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“Almost seven years. It’s been rough.”
She rests her hand on my knee. “I bet. But what did that woman mean about all the bad luck your family has?” She turns her head away from me and looks straight ahead. “Brina and I searched around, I mean. Everything we found was kind of wild, but...there were so many articles. It could still be tabloid trash.”
My shoulders slump like a condemned man.
No point in pretending I don’t know what she’s talking about.
Paige deserves the truth. She linked her trust, her reputation, to mine with this desperate arrangement, after all.
“I’m not sure what you found, but it’s probably all true. My parents are both selfish people from rich families. Dad never appreciated the blood, sweat, and tears my grandparents put into building the firm, and Mom was no better. She was a senator’s daughter. The senator filed for bankruptcy after losing his seat and having the SEC come down like a ton of bricks for insider trading. She had to find a way to maintain her lifestyle. Dad was her answer, a man with plenty of money and unlimited greed.”
My temples throb, so many shitty moments flooding back.
“That’s interesting. Did your dad want to be a politician?”
I scoff. “My dad doesn’t want to be anything but wealthy, a playboy, and an idiot. Yes, in that order. He liked being connected to a powerful family and offered my mother plenty of money. It was a done deal.”
Her eyes go wide when she meets my gaze.
“A deal. Like ours?”
Fuck, don’t remind me.
For one, arrangements founded on anything but love expire, and so will this. More than that, I don’t want to be anything like my father, yet here I am with this angel staring at me like we’re more than a pretense.
I swallow.
“Their arrangement was supposed to be more permanent, but it was all about fast money and ladder climbing. Mom turned into a huge alcoholic by the time I was seven. She hardly talked to me, and she lurched between babying Nick and treating him like crap.” I take a deep breath.
“Oh, God. Ward, I’m sorry,” she whispers, rubbing my shoulder.
“I’d might as well tell you the rest. Dad drained the last of his trust fund money and used it to start a Ponzi scheme. Then the shit hit the fan and people came after him. He used his lawyers to extricate himself from any wrongdoing. He worked for the firm a few years after that. Mostly stood around talking and acting like a major asshole. Employees said he bothered them while they were working—especially the women—so he left when Grandma made him.”
“Horrible,” she whispers, shaking her head.
“And not the end of it. He tried his hand at Vegas next. Turns out, he doesn’t have a poker face, so that resulted in huge gambling losses. My grandpa paid off the bookies because the whole family started getting death threats.”
“Holy crap. Wow. I’m so sorry you had to go through that...”
I put my hand over hers on my leg.
“I think my parents—well, all of us—finally hit rock bottom with the Parnell incident.” For a moment, I’m quiet, hating the fact that I have to rip myself open for her sake.
Her fingers massage my shoulder, crawl down my arm, and wait until I’m good and ready.
“Everyone on the yacht was drunk and high. Mom said Dad steered. Dad said Dylan Parnell steered. We don’t know who was driving, but they both blamed the wreck on the storm. Parnell died, and so did America’s favorite boy wonder movie star who never should’ve been invited to talk about a big merchandising deal with my idiot parents.” My throat feels raw.
“I’m too young to remember, but it was big news, wasn’t it?” Paige asks quietly.
“For us, that wasn’t even the half of it. My parents lived. I was so happy for them, but that only lasted so long. It would’ve been better if they were the only ones on that boat when it sank. They would’ve only hurt each other then...”
I slouch back against the bench, despising this shit.
“Dylan’s parents swore it was murder. A setup. Reporters hounded everyone for years. We had to hide in my grandparents’ house and go to boarding schools on the East Coast. We couldn’t come home without bodyguards swarming us for over a year. It was hell. Every time we tried to have a normal day, someone shoved a microphone in our face and started slinging questions. We were kids. We had nothing to do with it.” I shake my head. “My parents are lucky they’re not rotting in jail—”
“So, you believed Parnell’s family? You think it was murder too?”
I shrug. “I don’t know. Reckless manslaughter, maybe. The press made a lot of noise about smoke, but no fire. But I’m sure my parents supplied the drugs, and that was reprehensible. They were trying to pry more money out of that young man, knowing he was young, rich, vulnerable. They wanted to get him high and sign onto shit no one in their right mind would agree to sober. Things went catastrophically wrong. They divorced as soon as the investigation ended, and neither of them ever really recovered. They never learned a damned thing.”
