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I offered him some wine, but he reached across the table and took his son’s whiskey instead. He downed it without looking away, though. I took it as my signal to begin.
“For the past year I’ve been here at Northhold, making a life for myself,” I began. “A new life. A post-Elijah life.”
His eyes darted to his son for a moment, then back to me. I thought I heard the slightest squeak of Elijah’s voice, wanting very badly to say something. But he was cut off by his father’s gaze halfway through the first word.
“Elijah arrived a few weeks ago,” I went on, “with the sole purpose of re-inserting himself back in my life. This wasn’t something I wanted or needed, of course. It’s just something that happened.”
“Get to the point, Jenna.”
His eyes flared dangerously, giving me the urge to look anywhere but at him. It was a technique I could tell he’d used in life, in business, most definitely in the boardroom. But I refused to look away.
“I didn’t call you here to ‘tell’ on your son,” I said bluntly. “That’s not my style. And it’s not that I can’t handle Elijah either, because I certainly can. God knows I learned how, over the course of dating him.”
Now I cast a sideways glance at the man’s son, and not favorably. When I looked back at Sebastian again there was still no sympathy in his eyes.
“The problem is, Elijah’s taken it upon himself to handleotherthings within this town. He’s using your money to manipulate people.”
“Iuse my money to manipulate people,” Sebastian pointed out. “It’s a large part of doing business.”
“I know, but you don’t prey upon the innocent. You don’t destroy for the sake of destroying. You actuallybuildthings, whereas your son… well… all he can do is tear things apart.”
I stretched backwards with both arms, making the signal. Four men left the bar. All four of them approached our table, and slid into the empty chairs.
“Your son destroys people,” I said. “Good people. People who don’t even know him.”
Sebastian Strong’s expression turned bitter, his body language going cold at the sudden ambush. He glared at Tyler, at Jay, and at Luca. But I didn’t care. I pushed on.
“And some of which…” I paused, gesturing to the one man I actually didn’t know, “I thought you would beespeciallyinterested in meeting.”
Fifty-Five
JENNA
“Captain Strong, I’m Specialist Venturi,” Luca said, as he extended his hand. “Communications. Black Ops. Retired now, but better to fight for something—”
“—than to live with nothing,” Sebastian finished for him. The old man nodded gruffly and took Luca’s hand. “George S. Patton.”
“Yes sir.”
They shook, and it wasn’t the simple handshake of two strangers meeting for the first time. There was history in the short quick pump of their arms. There was weight and meaning behind it.
“This is Colonel Bosche,” said Luca, gesturing to the fourth man sitting beside him. “US Army. 101st Airborne Division, 2nd Battalion. Veteran of operation Apache Snow.”
Sebastian Strong had withdrawn his hand and already extended his arm to greet the other soldier who was roughly his own age. But as Luca mentioned that last part, I saw his whole body stiffen.
“Did you saysecondBattalion?” he asked gravely.
The man seated beside Luca nodded once. Very warmly he shook the hand that was offered to him, but Sebastian was already in another world.
“Then you werethere!” Elijah’s old man breathed.
“Hill 937?” Bosche nodded somberly. “Yes, yes I was. And so were you, from what I’m told.”
“We were third Battalion,” Sebastian offered.
“Ah, yes. Weldon Honeycutt’s men.”
Elijah’s father nodded mechanically. He was half in the moment, half in another world.
