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“Devon!” Mum cried out, darting up from the 19th century Victorian French settee, a flute of champagne in her hand. I stopped dead at the entrance, taking the scene in front of me in.
Hustling and bustling around her, servants were removing a Rembrandt van Rijn painting and expensive furniture from the room, item by item, to make it appear bare and scanty. Cecilia was perched in front of the winged piano, looking like a woman who not only wasn’t on suicide watch, but would happily commit murder herself if it threatened to bite into her leisure time. She wore a Prada dress—from this season—and next to her was the so-called bane of her existence, Drew, who seemed content playing with the locks of her blond hair before I walked into the scene.
“Devon?” I asked with a mocking expression. As I made my way to Mum, she put her champagne aside and was now pushing servants out of the room, shoveling them out into the vast hallway to cover for her indiscretions. She wanted me to think the house was empty, crumbling. That she was a step away from an empty fridge, she was so poor. “Whatever happened to Devvie?”
When the last of the servants were out the door, Mum threw herself at me, hugging me with a sob. “It’s so good to see you. We weren’t expecting you until dinnertime. Is your friend in Surrey all right?”
“My friend in Surrey does not exist, so it is hard to tell,” I drawled. Shrugging off her touch and sauntering toward the regency bar cart, I poured myself a generous glass of brandy.
“It’s not what it looks like.” It was Cece’s turn to stand up from the piano and rush toward me, her face flushed. She twisted the hem of her dress in her fists. “I mean, yes, it is what it looks like, in a way, I suppose, but we didn’t want you to think our struggle is not real. We needed to give you a push.”
I threw the brandy down my throat, pointing at my sister with the empty glass. “Are you suicidal?” I asked, pointblank.
She winced visibly. “I … umm … no.”
“Have you ever been?”
She squirmed. “I had moments when I was depressed—”
“Welcome to life. It’s a pile of shite. That’s not what I asked.”
“No,” she admitted finally.
I swung my gaze from her to her husband, who was scrambling up from the piano seat, wobbling over to us, still wearing silk pajamas that did no favors for his thighs. These were the people I’d worried about for the past two decades. The ones I’d been sending checks and letters to. The folks I’d agonized over.
“Drew, can I call you Drew?” I asked with a winning smile.
“Well, I—”
“Never mind. I was being polite. I am going to call you whatever the fuck I want to call you. Are you good to my sister, arsehole?”
“I-I think so.” He shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, looking around, as if this was a test with a definite answer and he hadn’t prepared for it.
“Have you ever held a job?”
“I was a business consultant for a nonprofit organization after I finished uni.”
“Did you know anyone on the board?”
He winced. “Does my dad count?”
I don’t know, is the Queen English?
“Do you have a health issue keeping you from working?”
“My stomach gets very upset when I’m nervous.”
“Very well. Work your way to a paycheck, and you’ll have no reason to be nervous.”
Next, I turned to look at my mother. By her cloudy expression, she gathered there were no happy announcements coming her way nor confetti and venue-shopping in her immediate future.
“You’re not struggling,” I said.
“I will, if you don’t marry Louisa.”
“Sell the valuables you own.”
“The family treasures?” Her eyes widened.
“Family treasures are supposed to be the relationships, laughter, and support you get from one another. Not paintings and statues. I suggest you start looking for a profitable job or at the very least find out if you could go on the dole, because there is no way in hell I am marrying a woman who isn’t Emmabelle Penrose.”
I was already cocked and loaded, ready to fight her over sending people to threaten Sweven. By the power of deduction, I wagered there was no way at least some of the things that happened to her weren’t by my mother’s order.
“Please, I cannot even hear her name!” Mum covered her ears, shaking her head. “That woman ruined everything. Everything.”
“Is that why you sent people after her?” I leaned against the wall, one hand tucked inside my front pocket.
“Excuse me?” She slapped a hand against her chest.
“You heard what I said.”
We held each other’s stare. Neither of us blinked. She spoke, still staring at me. “Cece, Drew, leave.”
They scurried away like rats abandoning ship. I cocked my head sideways, scanning the woman who brought me into this world who stopped caring about me when I didn’t shape my life around her vision of her own dreams. I wondered when, exactly, I’d become nothing but a tool for her. In my teens? College years? As a full adult?
