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Jay shakes his head fiercely. “No, Cat. You aren’t listening. Nothing was about revenge once I met you. Once I fell for you, my vengeance became a subplot in my life. A secondary storyline. And when you told me who you were? It became the thing I had to overcome so I could have you.” He steps closer, ducking so I’m forced to look at him. “But I did, Cat. I gave it all up. I told my father I was done with his plans, done with it all.”
“And then what happened?” I ask, tearing my gaze from him. “Because obviously you didn’t give it all up. You’re still Jonathan Hanson, CEO of Hanson Liquors, and now you own a controlling stake in James Whiskey too. Looks like it all worked out.”
“Mia happened.”
My blood runs cold as I remember what my grandfather said so many years ago. Jay cheated on me with Mia. She also has his child.
“The pregnancy. Right. I’m sure knocking up your girlfriend’s best friend put a wrinkle in your plans.”
God, how did I get myself into this mess?
“What?” Jay sputters.
Weighed down by years of bitterness, I can’t find the enthusiasm for a reply. Not even a sarcastic one. I slump and study the ground below me, ready to make a hasty retreat.
He presses so close I can feel the heat radiating from him, but I refuse to look at him. He grasps my hand. The simple touch slices through me. “I never touched Mia. Carter did,” he sneers.
My heart squeezes, and I have to blink several times to make sense of that statement.
My brother and Mia. Bile coats my throat at the thought.
“I needed the SD card from your brother’s computer. I had to figure out what my father planned so I could stop it.” His voice softens as his eyes plead with me. “Baby, I was trying to fix it. I know I screwed up. I know what I did was awful. But all my life, I’d been told that my mother killed herself after her affair with your father. And my father fed my hatred for years. I never could have imagined it would turn out how it did.”
“Jay,” I whisper, my heart cracking right down the middle.
He shakes his head. “She didn’t kill herself. But I found that out too late. I found out everything too late. All I wanted was to make it all right.”
“What did Mia do?”
He coughs out a bitter laugh and drags his hand down his face. “What she always does. She poisoned everything. When Carter showed up and found her in his room, she seduced him. Then she tried to sell the SD card back to me when she found out she was pregnant.”
My gasp slices through the night air. “Miais the mother of Carter’s child?”
The lightning reflecting in Jay’s eyes as he regards me sends a chill through me. He doesn’t need to respond. That look alone tells me all I need to know.
“Fuck.” I swallow thickly. “And he never knew?”
Jay presses his lips together and shakes his head.
“But my grandfather did?”
“Yes.” Jay drops his shoulders in defeat.
Pain, thick and forceful, threatens to drown me. “You told me my grandfather had secrets that weren’t yours to tell. Was that it? Mia’s baby?”
Moistening his lips, he shakes his head.
God, he looks even more terrified than before.
“Just tell me,” I urge. “I can’t live in the dark anymore.”
“After I left you in New York. I went to see your grandfather. To figure out how to protect you. But what he told me shocked me stupid.”
“I met your mother, you know?”Theo said, studying my reaction.
I cleared my throat. “Did you?”
He shook his head and smiled. “Your mother was a lot of things, but suicidal wasn’t one of them.” He closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he opened them again, a war waged within them. Then he pointed to a photograph on his desk. “And she didn’t kill herself when she was pregnant. That’s your brother right there. He’s very much alive. Just as he was when she left him with me so she could go back for you.”
