny we’d made. Which, as noted, was already gone.

  In the meantime, it was business as usual. But we’d have some big decisions to make soon, and none of us had a good feeling about it.

  I pulled the delivery van to a stop in the service bay of the Plaza, chatting with Charlie, one of the dock managers, about the event everyone was talking about—Natasha Felix’s twenty-first birthday party.

  Longbourne had put together the centerpieces, a few garlands, and the table display for the banquet portion of the evening, the “family” dinner that consisted of a cool three hundred guests at five hundred per head. Lila had planned this event, plus transportation for a hundred of those people to Noir, one of the hot nightclubs in town, which the Felix estate had rented out for the night. And it only cost them half a million dollars.

  Chump change.

  Charlie and I shook hands before I got to work, hauling arrangements out of the back and onto carts, which the staff transported into the venue. Lila’s interns waited with instructions to set up the centerpieces, and I would get the table display and garlands in place. A couple hours was plenty of time, thanks to Tess’s stellar organizational skills. She’d boxed, labeled, and color-coded everything, leaving me instruction sheets in triplicate.

  The second I walked into the banquet hall, I saw her. As was her custom for evening events, she was in all black, the deepest, darkest of blacks against the cream of her skin. The pantsuit was tailored to fit her body in exact proportions—the V of her lapels, the bend of her waist, the flare of her jacket, the long, straight length of her pants that made her legs impossibly long. Her hair, which she usually wore up at events, was down and shining in waves like a starlet from the golden age.

  When she saw me, she smiled in a stretch of red lips, sending an intern off with a word and striding in my direction. Without thought, I moved to meet her. There was nowhere else to go.

  She kissed me, or I kissed her—I couldn’t tell and didn’t care. All that mattered was that we were kissing, brief and delicate as it was. When she leaned back, her gray eyes sparked like flint, bright and hot and lovely.

  “What can I do for you?” I asked, my voice low and rough.

  She hummed, watching her hand as it trailed down my shirt. “So many ways to answer that question. But let’s start with the flowers.”

  I kissed her nose. “If we must.”

  “Sadly, we must. But if you’re up for a late night—” She froze, her eyes flicking behind me.

  I heard her laughter and knew exactly who was there. Turning confirmed that Natasha Felix stood behind me, tall and blonde and beautiful in that contrived way only achieved by makeup artists and plastic surgeons.

  Judging by the way the man at her side looked at Lila and the proprietary way Natasha hooked his arm, I could only assume this was Brock.

  He was handsome, I’d give him that. Strong jaw, cool eyes, easy smile. Rich and confident, the kind of guy who walked into a room and drew the attention of everyone in it.

  Stupid fuckbag. He had no idea what he’d had in her—and bully for me.

  I turned fully, straightening my spine and drawing back my shoulders to flex the extent of my height and breadth on him. I wasn’t even ashamed to posture so blatantly.

  I wanted him to know who the bigger man was. Th
e better man.

  But Natasha laughed again, a disdainful sound, drawing herself a little closer to Brock the Cock.

  “Wait, you’re not telling me you’re fucking the gardener, are you?” Cruel was her laugh as she glanced up at Brock.

  He eyed me with challenge and an air of disbelief as he took stock of my appearance. Size aside, I was dressed in a T-shirt and jeans, not willing to mess up my good clothes, which were in a garment bag in the van, to haul up centerpieces.

  Brock didn’t seem impressed.

  But Lila, ever the professional, smiled and stepped around me. “Not that it’s any of your business, but yes. The bar is over here, already set up and ready. Shall we?”

  She swept her hand in the direction of said bar, behind which was waiting a bored bartender on his phone. The minute he saw her glaring in his direction, he straightened up, tugging his coat to straighten it.

  But neither Brock nor Natasha moved. Their gazes fixed on me.

  “Kash Bennet,” I said shortly, extending my hand to Brock in a gesture of good will, for Lila’s sake.

  They looked down in unison. He hesitated, and I didn’t know if it was because he thought me beneath him or because he was just so fucking amused at the circumstance that he figured me for a joke.

  I wondered if he’d think a black eye was funny. I sure as hell would.

  Brock shrugged Natasha off and took my hand in an exaggerated clap and a squeeze that was too hard. I returned the gesture forcefully enough to feel his bones gather.

  “Not every day I get to meet the guy fucking my ex,” he said with a false smile and hard eyes.

  Lila stiffened next to me, insult on her lips—I could feel it. But for the sake of her job, she kept her mouth shut. Fortunately, I wasn’t bound by the same laws.

  “Not every day I get to meet the guy who fucked her over.” His face flashed with offense, but before he could speak, I said, “If you’ll excuse me, I have some work to do.”

  “Dick,” Natasha shot, slithering up next to Brock again.