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“She’s my mother, Madi. What was I going to do? Put her in prison?”
Madi claps a hand over her mouth, her expressive brown eyes welling with tears. “My God–I'm so sorry. I can’t imagine.”
“So you can see why I don’t like her showing up at Thanksgiving or at the office.”
A tear slips from her eye.
“Don’t.” I thumb it away. “It kills me when you cry. Please don’t.”
She sniffs and shakes her head. “I won’t.”
Now I want to kick myself. It’s not fair to ask her to hold it in or fight it. But her logical brain comes online. “H-how did she do it?”
“Poison.” Silver dust mixed in with the tobacco. Silver is poisonous to shifters. Totally debilitating. “She brought my dad a gift. She’d gone to Cuba and brought him cigars–his favorite. They were poisoned. When he smoked the first one, it went straight into his lungs and killed him immediately.”
Her eyes swim with tears, but she blinks them back. “That’s horrible. Are you sure it was her? I mean, she brought the cigars, but did she know about the poison? Were they out of her or your father’s control any time between her giving them to him and him smoking them?”
I leave Madison and walk to the windows to look out at the city below. Her questions are valid, but I resent every one of them. I don’t want to open this can of worms–I’ve never wanted to. It was hard enough to assimilate what happened without examining it all too closely.
“If it wasn’t her, it was her family. My uncle or even my great-grandmother, who is a seriously creepy old woman. It doesn’t matter. My mom was the instrument of his death.”
Madison walks up behind me. In the glass, I see her reach out, then pull her hand back, like she’s afraid I won’t receive her touch. “Is it the same, though? Her knowing and participating versus being the unwitting instrument? Those are pretty different things, aren’t they?”
“To me, it’s the same.” My voice sounds dead.
The Adalwulfs killed my father and stole his company. My mother is an Adalwulf. These things can't be separated. I can’t forgive her, no matter what her part in it was.
“You see her as complicit, whether she acted directly or not,” Madison guesses.
“Exactly.”
“What if she wasn’t?”
I whirl on her, and she immediately throws her hands up in surrender. “I’m not trying to piss you off. I just think it’s important to have all the facts before making judgments. Especially about things that are close to the heart. Like your own mother.” She adds the last part softly, and I tug her against my body and kiss the top of her head.
Her scent smooths my frayed temper.
“Your input has been noted,” I murmur against her silky hair. “Call my pilot and have him bring the helicopter around. I need to get some fresh air.”
She lifts her head, brow furrowed. “You’re going to the Berkshires?”
“Yes. You can leave for the day,” I say, even though it’s only three in the afternoon.
“I can’t. I need to finish up those reports. My boss is a real dick.” She tilts her head when I don’t respond. “That was a joke, of course.”
“Finish them in the morning.”
“I’d rather finish them tonight. Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“No.” I shrug although it does feel wrong to leave her working here after I’ve put her through the wringer today. But this is why I value her as an assistant. Even without her scent. That hot as fuck body. Even without the attraction, she’d still be the best employee I’ve ever had.
* * *
Madi
I stay late working. I’m a perfectionist by nature, but I’m sure some of my workaholism tonight is guilt-driven. I screwed up with Brick today, and I hate screwing up. My heart aches for him. I can’t imagine the level of pain he must feel to believe his mother actually killed his father.
I believe there are layers of the trauma that need to be peeled back. I’m not as apt to blindly believe his mother was responsible based on circumstantial evidence, but it’s obvious he’s not willing to unpack it. It’s all too sore for him.
