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I hesitated. Brandon’s entire life was in these pages. Was this really something I should be looking at? My fingers toyed with the paper. He had brought them here for me to see. I had every right to look.
It was a fairly standard agreement, its length only accounted for by the sheer volume of assets the two of them shared. It was also incredibly generous, granting Miranda more than seventy percent of their liquid assets and property, almost all of their mutual stock portfolio, andallof their properties, including the house on Beacon Street. I paged through the assets, wondering why Brandon was offering so much, but the reason was soon clear. He was giving her everything in exchange for sole ownership of Sterling Ventures and the law firm. He meant what he said: he didn’t want her anywhere near his companies.
Why didn’t she want to take the deal? She’d end up richer than Brandon, although they’d both still be extremely wealthy. Was it just to mess with him? Or was she still trying to stay connected to put off the inevitable? As I flipped through the rest, I continued to ruminate on that unpleasant yet unfortunately understandable possibility until I saw a name that made my entire brain stop.
The end of the agreement included a set amount of their assets to be paid into five different trusts, separate from the money that would be split between them. The first two trustees’ names were familiar enough: Ray and Susan Petersen. Douglas Murphy and Michael Larsen were clearly the formal names of the men who had gone to prison in Brandon’s stead, causing a permanent stain on their records that would follow them and their job prospects for the rest of their lives. They might not want to know him anymore, but Brandon was still making sure they would be taken care of once they were released.
It was the fifth name on the list that stopped me. Victor Salvaturi Messina.
Brandon was making payments into a trust for the gangster who had nearly cost my father his life. My heart froze as I realized he had explicitly broken another promise he’d made to me. And lied about it along with everything else he’s hidden.
I thought he understood how desperate I was to get me and mine away from this man, from that kind of life. The last thing I wanted to do was give the keys to a piggy bank to a criminal who would never get enough. Who would never, ever leave my family or me alone.
The jingle of keys shook me out of my stupor, and I dropped the papers on the table like they burned. Jane entered, slow and sluggish. Apparently, the library had turned into a night out.
“Good morning,” she greeted, but stopped when she saw my expression. She shucked her coat and approached like she was cornering a stray cat. “Everything okay?”
I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. With a shaky hand, I pointed a finger at the papers.
“Oh,” Jane said knowingly, following my gesture. “You looked. Yeah, it’s a shitload of assets, isn’t it? You know these kinds of people are loaded, but it doesn’t really hit you what that means until you find out they could buy Nicaragua if they wanted to, does it? The good news is that if you ever do marry the guy, you’ll be able to negotiate one hell of a prenup.”
“It’s not that,” I replied.
I grasped at the papers and held up the one with the trust agreements on it. I pointed to the name that had me quaking with bad memories.
“Vicomte Slughead Meshuggena?” Jane joked as she leaned over the couch, squinting before she stood up. “Goddamn it, I should have brought my glasses with me. The guy wasn’t even worth taking them off anyway. What does it say?”
“Victor Salvaturi Messina,” I said slowly as I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “He’s the guy who beat the shit out of my dad, and for some reason, Brandon is giving him money. A lot of it.”
Jane nodded slowly. She didn’t know that much about my family’s entire history with the Messina crime syndicate, but she knew about the most recent events, enough to comprehend the consequences of this particular revelation. She set a cautious hand on my shoulder.
“What do you want to do, Sky?” she asked quietly, checking toward the bedroom where Brandon’s light snores filtered out every few seconds.
“I thought…” I whispered vacantly, “…that I could do it. That I could forgive him, and we could move on. But this…he’s going over my head, inviting this scum into my family’s life all over again. How am I supposed to get my dad clean if he has this menace forever in his life? Brandon can’t really think a guy like this won’t come knocking around for more if he knows it’s there.”
My voice had become almost soundless. My chest constricted, and I pushed my hands roughly over my face. When I pulled them back through my hair, sudden clarity came over me.
It didn’t matter what Brandon’s intentions were or whether or not we were desperately in love. It didn’t matter that I had never felt like this for anyone and suspected I never would again. I absolutely could not allow my family anywhere near this kind of mess. And I could not be with someone who wasn’t honest.
Brandon had lied. Not once, but multiple times. That wasn’t something I could overlook.
“Do you want me to ask him to leave?” Jane asked. “Say the word, Sky, and I’ll march back there and kick his naked ass to the curb. You know I will.”
I groaned into my hands. I loved Brandon. But I didn’t want to end up like these women I met at the clinic, who threw their lives away for a man because of “love,” and I certainly couldn’t be indebted millions of dollars on account of Victor fucking Messina.
I turned to Jane, full of decision. “No,” I said, quietly yet definitively. A deep mixture of resolve and regret throbbed in my heart. This was going to be hard, but I knew I had to do it. “Jane?”
She looked at me with sympathy, as if she already knew what I would ask.
“Can you help me out with one thing?”
“Need me to call the security guard?”
I shook my head. “No, no. Just…can I borrow some clothes? I’m going to leave a note saying I’ve gone to the library or something and will be tied up all day. He’ll go, I’m sure of it. Just…tell him that’s where I went, okay? And that I didn’t want to wake him up.”
She looked uneasy. “Skylar…”
“Please, Jane. If I see him right now…I don’t think I’ll be able to do this. And he won’t just let me go. I know him.”
