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“What happened between our families?” she asked.
“Your father and mine were best friends. They worked together and were planning to start a business together. My father invested a lot of money, more than Caleb, into their startup venture. I was around eight at the time and I remember him working so hard and being so excited and hopeful about the better life he’d be able to give my mom and me. Your father stabbed him in the back, Abby. His best friend whom he trusted, who was often in our home.”
She pulled in an audible breath. “What did he do?”
“Caleb was taking part in a few unsavory business deals to push ahead, a fact my father was ignorant of. When things caught up to Caleb, he threw my father under the bus. It was my father’s company for the most part…at the time, having put up front most of the money and effort. Caleb had good ideas and he had vision, but handling the financial aspect of things wasn’t his strong-suit. My father’s name was on everything. He went down for fraud. There wasn’t much money to hire a good lawyer to prove his innocence. He’d drained his savings to start that business. Instead of Caleb coming forward, he took their business and went on as if nothing had happened, turning it into Aldridge Enterprises with the help of your conniving stepmother, Celeste, and a few others who’ve recently been shown the error of their ways.”
Damian ran his fingers through his hair. “I spent seven years without my father, watching my mother struggle, barely able to put food on the table while Caleb’s fortune amassed on the money and sweat of my father. When my father was free, he went to Caleb to get back what was owed to him, but Caleb didn’t have a conscience. My father was never the same again. He killed himself a year later. I think he was ashamed. He was a man who believed in providing for his family. But, with his record, he couldn’t get a job. When he couldn’t provide for us, he didn’t want to continue living. It was selfish of him and very weak. My mother and I were so happy to have him back, we weren’t thinking about what he couldn’t provide financially. I found him in the garage slumped over a table in a pool of blood with a gun in his hand. I was sixteen.”
“Oh, Damian,” Abby said. She clutched the sheet to her chest and stared at him in horror. “I ... I’m so sorry.” She winced. As if her apology was worth anything.
Damian shook his head as if shaking off the ghastly memory. “Do you see now, Abby? Why I detest your parents? I’m pretty sure it was Celeste who encouraged Caleb to let my father take the fall for his crime. That woman will step on anyone to stay rich and maintain her social status. That’s how some of the old-money types behave. She even came to our house and threatened my mother to stay away from Caleb. As I said, Caleb spent a lot of time with us. He and my mother were friends as well. But my mother doesn’t have a vengeful bone in her body. Her only thought was of me. I spent years taking down everyone who refused to help my father and prove his innocence, years planning and orchestrating until your father had nothing left. I knew his weaknesses and his careless nature when it came to money and his flashy wife. I stayed behind the scenes, while I commanded several institutions I’d gained power over to drain Caleb’s finances. I only showed my face when it was time to take the company that was rightfully my father’s away from him. That day, he knew exactly why he’d been destroyed and by whom.”
Slack-jawed, Abby continued to stare at Damian. Her heart pounded so hard that she could’ve sworn she could hear her blood rushing to her ears. How could her father have been so … evil? All along, the story had been flipped. It wasn’t Damian and his father who were the heartless villains. She believed Damian. Wholeheartedly. Regret for ever even having the slightest inclination to hurt him consumed and overwhelmed her in an instant.
“Go ahead, Abby, tell me what a merciless bastard I am.”
His dark eyes bore into hers. “No,” she said, “because you’re not. I don’t blame you for anything that you’ve done to my family. They deserve it. We deserve it.”
Damian blinked, his disbelief evident. “I definitely didn’t see that coming either.” He wiped a hand over his face. “You don’t deserve anything bad, Abby. Hell, you weren’t even born when your father did what he did.” He reached for her hand. “You’re innocent. You and your brother.”
His belief in her innocence hit her like a ton of bricks. Slowly, she edged further away from him. “Celeste did something else didn’t she? Something more than playing co-conspirator with my father.”
Hate gleamed in his already-cold eyes. “Celeste tried to do to me what was done to my father—send me to prison for false crimes. She assumed with all of her powerful family and friends that she could pull it off. If only she’d known that I owned those so-called powerful family and friends. One must be very thorough when going about destroying every indelible aspect of someone’s life,” he said. “Your father refused to go through with it, according to that rat-bastard lawyer, Henry Sullivan. It’s amazing how quickly some people will betray a friend when money is involved.”
