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They should probably have divorced, but James was loyal to a fault and too damn stubborn to throw in the towel. I couldn’t see staying married to someone who I had nothing in common with, but it wasn’t a choice I could make for him.
As I spoke, I opened the top drawer of my desk and pulled out my car key before I grabbed my cell off my desk.
“I’ll see you when you get here. Come right to my office,” he instructed before hanging up.
I made the drive from our office building in West Hollywood to James’s estate in Beverly Hills like Mario Andretti was on my tail. Only when I pulled through the gate onto their property did I slow down. This I did because I didn’t want to raise any red flags with James’s wife if she was home. Parking my Maserati in front of the house, I schooled my expression before exiting the car.
Since I was expected, I didn’t bother knocking. After entering and closing the front door behind me, I listened for any unusual sounds. Hearing nothing, I headed through the foyer toward the west wing of the bottom floor where James’s office was located. After giving two courtesy knocks on the door, I walked inside. My stomach clenched when I saw him sitting behind his desk. The day before, he’d looked pretty damn good, but now his coloring was off. Hunched over his desk, he seemed almost frail. I tried to stamp my anxiety down as my heartbeat accelerated. Far more than a mentor, James was the only father figure I’d ever had. The thought of losing him made me physically ill.
After closing the door behind me, I hastily crossed the room to his desk. “What’s wrong?”
He gestured for me to sit on one of the plush office chairs in front of his desk. After complying, I looked at him expectantly. Clearing his throat, he sat up straight and gestured down to his iPad.
“I was looking over the invite list for the party the night before the upfront announcements when my iPad died,” he began. “Only when I plugged it in, I realized the charger wasn’t working. I figured I’d kill two birds with one stone. Walk to the east wing, get some of my steps in for today, and pick up Marcella’s charger.”
His eyes were full of pain when he looked up at me. “If I hadn’t needed that damn charger…”
My stomach dropped. If that fucking bitch cheated on him, I’d personally pack her shit and toss it out onto the curb.
Through clenched teeth, I asked, “What was in her office?”
“As I unplugged her iPad, the screen lit up, and I saw her messages. Once I saw who they were from, I typed in the password and did a deep dive on her messages. I took screenshots and sent them to your personal email and mine before I wiped all traces that I’d been there. Then I came back and called you. Now that you’re here, I need you to read everything I included in the email.”
I nodded as I lifted my phone from where I’d set it on the seat next to me when I sat down. With a series of swipes across the glass, I pulled my email up and clicked on the one from James. Another few seconds of downloads later, I started reading the screenshots.
There were just shy of two dozen of them, and I knew on the very first one that shit was not good because it was a chat between Marcella and her formerly estranged brother, Donald.
Marcella was part of the Montague family, sister to Donald and Ivory, but as far as anyone knew, she hadn’t spoken to any of them in more than two decades.
A few years after Ivory gave birth to her daughter, Kerri, she and her husband, Hanson Anderson, had broken up. Somehow, she’d sucked James into her orbit for five seconds, and during that time, she wound up pregnant. They’d been together until the fifth month of her pregnancy when she broke up with him and went back to Hanson.
Much like his daughter Kerri, Hanson was one of the neediest pricks alive. Naturally, it meant that he couldn’t stomach the idea of raising someone else’s child. Hell, he was barely raising his own. Donald was more involved in raising Kerri than Hanson was, not that it did her any favors.
Ivory was a self-involved psycho with an eating disorder. When she started to truly show in the sixth month, she disappeared. When she returned four months later, she did so sans child. James had moved heaven and earth to get details about where the child was—for almost two months, he had no idea if it was a boy or a girl—but he never got anywhere.
The only reason he ever found out that Ivory had given birth to a girl was because of Marcella. She’d gone against her family and told James what she knew, which wasn’t much. His daughter had been given up for adoption at birth, and Ivory refused to provide any details. James spent years searching for his child and never had a solid lead.
