by Joss Wood
“What did you do?” Liam dropped his voice, knowing that he had to keep a cap on his anger because, if he let it loose, it would roar and claw and eviscerate.
Catherine stood up and lifted her shoulders in an elegant, indifferent shrug. “I was the source of the tabloid rumors. I’ve been telling my friends, and encouraging them to tell their friends, not to hire Teresa St. Claire, that she’s just not our sort.”
Yeah, that was the truth; it just wasn’t all the truth. “What else?”
That shrug again. He didn’t want to think, or face it, but he had to ask. “Did you have any interactions with her brother, Joshua?”
Catherine inspected her nails. “Not directly.”
She wanted to tell him, he realized; she wanted him to know. To brag? He wouldn’t put it past her. Liam remained quiet and waited her out. It didn’t take long for her to start talking.
“When I heard that she was working for Matt, I knew that you’d run into her and I knew that there was a chance that you’d still find her attractive. I was soon proved right. I was not going to let her back into our lives.”
Oh, shit.
“I’d always kept tabs on her. I thought it necessary. I knew exactly who she was, what her brother had done. I made contact with the people who bought her brother’s debt and I encouraged them to inflate the interest, to apply pressure. I made certain financial contributions to make her life hell.”
“Did you have anything to do with Joshua’s flight across the country, him gate-crashing Matt’s party?”
“A little ketamine, two thugs and a thousand dollars will go a long way,” Catherine admitted without a shred of remorse. “I also fed the tabloids information and photographs about her affair with your father but I have to admit, that girl is harder to scare than I thought.”
Liam realized that he’d never been this angry before. Right now he absolutely hated his mother. Loathed her with every fiber of his being.
He still had so many questions but he was running out of time. “How did you contact the people holding Josh’s debt?”
“The same way you did. People in our social circle, people with serious money, all have people who take care of things like that for us,” Catherine replied, bored. “We don’t do it ourselves, darling.”
“The Fixer?”
“Someone like him.” Liam fought the insane desire to laugh. People like them never got their hands dirty; they directed proceedings from afar. Plausible deniability, wasn’t that the term? No more. He was done with trying to keep his hands clean. If fighting dirty was what was needed to save Teresa from his mother’s machinations and, as scary, the criminal underworld, that was what he’d do.
Picking up his phone, he redialed the previous number he’d used.
“I just sent you the coordinates,” Jeremy stated. “Since you’re in your office, it should take you about ten minutes to get to him.”
“I want to be in on those conversations. I want to be in on that meeting. I want to be the one to hand over the cash. Make it happen.”
Liam looked at his mother and narrowed his eyes at her. He tossed his phone on his desk and sent his mother a hard look. “I want you out of my life, Catherine, but right now I’ll settle for you leaving my office.”
Catherine, for the first time in her life, left without further argument.
Ten
It took a few hours to track Joshua down as the kid kept moving through the city. When he did, Liam sat on the park bench next to Teresa’s younger brother, watching him out of the corner of his eye. Joshua looked as relaxed as a rabbit on speed and at any moment he expected him to bolt. Liam, on hearing that Joshua was in Cal Anderson Park, was surprised to find him on one of the first benches after entering the park.
“Did my sister send you?” Joshua demanded.
“No, the world has to stop turning before your sister asks me for help,” Liam muttered, still annoyed. “So, what’s the plan? How are you going to deal with this situation? How do you plan on repaying the money?”
Joshua’s expression turned grim. “We’re not. If we can’t borrow it from you it leaves us only one option and that’s to run.”
Liam felt his heart constrict. Running was the stupidest idea ever. “Wait, back up. What do you mean if we can’t borrow it from me?”
Joshua looked at him like he was thick. “Because if we do, we all die. Including you.”
Nice. So that was the reason Teresa issued that stupid lie. She’d been trying to protect him.
Liam forced himself to push the thought of his imminent demise away. “That makes no sense. They shouldn’t care where the money comes from, just that they get it. Unless...”
Unless his mother put that bug in their ear.
Oh, that sounded like something she’d say. Liam wanted to believe that she didn’t mean it but, having seen what lengths she’d go to get Teresa out of his life, and hers, he wasn’t so sure.
Dutton’s voice flowed into his ear. “When I spoke to the boss, he made it clear that he’s only concerned about getting the money asap. If that was a condition, he would’ve said something so I think it’s safe to assume that they don’t give a damn who pays and that it was an empty threat.”
“Awesome,” Liam replied to Dutton, who was monitoring his conversation through some fancy spy gear. He had a bud in his ear and the pen in his inside pocket was operating as a microphone and recorder. He was also somewhere around and when he met with his contact, Dutton would video-record the transaction. There was no way anyone would be able to dispute the payment.
Liam put his hand on the leather knapsack, needing to keep contact with the cash that had been delivered to his office an hour ago. Newish bills, packets and packets of them.
He was carrying around seven million dollars in cash and in thirty minutes, he was going to hand the rucksack over at a coffee shop not far from here. He was trying to play it cool but he hoped Joshua couldn’t tell that his heart felt like it was about to beat out of his chest. It wasn’t every day one met with the lieutenant of some mafia-like organization. Okay, he met with sharks all the time—his board members were an excellent example—but these were streetwise sharks and they had a history of drawing blood.
