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“And that makes it okay?”
He sighs. “No.”
“What would a twenty-nine-year-old, smoking hot, sexy, confidentwomanwant with a fifteen-year-oldboy? There’s no way you looked likethis”—I wave a hand at his chiseled body—“at that age.”
“I was a lot scrawnier,” he admits. “But I had my charm. And she was a good teacher.” A secretive smile touches his lips, as if he’s reminiscing.
“She’ssick.” Wait until the media gets hold of this. Another scandal involving Henry, one where he was more prey than predator. It won’t matter to them. A juicy story about the Wolf family is a juicy story, nonetheless.
His amusement fades as he wanders over to collect the stack of legal documents again. “Every guy in my boarding class had a massive hard-on for her. Weallflirted shamelessly. We had bets going to see who she’d flirt back with. But she always laughed us off.”
“Apparently notalways.”
He studies the liquid in his glass. “We were on a school ski trip. She was monitoring the halls and caught me trying to sneak back in from somewhere. She’d been drinking. That night, she didn’t say no.”
My anger flares. While it’s impossible for me to picture Henry as anything but who he is—which is far from innocent—at one time, he was. “And after that?”
“We fucked a few times. Once, on her desk, during a detention she gave me”—another smirk as he remembers and I quietly seethe—“and then I left for the summer and when I came back, she was gone. She was no longer on the staff.” He shrugs. “I didn’t think anything of it, but I should have known.”
“You should have known that she was pregnant by her fifteen-year-old student?” Just saying it out loud makes my face twist with disgust.
“No, that my father was somehow involved in her leaving.” His face turns sour as he hands me the stack of paper.
I see the familiar name at the top almost immediately. “He knew.”
“He liked to keep tabs on us, make sure we weren’t fucking up our lives.”
“Sounds like he had good reason,” I mutter.
“I don’t know how he found out about Audrey, but he did, and he threatened to disinherit me if I ever went near her again. William Wolf’s favorite pastime—dangling money over his loved ones to control them.” Henry sucks back another gulp of scotch.
“Would he have?” That’s all I’ve heard about since I met Henry: William’s threat to give Wolf Hotels to Scott if Henry got caught up in another inappropriate relationship; his threat to out Henry’s mother as a lying, cheating thief of a children’s charity if she didn’t leave their lives.
“I don’t know anymore. But he made good on his threat to cut Scott out.”
I scan the legal jargon but am quickly overwhelmed. “What does all this mean?”
“It’s an agreement for financial support as long as Audrey makes no contact with me and I never find out about this child’s existence.Ever.”
“So, all these years, he knew he was a grandfather. He knewyouwere a father, and he never told you.” William Wolf looked his son in the eye and lied by omission.
“I’m sure he thought he was protecting me.”
A dark thought hits me. Henry’s father had cancer and was given only a few years to live. That was cut even shorter by Scott and his accomplice, but had it not been, would William have confessed on his deathbed to hiding this human from Henry, or would he have taken this secret to his grave? The fact that he had a detailed letter included in his will about Scott’s true parentage, and about funneling money out of the company in his search for diamonds—just in case something happened to him—but no mention of Violet, makes me think the latter.
The depth of betrayal in Henry’s family seems bottomless. “And Audrey agreed to this.” Obviously, she did. Her signature is somewhere on these pages.
“My father wouldn’t have given her a choice,” Henry says, suddenly somber. “It was this or the end of her life as she knew it.”
Because Audrey slept with her fifteen-year-old student and William Wolf would ensure she landed in a prison cell. Babies aren’t allowed in there. She’d have lost her child.
If it were me, I would have taken the deal too. “Maybe she thought she was doing you a favor.”
“Maybe she was.” Henry grimaces, as if he realizes how harsh his words sound.
“Why come to you now though?” I answer the question myself a moment later. “Because your father’s gone.” It was all over the news.
“Knowing him, I’m sure there are still provisions here in the event of his death, but it would mean someone acting on them. Who’s going to do that?” Henry collects the contract again and flips through the pages. There are a lot of them.
