AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Instead of answering me, he took a long sip of his whisky.
“Remind me how much it was?”
Shouldn’t he have known that? “Don’t you know?”
Warning bells were going off in my head. I tended to listen to them. When you grew up like we did, you learned when someone wanted something from you. I tended to know almost instantly, and I was really good at quickly figuring out exactly what that was. I was many things, but naïve wasn’t one of them.
He set down his drink. “No, I don’t unfortunately, because your father has been, for some time now, hiding money and information from me. Things I need to successfully and honestly put an end to a partnership we should long since have dissolved. But he’s hiding money. So, I can’t do that, because I’m not going to be cheated. Not by him. Not again.”
3
Well…I’d give it to him. Zeke hadn’t lied or pretended that he knew something he didn’t know. That was slightly…refreshing.
“Again?”
He shook his head, a scowl coming across his face. “Your father is one of the most unscrupulous, untrustworthy, terrible people I’ve ever encountered in my life. And I’ve known a lot of bad people.” Zeke looked away for a second. “I made him a very rich man, and to be fair, he made that, too. But I’d give it back to never have known him. I could have made someone else, someone less…pitiful. How much money was he going to get from the Allards? Something I suspected, by the way, but couldn’t prove.”
I suddenly felt like I was being asked to divulge state secrets. People didn’t talk to me about things because they didn’t think I’d understand, and most of the time, I didn’t. But sometimes they spoke in front of me for the same reason, like I was so stupid I couldn’t hear them or grasp their meaning, even sitting there in front of them. Like I was a decoration left on the mantle, placed and soon forgotten.
My father had just thrown me away like I’d fallen and broken. He’d had me forever but was happy to discard me, like I’d never mattered at all. I was taking this metaphor too far, but that was how truly wired my mind was at this moment.
Who was I betraying? No one. They’d cared so little about what I did and didn’t know that no one had bothered to tell me it was a secret to begin with. “Thirty billion dollars.”
My answer must have been rather significant, because Zeke took the longest sip of his drink, yet. “I see. And do you know where he was going to put that money?”
“That goes beyond me. I’m afraid they’d never have mentioned that to me.”
He sat forward. “Who would know? Hope? Bridget?”
“Yes, likely they would know.”
It was like I could see a plan forming in his eyes. I’d spent a lot of time studying him, but I had no idea exactly what he was thinking. I just knew this was about to turn the day on its axis, again. How many times could a day do that?
“And I don’t imagine you could just ask them. That would be too obvious, they’d guard up, and besides, you’re not going to betray your sisters since they are the only people who give a shit about you at all.”
My stomach burned, and my bravado threatened to flee. No. I wasn’t going to go back to almost crying. That was too hard, too miserable. “Thanks for that.” I let sarcasm drip from my tone. It wasn’t like me to do that, at least not aloud. But he’d earned it. “Yes, I’m luckier than most to have that much love in my life.”
“Love is overrated. I’ve never believed in it. Why bother?” He rose. “But I’m wondering if keeping you would just be enough.”
“Keeping me? Enough for what?”
He got to his feet. “Come on. Let’s go get your stuff. I don’t think I’m putting you on a plane tonight or any night soon. Thatis unless you want to go back to people who don’t care if you’re there or not.”
I rose slowly. The dress was constricting, my feet hurt, but my mind was whirling. It was like we’d hit that wall where everyone else was going to understand what was happening except for me. I had to tread slowly to not make some kind of mistake.
“What are you saying to me?”
He put out his hand. “Right this second, I’m saying we’re going to go get your stuff. Unless you’d rather stay here not eating peanuts or drinking your drink.”
A woman rushed over to him, throwing her arms around him before kissing his cheeks one at a time, in the way that was so un-American and so French to do. Also Italian, Portuguese, and other places I’d lost count of. Her arrival startled me. It had seemed a little bit like we were alone in a cocoon, he and I. Sure, the waiter had come and gone, but it was like the rest of the world couldn’t really intrude on us here.
That had been ridiculous. I barely knew this man, and the leggy blonde who had moved from kissing his cheeks to trying to kiss his mouth certainly did. She’d have succeeded, but he set her aside in a swift move that was impressive in as much as anything because it indicated he’d done it before.
Throwing her a smile that looked fake to me, he spoke to her in French. Well, I assumed it was French. I really couldn’t hear the difference.
She turned to me, and her eyes widened. After she said several things, I was actually able to make out the word Layla. Great. She recognized me. Looking like this. Next, she’d be taking a picture. Or wanting a selfie.
“It is you.” She spoke to me in English. “I didn’t believe it.” Her accent was light. Whoever this beautiful woman who wanted to kiss Zeke was, she spoke nearly flawless in English. Inever ceased to be impressed that people could do that. “I said to myself, it couldn’t be the redhead with Zeke. Why would Zeke be with the redhead?”
