AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He shook his head. “Let me worry about my pain.”
“Still…it has to…”
“Bridget.” He interrupted me, brushing his thumb across my bottom lip. “Come on. Whatever it is, just say it. Stop giving it power over you and say it, whatever it is.”
My mouth shook like it didn’t want to form words, but I told him everything. I started with him picking me up from college and bringing me to my father’s yacht. They’d seized it, the government taking the yacht in their claims against my father. Any day, they might come and do the same thing to me. Seize me. I deserved it, if they did. I told him how I decided to go to that computer and look at the screen, and how stupid the choice really was, although I didn’t know it at the time. How I thought about not doing it, yet I made the choice to do so anyway.
Like the universe offered me two choices and I picked the wrong one.
I continued, not leaving a single detail out of my retelling. I told him about the years when I worked from my bedroom at school—making trades, hiding money in off-shore accounts. I wanted to make my father happy, to make him see me as more than the third one in the photos he no longer cared about. My dad. So important. So integral. So awful. How I had to know—Imusthave somehow known—because I looked at what I’d done straight in the eyes. Eventually. I looked, and I saw who we worked for and what they did. Then I told him how my fatherdropped the bomb on me. It wasn’t the company. It was me who did it all. I was the one earning money for terrorists.
I looked at the floor the whole time I spoke to Michael—at his shoes, at my feet, at the bottom of his pant leg. Anywhere but at him, while I confessed my many sins.
“I did it, then. Right after we danced on New Year’s. I went ahead and I started changing things. Slowly, so he never saw it coming, but then he was broke. The income stopped. I acted confused, like I didn’t know what happened…like I suddenly just stopped being able to earn.” I shook my head. They were such long nights. One move after another, like the longest chess game I hadn’t known I would have to play against a partner who wanted to destroy everything. “I didn’t stop there. His own personal earnings were gone. Allard’s. The others. I did that, but the company had to be stopped. I didn’t want to put people out of work, but it had to be handled. With any money coming in, he’d never stop.”
I could hardly bear to admit the rest. I graduated college then went to work for the company. So did Hope. We were both going to be screwed, but I did it anyway. “I tried to encourage people to take other jobs. Quietly. You were going to be okay. You had this huge company you built, and we were small potatoes to you by then. I knew I’d never see you again, and that was awful. Too much to think about, so I…I kept going. I thought the company would fold and that would be that. Zeke would be okay. He was so rich, he’d either find something else or he’d just be happy in France drinking wine.”
“But folding wasn’t what happened?” His voice sounded so calm. Any second, he’d lose it and push off the wall, away from me. That would be it.Goodbye, sweet Michael. Hello, whatever comes next.
I panted, it was like I was running up a hill, but I forced the words out anyway, even if they did sound a little shrill andhysterical. “Dad partnered with Allard. If Layla married Kit and did what they wanted, they’d continue to fund him. Zeke didn’t even know about it. I wasn’t sure. I suspected but I didn’t know, and if I asked Layla, she would say she loved Kit. And then she’d shut down about it.”
“I hated him,” Michael confessed in a low voice.
“She left him at the altar. It was like a dream, and I thought surely it had to be ending then. But the Russians, they came after Layla! They kidnapped her.” It was the worst day of my life. My knees threatened to buckle but his hand was back on my waist, holding me up. I told him to not touch me, but I couldn’t argue. “And you had to go in, and you had to rescue her. I stood with Hope and watched. I waited and I’ve never been so scared before. I thought that you were both going to be dead—youandLayla.”
He shook his head, tilting my chin up so I’d look at him. “I was never in any real danger. Neither of us were at risk of dying.”
That was just ridiculous, so I shoved at his chest. “Anytime there are people with guns pointed, there is risk. Your poor shoulder is a perfect example.”
“Okay. Fine. Please go on.” He held my eye contact, his eyes so calm and serene. “Bridget. Finish it.”
“Everything that happened after that is my fault,” I said in a rush. Well, not Hope getting shot. She went after that boy on her own, so I didn’t have anything to do with it. “Almostall of it. Not to mention, you said those lovely things to me that day—you told me that you had these feelings, and I couldn’t believe you, because I am so unworthy of them. And…and my father had just said some things to me, and I knew that I had to protect you from me.”
I held my breath. The push off the wall. The yelling. Him being done with me. It would start any second.
Instead, he brushed a gentle hand down the side of my cheek and I trembled as I tried to hold back a sob. “Oh, sweetheart, you have been carrying some heavy-duty shit.”
The tears came, a hot flood of them. I tried not to cry. It was so pathetic but at least he knew the truth. “I told you I was bad, okay? I warned you. And now you have to be relieved.”
His hand on my face tightened, the fingers holding my face so he could stare into my eyes. “Not one word of what that monster said to you is true.” His voice was hard, but his eyes were so gentle.
What?“Michael…”
“Finish it, okay? What did he say to you that day? Right before I picked terrible timing to confess to you how I’ve loved you for years. What did he say to you, Bridget?”
I tried to swallow, but I found it harder than it should have been. “He called me up. He fled the country, and he said it looked like Layla’d found some sort of ridiculous ever-after with Zeke.” That had been his exact phrasing, I remembered. “He said he was sure Hope would worm her way into someone’s bed, and they’d take care of her, but that, I was exactly like him. He said he always knew it. He told me how I was just like him, and that there would never be a time when I didn’t destroy everyone around me.”
“Bridget.” He kissed both my cheeks then pressed his forehead against my own. Why wasn’t he running away? “He’s such a god damned liar. He knew he could hurt you, baby. He knew just what to say. If he could have reached Layla, he would’ve told her she was too ruined for Zeke to ever love. If he could have reached Hope, he would’ve called her crazy and said she was too damaged to be loved. I changed their numbers so he couldn’t, but he beat me to you. I am so sorry.”
He held no blame in any of it. I reached for him. “Michael, the truth is that he’s…”
He interrupted me. “Never understood you. He didn’t appreciate the gem of his family. He’s fucked in the head. He personally destroyed your brother, if you want another example of how awful he was and he continues to be. He might be a sociopath, and no, don’t turn away from me, Bridget. Listen to me. It’s important.”
Michael picked me up in his arms and I gasped. “Your shoulder.”
“Stop worrying about my damn shoulder. I wouldn’t pick you up if I couldn’t.” We both knew that wasn’t true, but I didn’t argue. In a second, he sat us both down on the couch, where he pulled me into a tight hug. I returned it, burying my face in his neck and inhaling him deep within my lungs. He said, “You need to sit. You’re going to faint, if you don’t. You’re hyperventilating and I think you might go into shock from the hell you’ve been carrying around. Listen to me, Bridge. We’ll start with his first point.” He stroked a hand down my hair, his gaze rapt as he watched the red strands slide across his fingers. “Your father took one plus one and he made three hundred and five.”
That didn’t make sense. “What?”
