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I’m on my feet and out the door. I know Roger will handle the rest but if this matter is about what I think it is, I don’t want to wait.
Caleb isn’t alone in his office.
I’m not surprised to see Lana and Kendall there, but I am taken aback to see Jace.
He looks at me, uneasily.
I have never understood why he’s so wary of me.
Oliver enters the room behind me and shuts the door. Leaning against it, he nods towards the odd person in the room. “Jace found something out.”
Jace meets my gaze, “If I had known you were looking into Darren, I would have come to you sooner. A friend of mine from Cornell dropped by for lunch a while ago and we ran into Darren. My friend seemed to recognize him but he kept calling him Payden Hale.”
The name sounds familiar.
Jace continues, “Darren looked all flustered and he kept telling him he was mistaking him for someone else. But I asked my friend about him over lunch. Apparently, they studied together before Darren was kicked out for assaulting a few of their classmates. He raped two of them and harassed them, making them sign some kind of contract. One of the girls was shy of eighteen so her signature wasn’t valid. That’s how the news got out. Around the same time, Darren’s family was being sued for an accountancy scam, involving several firms.”
Oh, shit.
Jace sees the realization dawn on my face, and he nods. “You were one of the lawyers involved. I was there. I followed that case. I didn’t see Payden in the trial but that’s – I remember how ruthless you were. You were the one who broke that entire family and forced them into bankruptcy. I didn’t link the two together until my friend brought it up. Their family had a huge name in society and it was compl
etely destroyed. The entire family moved to London, so my friend was quite surprised to see Payden working here.”
I sink into the chair next to him, bewildered, “No wonder he looked so familiar. He’s dyed his hair but I’ve seen- Grace Hale, that’s his mother?”
Jace nods.
I jump to my feet. “And Payden is her oldest!”
Caleb asks, sharply, “Why is that important, Lucas?”
My jaw is tight with anger. “Because my father knocked up Grace Hale twenty seven years ago!”
“Wait – you and Dar-Payden are related?” Kendall sounds scandalized.
I want to pick up the chair in front of me and smash it on the ground over and over again. Gritting my teeth, I shove my clenched fists into my pockets. “I didn’t put two and two together as I never kept an eye on Grace. I knew about her situation and I knew my father extorted from her. He had a videotape of her. I stole it and freed her just to spite him. But I never thought about the kid!”
“Why would Payden come after you?” Lana sounds wary. “Seems to me, you two share the same enemy.”
“I don’t know…” There is still so much that is not making sense. “Why target Elise at all?”
Lana watches me and says slowly, “Your feelings for Elise have never been a secret. He could have just aimed for her to teach you a lesson.”
Kendall seems to follow Lana’s line of reasoning and she blinks. “He already has a history of assaulting women. He probably just planned to assault her and traumatize her. He didn’t think that she would get pregnant. And then he probably thought that you would be heartbroken that she slept with somebody but you still pursued her. The rumors, the bullying, his threats, everything happened in quick succession, because you never stopped pursuing her.”
“You kept stepping up, each time,” Lana adds with a nod.
I feel heavy remorse sinking in my gut. “So, all this, everything that Elise went through, it’s been because of me?” My words are phrased like a question but it’s a statement.
“Do you want us to give you a minute so you can cry this out?”
Oliver’s sardonic words snap me out of my stunned shock and I toss him a heated glare. “Fuck you.”
But his words do the job.
They make me focus on the real situation. “If he’s this vindictive, for whatever reason, he won’t leave Elise alone.” My blood runs cold. “He’s been running a long game. He won’t go down, quietly.”
My hand is reaching for my phone without thinking and I dial Elise’s number.
