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“No,” Brandon said flatly. He looked up, eyes unblinking and hard. “No. I promise you that, Skylar, I never killed anyone. But I did throw a few punches, and I was definitely a witness, you know? Or an aid to murder, depending on which side of the prosecution you’re on.”
Now chilled to the core, I pulled a blanket from the back of my chair and spread it over my legs. Brandon continued to sit stone-still, like he couldn’t feel the goose bumps that had risen all over his ruddy skin.
“So, what happened next?” I asked.
“Well, Miranda’s dad got what he wanted. While Doug and Mickey had to make do with burnt-out public defenders, Stan bankrolled my criminal defense. In exchange, of course, for a ten-year contract at the fund and non-compete agreement for just as long if I was fired.”
“Ray and Susan couldn’t help?”
Brandon shook his head. “Ray’s a poor professor, and Susan doesn’t work. So, no, they couldn’t help, but they were fed up with my shit by that point anyway, especially Ray. When Stan stepped in, I would have been a fool to say no. But here’s the real kicker: he didn’t just pay for the lawyer. He had Miranda act as my alibi.”
The fine lines around Brandon’s eyes suddenly seemed more evident. I gripped the blanket, resisting the urge to go and wrap my arms around his shoulders, pull his head into my lap, and smooth the anguish that I saw. But I needed to hear the rest of this story.
“It wasn’t right,” Brandon continued. “I know that. He traded his daughter for the promise of millions in revenue, and she was willing because she loved me. Stan knew my potential better than I did. I was only twenty-one, and for the first time in my life, really fucking scared. My friends were too good to rat me out, and Miranda’s alibi made the Westies’ testimonies sound like petty gang rivalry. I didn’t want a record, so I let her cover for me and signed the agreement. And while my two best friends got time—Doug got two and a half years for assault with intent while Mickey got twenty for voluntary manslaughter—I got off scot-free.”
Well, that explained why he didn’t see them anymore. He’d told Messina that they were both still in jail—Doug must have done something else after getting out the first time.
“So, you married Miranda for her alibi?”
The tension in Brandon’s shoulders released a little now that the story was coming to an end. “In a way, I guess I did. And I seemed to make her happy, especially when I quit hanging out in Dorchester and decided to go to law school with Stan’s blessing. So, when she started talking marriage, I said okay. We had a big white wedding. Church, reception, the works. She looked like a princess, and I was a frog dressed like a prince.” He paused, caught up again in the memories. “It seemed like the right thing to do at the time.”
“How old were you by then?”
“Twenty-three.”
I could see it clearly: fourteen years ago, before he’d quite learned the veneer and polish that wealth brought, trussed up in a tuxedo that hung from a slightly lankier frame. I also had no problem envisioning Miranda in a Vera Wang confection, carrying pristine peonies and tippling champagne with equally pristine guests. It was a world I could only imagine from movies and novels—never one I’d ever known or wanted. I wondered if, despite his initial desire to escape the threat of the poverty of his youth, Brandon had ever really wanted that kind of opulence too. The kind of opulence that now characterized his life.
“But it didn’t last.” I spoke quietly, more to myself than to him.
“No,” Brandon said. “It didn’t.”
I didn’t say anything, just waited for him to finish the story. He sighed and kept going.
“Stan died about five years after the wedding. Pancreatic cancer. Just after instating me as the president of the fund. He also signed the business over to me before he died, a sort of mea culpa, I guess. By that point, I was ready for the challenge. I had finished law school and started Sterling Grove. When Stan died, I disintegrated the fund and used the capital to start Ventures too. Things took off pretty quickly after that. Miranda…well, she liked the money, but she didn’t like the hours two businesses like that took. And when she couldn’t have kids, well…she didn’t like that either. But not as much as she didn’t like divorce.”
After trying everything short of adoption, Brandon and Miranda had agreed somewhat tacitly to live their lives apart while maintaining their marriage publicly. Miranda spent most of her time in a penthouse in New York, only coming to Boston for family functions or occasionally to see Brandon.
I filed that fact aside. Brandon made it seem like the fire had gone out between them long ago—or was never there to begin with—but it was obvious to me that Miranda Sterling née Keith still was and always had been very much in love with her husband.
Brandon, meanwhile, stayed on Beacon Street and continued to invest energy into the companies, which had quickly blossomed into some of the top law and investment firms on the East Coast.
I rubbed my forehead and sighed. As angry as I was to find that he had a wife, I couldn’t help but sympathize with his situation. I knew just what kind of passion, kindness, and dedication Brandon was capable of, so I could hardly blame another woman for seeing it too. It was part of what had made me fall in love with him.
Love. The word rang through my head with the subtlety of a church bell. We had said it to each other only last night, and then he had shouted it in front of half of Harvard Law maybe an hour ago. The words had been spontaneous, and I hadn’t yet processed exactly what they meant. But Brandon’s eyes implored with such obvious desperation that I knew that I was still head over heels. There was no way I couldn’t love this man, history and all.
The thought was terrifying.
“So, what happened next?”
Brandon clapped his hands together. How he wasn’t shivering was beyond me. The man was a furnace.
“Everything and nothing, if you know what I mean. I was having dinner with Ray and Susan one night. Susan made her roasted chicken, which is Ray’s all-time favorite meal. Ray isn’t the most affectionate person, as you know, but I remember, when she set it down in front of him, he gave her this look. And she blushed about ten shades of red.” Brandon smirked. “About the same as your hair.”
I chucked a throw pillow at him, which Brandon caught easily and laid in his lap like nothing had happened.
“Anyway,” he continued. “I just remember thinking that I was never going to do that with Miranda. She’d never make me a chicken that would make me look at her like that—she might have loved me, but I doubt she even knows what my favorite meal is—and I’d never look at her with that kind of love.”
“What is it?” I asked in spite of my determination to remain stoic. “Your favorite meal?”
