My eyes were squeezed shut. I winced away when her hand came to rest on my shoulder. “Did you hear me?” she asked lightly.
“I heard you.” My voice cracked.
“I know this is probably awful to hear about your mother. The injustice of it all makes me sick. This-this sleazebag has gone on to have a career riding the coattails of works that are not his own. Yet he continues to use that earlier success to this day, no doubt financially as well, for these past thirty years.”
I took steadying breaths in and out. “Leave it,” I growled out the words. My throat was raw with the restraint I used.
“But the silver lining in all this is that I have started compiling a pretty credible case against him. I think, with a few more weeks, maybe more, of work, I can really have something here. Ialready pitched the idea to my editor.”
“You what?” I spun, barely reining in my anger as the words burst out of me.
She blanched, reeling back. “No names or details, of course.” She held her hands up in a soothing gesture. “I wanted to talk to you first.”
“You need to leave it, Claire,” I said slowly and flatly.
Her eyebrows contorted in hurt confusion. “Didn’t you hear me? I have proof. I could write the story. Your mother deserves justice.”
“Jesus, Claire, I said leave it!” This time, I did shout.
Her shoulders rose and fell in anger. “Leave it? Are you kidding me?”
“I should have known the second I showed you that room that it wouldn’t be enough to share this part of myself with you. You couldn’t just accept the piece of myself that I offered. You had to keep going and going.”
Her eyes were moving all around, trying to put pieces together, trying to catch up. “I wasn’t trying to pry. I recognized something about her style. I thought—I thought you would want to know this about your mother. I thought you would be upset, sure, but you want me to leave it?”
“That is what I said.” The fear. The sadness. The helplessness. They all clawed up my throat. It made me feel like I’d swallowed scalding coffee, burning me from the inside out. But more than anything, the anger, the pure unadulterated rage that lit up every cell, making me want to scream and flip the workbench, rip itfrom the hardware securing it, and throw it across the room like something out of a horror movie.
“Just like that?” Her head was shaking as she spoke. “I thought you would want to know that this snake of a man was stealing her work. I thought you would want to know the truth.”
My chest was hammering; I imagined my features were twisted in a terrifying snarl as I spat the next words out at her. “I know who he is. I know all about everything he did.” I tossed out my arms. Hands flexing to keep from grabbing and breaking something. “I know because he’s my bastard father.” I huffed a humorless laugh as her eyes went wide in horror. “Or I guess it’s more realistic to say I’m his bastard son.”
Chapter 23
Claire
This wasn’t happening.I had rehearsed this scenario a hundred times in the past few days, thinking of exactly how I would break this awful news to Levi. Never, in any reiteration, had I imagined him already knowing and wanting me to stop my search for justice.
“Your father?” I said, but it was mostly to myself as I processed this information. I certainly hadn’t accounted for that.
His father.That couldn’t be right. But the dates lined up, and even looking at his strong jaw and that patrician nose, the hints of Richard Stanley were there. But still. Why would he ever want me to stop? He loved and cared about his mother. My brain couldn’t make sense of it.
I looked around at the workshop and thought of his gorgeouscabin with all the top-of-the-line furnishings. Had thatman, that thief, funded this life for Levi? Was this another case of man looking out for man? Was this like Kevin wanting to protect his job over my story? Was he protecting this life? I’d managed to find yet another man who wanted to conceal a horrible, awful truth rather than deal with a modicum of discomfort.
I would have never thought in a million years that Levi would be like that. He seemed to be unconcerned with the things the rest of capitalist society cared about. Then again, only people who could afford to could easily say they wouldn’t be a cog in the machine.
“Forget the research. Forget the article. Let. It. Go,” he said when I remained quiet, processing.
I looked up to find the man standing right in front of me. His nostrils were flared, red flushed up his neck as he narrowed his eyes, boring them into me.
He had the audacity to be mad at me?
“I don’t need your permission to write this article. I came here as a-a friend, or whatever, to tell you because I thought you would want to know. Now I see I misread the situation.” Again.
I felt sick, worse than the nerves had made me feel. I felt lied to, cheated once again by a man I thought I understood, thought I shared some of the same incorruptible scruples. I couldn’t even think about the feelings I’d been harboring for him right now without another wave of nausea. How was I so naive? How was I so susceptible to this type of man? How did I miss the signsaround me?
Betrayed. That was the word. The familiar feeling that I fought so hard to protect myself from. Thinking I had all the information only to feel like the ultimate idiot.
Hot anger burned the back of my eyes as I twisted to shove past him and get out of there.
