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Life after Ava is like stale bread.
I’ve been keeping tabs on her, torturing myself with it. She got the job she wanted at her dream school. It had nothing to do with me—I only made the introduction. From all accounts, the kids love her already. I’m not at all surprised.
But she refused my offer of an apartment in the Cielo, instead wanting to find something on her own. She refused my money as well, and every cheque has come back return to sender. Our arrangement, in the end, left us both with half-measures. My brother doesn’t believe me, and she’s still looking for somewhere to live.
The deal with Henry Livingstone is hanging on by a thread—true to his word, Marc has stayed out of my way. But there’s been delay after delay. I know cold feet when I see it, but I can’t find the energy to properly reel him in. And truthfully, without Marc, the financial side of our business is sluggish. But I can’t pull the trigger on a replacement, either. Our head of accounts is acting in the CFO role, but the guy is no Marc.
Not even close.
The fact is, I want my family beside me. Even after everything that’s happened. But relationships are the downfall of good men...even familial relationships, because they can be tinged with as much animosity and jealousy as romantic relationships.
A sharp knock at the door startles me. I’ve been thinking aimlessly for over an hour—neglecting emails and board papers and the speech I’m supposed to run through for some charity event. None of it seems to matter now.
“Daniel?” My assistant pokes her head through the door. “Your brother is here to speak to you.”
If she registers the shock on my face, she doesn’t say anything, and a second later Marc walks into my office. He looks stylish as ever—his signature light grey suit a stark contrast against his overlong brown hair and full but neat beard. The facial hair is new, and when I look closer, I spot the hollows under his eyes. He looks rough. Ragged, even.
“What are you doing here?”
“We need to talk.”
Lord knows what kind of speculation is flying around the office now—I announced Marc’s departure in a short, undetailed statement last week that led to much office chatter. No one has dared breathe a word of it to me directly. Still, it hasn’t stopped the whispers or conversation that halts abruptly when I walk into a meeting room.
Marc takes a seat, popping the button on his suit jacket and folding his long-limbed body into a leather chair on the other side of my desk. How many times have we sat here, tension thickening the air as our relationship slowly disintegrated before my eyes?
“I thought you’d said everything there was to say,” I respond coolly. I have no idea where this conversation might go, but I’m done trying to placate my brother. Done trying to be the glue in this family.
“I know what happened,” Marc says. “I finally got to the truth.”
Great. Now what fresh, new bullshit does my brother believe? “I won’t keep defending myself—”
“I know you didn’t sleep with her.”
For a moment, I can only sit in stunned silence. “That’s what I’ve been telling you this whole time.”
I’ve never seen Marc look so broken before—he’s like a man who’s watched the world burn to the ground. Like a man who’s lost the only thing he’d ever cared about. He pulls out the photo—the one supposedly depicting Lily and me in a close embrace.
“You said the photo was doctored, and you were right.” Marc points to a small detail—the cuff link on “my” shirt, which pokes out from the sleeve of my suit jacket. It’s tough to make out the design, but they appear to be round with a dark stone in the middle. I squint, but they don’t look familiar to me. “Nonno gave me those cuff links before he passed away—he hardly ever wore them because he hated how he fumbled putting them on. But they were a gift from his big brother and he thought they should remain with the youngest Moretti.”
“Okay.”
“I could have put it down to you borrowing them, even if that does seem unlikely. But I know it can’t be true,” Marc continues. “Something about the date didn’t seem right. I’ve had them in for repair for months. The gemstone fell out and they’ve been waiting for a replacement to come in because I was adamant about having them colour matched. They would have been in the shop at the time this picture was supposedly taken.”
Such a small detail, but so significant.
“It only clicked when I got the call to pick them up a few days ago,” Marc continues. “It triggered something in my memory, and I went back to look at the photo. If the date was fake, then how could I believe any of it?”
He tells me the story—admitting the source of the photo is someone close to us. A confidant. A friend of our uncle’s and a board member of Moretti Enterprises. He’d stood next to me at my grandfather’s funeral, hand on my shoulder.
A board member who’s been quietly objecting to me stepping into the CEO role.
“Turns out the photo is old,” Marc adds. “I found the original online. It was from a charity event about four years ago that I don’t even remember. I’ve attended so many of the damn things they all blur into one in my head.”
White-hot burning rage filters through my system as I listen to the betrayal, to this morally corrupt board member’s plans to oust me. Apparently the “affair” was step one of his wider plans to degrade trust in my ability to lead the company. Marc had been a puppet, blinded by his own jealousy.
“He used me,” Marc says simply. For once, his emotionally charged communication style is dampened. Muted. I’ve never seen him like this before. “He knew that we were at odds over your promotion, and he used it to his advantage. Because he knew you wouldn’t let him run the show here, like our uncle did. He knew you couldn’t be bought or manipulated.”
The underlying message is there: this man thought Marccouldbe manipulated. And he was right.