Abby thought of Henry with pure vitriol. He really was a rat. It was also clear why Celeste had made the comment she had. If her father had listened to her and gotten Damian out of the way after he had bought the company, he would still be alive. That only showed how dense Celeste was. Falsified documents and claims would have been exposed eventually, and she was no match for Damian’s wit. A bittersweet swell of pride to her came out of nowhere. After everything that had been done to his family, he deserved to win. “And Elaina, why do you hate her?”
“Jesus, Abby, why are we doing this? Aren’t you satisfied with knowing the truth about your father?”
“I want to know everything. I need to know.”
He looked skyward and let out a frustrated grunt. “She tried to seduce me. Probably to find out something to use against me or to try to get me to go easy on the family. That’s still a mystery. I can bet it was Celeste who put her up to it. When I refused to even touch her, she spat threats of sullying my name with accusations of sexual assault. I suppose most people would believe the pretty socialite with the prominent name over a man from the other side of the tracks with a father who was deemed a criminal.” He shrugged. “The thing is…when a woman like Elaina shows up at your hotel room and you let her in, out of curiosity, of course, you press the record button on your phone …” Damian’s low chuckle filled the room. “The ego on that woman is something else. I’m guessing most men never say no to her. When I replayed her entire rant she was livid. Another plan orchestrated by an Aldridge failed.”
Abby let out a mirthless laugh and swept a hand through her hair. She couldn’t deny that she was relieved Elaina and Damian hadn’t slept together, there mere thought of it had been driving her crazy. “Wow. This is all a lot to take in. You certainly are a mastermind, Damian.”
He cocked a brow. There was no air or expression of self-praise. “Money made things easy.”
“If you were as thorough as you claim, surely you knew about every buried secret my family had.” He hadn’t seemed all that surprised when she revealed Celeste wasn’t her mother. Abby waited for his answer with bated breath.
“I did.”
Her breath escaped in a whoosh. “You knew that Celeste wasn’t my biological mother all along?”
“No. I had no idea when we first met. That piece of information came along later.”
Nodding, Abby slid out of bed, still clutching the sheet to her front. She had to find her clothes and get the hell out of there, but first, she had to come clean. Damian moved to get up, and she held up a hand. “Please, just stay over there.”
He frowned but surprisingly, he acquiesced. “Abby, I know you’re hurt and angry, but we can work this out.”
“No we can’t,” she said, her eyes already filling with tears. “You’re going to hate me too.”
“No, you’re different. You’ve never …”
“I played you, Damian.” She dashed away a tear. “At least, I tried.” His confused expression made her confession so much harder. He truly believed she was innocent. “The night I showed up at your event, I was told to get your attention, get you into bed, and see what I could find to blackmail you.”
Slowly, his bewildered expression turned to a deeper frown. He gazed at her with blatant shock, and then, recovering with speed, his face became a stern mask. But, Abby would forever remember the way his expression had crumbled…before he became the man she’d met after their tête-à-tête on that balcony- guarded and aloof.
“I agreed to do it because I was so angry and I hated you for what you did to my father, but I had no idea what really went on with our families’ history. It might not matter to you at this point, but I got to see the man you really are. You’re not who everyone says you are, and I fell for you, Damian. I couldn’t go through with their stupid plot. Even if you hadn’t told me the real truth, I wouldn’t have done anything to hurt you, no matter what,” she said, silently imploring him to believe her.
Damian’s eyes never left her, and it was disconcerting standing under his piercing gaze as she clutched the sheet to cover her nakedness. He rubbed his chin thoughtfully and then let out a sour grunt of laughter. “I’ll be damned. I was the prey and not the predator.”
She gulped and braced herself for an onslaught of angry words, but what she got was worse.
“And here I thought I’d won,” he said calmly. “Well played, Abby. Celeste taught you well.”
That was all he said, delivered with an empty stare, and she broke down. Before he could witness her tears, she wheeled around and fled.