Joshua’s phone rang and the kid leaped a foot out of his seat. He pulled it out of the deep pocket of his stupid, low-hanging pants—had he never heard of a belt?—and squinted at the display. “It’s Teresa again. She’s flipping out.”
Liam hated the thought of Teresa worrying and could easily imagine her pacing her apartment, wondering where the hell Joshua was. But if she, and Joshua, were kept in the dark about what he was doing there was no chance of either of them messing up his plans. And Teresa wouldn’t run without Joshua and he intended to keep Joshua with him until the very last minute.
This needed to end and he intended to do exactly that.
Joshua stared at his heavy biker boots. “Why are you doing this? Why are you helping me?”
Liam thought it better that there was no misunderstanding between him and Teresa’s brother. “I’m not doing it for you.”
Joshua frowned and for the first time, his eyes met Liam’s. “Uh...you’re not?”
Liam folded his arms across his chest. “Nope. I’m doing this for your sister, so that you can stop being the biggest pain in her ass.”
“I...um... I know I messed up,” Joshua hedged and his voice took on a whiny tinge that Liam despised.
“You are in your twenties, St. Claire. When are you going to stand on your own two feet and stop expecting your sister to bail your skinny ass out of trouble?”
“I didn’t mean to—”
Liam plowed his fist into Joshua’s biceps and the kid skidded down the park bench and nearly fell off the end. “Stop lying to yourself. You act first and think later or you ask Teresa to think for you. That stops here. And it stops today.”
>
“I guess,” Joshua muttered. “You’re hella protective over my sister. Why are you doing this?”
“God alone knows.”
Joshua tipped his head to the side. “Have you told my sister that you love her?”
Liam turned his head slowly and he saw Joshua inch down the bench, away from him. He wanted to deny his words but he couldn’t; neither did he have an answer to his question. He hadn’t told Teresa because, as of two seconds ago, he wasn’t completely sure that he did. Now he was. Sure, that is. She was his; she always had been since that evening they first met all those years ago.
He loved her.
That had to be the reason why he was handing over seven million dollars to some assface at lunchtime on a Monday morning.
“Well?” Joshua asked. “Does she know? Are you ever going to tell her?”
Not yet, not quite yet. Maybe never. There were so many gaps in his life, so many blanks he still needed to fill. He needed those missing puzzle pieces to be filled before he could go to Teresa and hand his heart over. There were so many questions he needed answered—about his parents, about why Linus left her his shares—and he would also need to tell her about Catherine’s machinations.
His mother had messed with her and Joshua’s lives, had tried to ruin her business, caused her untold worry. How would she be able to look past that to a life with him?
She’d thought that she was bad for him but today’s events proved that he wasn’t good enough for her. They didn’t have a hope in hell.
“Are you going to ask her to marry you? Are you going to get her name tattooed on your butt? Are you going to make her a playlist with a whole bunch of love songs on it?”
Right, the kid was now starting to annoy him. Liam lowered his glasses and when Joshua met his eyes, scowled. “Remember that fist I planted on your jaw a few weeks back?”
Joshua rubbed the side of his face. “Yeah, you came close to breaking it.”
Not even close. “Well, if you don’t shut the hell up, I’ll try again.”
“Relax, Liam,” Dutton cautioned via the tiny bud in his ear. “By the way, I’ve just sent an email through to your phone with regard to that DNA testing.”
Liam felt his heart shrivel and his lungs collapse. This? Now? “I’m about to hand over a crap load of cash to a known criminal and you want to discuss this now?”
Dutton had the audacity to laugh. “You can do two things at once. Do you want me to give you the highlights?”
“Give me a sec.” Did he? Liam knew that whatever Dutton was about to say next would change his life, on a fundamental level. He wouldn’t be the same person he was right now; he might not even be, he suspected, a Christopher. Did he really want to know? Could he live with himself if he didn’t find out?
No, he was done with lies, half truths and obfuscations. He needed the truth, no matter how hard it was to hear. The truth was always better than a lie...
Maybe.
No, it was. Truth had to win, every time. And if he wasn’t a Christopher he’d deal with the ramifications—his father’s will, this position on the board, in society—later.
“Tell me,” Liam said, pushing the words through clenched teeth.
“Your mother is your biological mother. Your father is not.”
Liam took a moment to digest his words. Hold on, what did that mean? It didn’t take him long to figure it out since he knew that his parents had been married for a few years before he was born.
So that had to mean that his mother had an affair.
A bubble of hysterical laughter formed in Liam’s chest. Catherine had bitched and whined and moaned and cried buckets over his father’s supposed affair with Teresa. But she was the one who’d colored outside the lines and not only had an affair—she also passed off her lover’s son as her husband’s.
Priceless.
Liam picked up his phone and walking just far enough away from Joshua so that he couldn’t hear his conversation, dialed his mother’s cell.
“I do hope you’ve called to apologize.”
Not in this lifetime.
“So, Catherine, would you like to tell me who my biological father is?” Liam asked. It was a strain to keep his voice calm and even but if he started shouting, there was a solid chance that Catherine would hang up. And he needed answers and he needed them now.
“I have no idea what you are talking about. Have you been drinking, Liam?”
Nice try, Mom. “I noticed Dad’s blood type in the hospital, and I knew that people with his blood type can’t produce a kid with my blood type. When I asked you about it at Dad’s funeral, you said it was a typo.”
Catherine’s silence was hot and heavy.
“So I ordered some genetic testing done and those results came in a few minutes ago. You’re my mother, but Linus wasn’t my father.”
“He was your father in every way that mattered—”
“Cut the crap, Mom. You had an affair—ironic, giving how much you’ve had to say on Dad’s perceived infidelity—and pretended that I was Dad’s.”
“You have been drinking!”
He’d definitely inherited his stubborn gene from Catherine. “Are you denying it?”
“Until my last breath.”
“Science doesn’t lie, Mom, but you sure as hell do.” Liam waited a beat. “I will find out.”
“It’s not going to change anything, Liam!” Catherine said and for the first time, Liam heard the edge of fear in her voice.
“Maybe not. Then again, it might change everything.”
Liam disconnected the call and gripped the bridge of his nose. With a mother like Catherine, who only saw what she wanted to see, it was no wonder he had trust issues. Would Catherine ever tell him the truth? He doubted it. So then, how to find out who his real father was? And why did he need to?
Liam stared at the green grass beneath his leather shoes. He needed to know because he now didn’t know who he was, where his real place in the world was. Was he a Christopher? What parts of him were a result of nurture and not nature? There were too many puzzle pieces of his life missing and he needed to find them, to get a clear picture of where he came from and who he was.
Until he was clear about that, he couldn’t know for certain how he felt about marriage and love and...
Teresa.
He needed to know everything, to be able to show Teresa exactly who he was so that, when—if—he ever found the guts to tell her he loved her, she’d know everything. The good and the bad. It was vitally important that there was nothing between them but cold, hard truth.
Lies corroded and if he kept anything from her, whatever they had would be eaten from the inside out.
“So do you want me to dig into who your biological father might be?” Dutton asked.
Dammit, he’d forgotten about his own Fixer, listening to every word he’d uttered.
Oh, well, what was done was done. “Yeah.”
“Can you give me a starting point?” Dutton asked. “Where were your folks living at the time? Please don’t tell me here in Seattle.”
Linus wasn’t his father; Linus wasn’t his father... Who was? Liam forced himself to think about Dutton’s question.
“Uh... I think I remember my mom saying that I was conceived in Hawaii. My dad was building a hotel out there at the time. Before he started with tech products, he was into real estate,” Liam replied. “They sold the hotel decades ago but it’s still there. It’s now called The Poseidon Inn.”
“I’m on it. Well, I will be when we’re done here.”
Liam looked around, trying to act casual. “Where are you?”
“Around.”
Liam walked back to the bench and sat down, resting his forearms on his thighs. He felt Joshua’s eyes on his face. “You look as white as a sheet. What happened?”
&
nbsp; Liam shook his head. “Nothing to do with you.”
Joshua nodded. “Fair enough. But if you are stressed, you should talk to Teresa. She’s good at listening and finding solutions.”
Yeah, she was. But Liam wasn’t going to burden her with his ugly past. Teresa had had too many people dumping their crap on her; he wouldn’t be another one in a long line who looked to her for a solution. He was a big boy; he’d work it out for himself, his way. “There’s a lot to be said for independence, Joshua. You should try it sometime.”
Dutton spoke in his ear, informing him that he needed to leave if he was going to meet his contact on time. Standing, he placed a hand on Joshua’s shoulder. “By the end of today your life is going to be very different. You’re about to get a second chance, so don’t mess it up. That being said, can you do me a favor?”
“What?”
“Wait here for me, maybe for twenty minutes, a half hour? Then we’ll tackle your sister together.”
Joshua nodded and Liam picked up the rucksack and walked away, trying to act like he wasn’t carrying several fortunes over his shoulder.
* * *
Teresa was about to climb the walls by the time she heard a knock on her apartment door. Flying across the room, she hurdled the two suitcases she’d packed—the absolute essentials she couldn’t leave behind—and yanked the door open. Her brother, looking tired but unharmed, lifted his hand in a half wave. Teresa, conscious of Liam behind him looking grim, wrapped her arms around Joshua’s waist and burst into tears.
“I thought you were dead. Why didn’t you answer my calls?” Teresa demanded between hiccups and sobs.
Joshua steered her backward into the room and awkwardly patted her back.
Aware that Liam had followed them into the room, she stepped away from Joshua and wiped her eyes with the balls of her hands. Teresa was so glad to see him one more time, for the last time, and she wished she could throw herself into his arms and ask him for help. But this was her mess. Well, Joshua’s actually, and while she might, emphasis on the might, consider asking him for a loan to help her out, she couldn’t ask him to risk his life.