No scrutiny, no expectations, no pressure.
It worked…until it didn’t.
“Did anyone know before the piece?” Kai asked, his face unreadable.
“Viv and Sloane.” I curled my hands around my mug and took solace in the warmth. “They found out organically when my mother dropped by for a surprise visit a few years ago. Sloane recognized her. Parker knew too since she ran my pre-employment background check, but she promised not to say anything.”
My trust fund was both a blessing and a curse. I didn’t have access to it yet; it would kick in if and when I “settled” into a career I loved, as determined by my mother and Gabriel. If I was still floating from job to job by the time I turned thirty, I forfeited the money to charity.
Theoretically, it was nice knowing I had money to fall back on. In reality, the age stipulation amplified the pressure. I tried not to think too much about it because when I did, I couldn’t breathe.
It wasn’t even about the trust fund as much as it was about the symbolism. If I lost it, it would mean I had failed, and failing when every door was open to me felt like a special kind of hell.
“I spoke to your brother when I was in California.”
Kai’s admission snapped me out of my spiraling self-pity.
My head jerked up. “What? ”
I listened with mounting disbelief and anger as he explained what happened, from Rohan Mishra’s ultimatum to Gabriel’s appearance at the bar.
No wonder he looked so stressed. The past few days had been as shitty to him as they had been to me.
“He had no right,” I fumed. “He had absolutely no right to ambush you like that.”
“He’s your brother. He’s protective,” Kai said mildly.
Protective? Gabriel had better learn to protect himself because I was going to strangle him with one of those stupid silk ties he loved so much.
“He also mentioned someone named Easton.” Kai’s gaze remained steady while my blood solidified into ice. “Who is that?”
My heart pounded in my ears.
Forget strangulation. That was too good for my brother. I was going to make him watch while I shredded every suit in his closet with garden shears before suffocating him alive with the scraps.
A bitter taste welled in my throat. My first instinct was to lie and say I didn’t know anyone named Easton, but I was tired of living in the shadow of what happened. I’d let that asshole dictate too much of my life for too long. It was time to let go of the past, once and for all.
“Easton is my ex. The last man I was with before you and the reason I didn’t date anyone for two years.” The bitterness spilled into my chest and stomach. “I met him at a bar. I wasn’t working that night, just having fun and meeting new people. I was by myself since Sloane and Vivian were both out of town, and when he approached me, I thought he was perfect. Smart, good-looking, successful.”
Kai’s eyes darkened, but he remained silent while I talked.
“Our relationship took off quickly. Within two weeks of meeting, he was taking me on weekend getaways and buying me all these expensive gifts. I thought I loved him, and I was so blinded by my infatuation that I didn’t pick up on the red flags that are so clear in hindsight. Like the way he only took me to remote places for our dates, or how I never met his friends and coworkers because he wanted me ‘all to himself’ for a while longer.” I grimaced at my younger self’s naivety. “He spun his excuses into romantic intentions when the truth was so simple. He had a wife and two kids in Connecticut.”
A bitter sound, half laugh and half sob, scored my throat. “What a cliché, right? The proverbial married cheater with the family stashed away in the suburbs. But that wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was when said wife walked in on us in the middle of sex.”
Kai blanched.
“Yeah, I know. She suspected he was having an affair, and she hired a private investigator to tail him. That night, she’d had a little too much to drink. Got aggressive when the P.I. sent her husband’s location to her. She showed up, screaming and crying. As you can imagine, I was horrified. I had no idea…” I forced oxygen past my tightening lungs. “Easton and his wife got into a huge argument. I tried to leave because my presence was making things worse, and that was when she…she took out a gun.”
I still remembered the cold glint of metal beneath the hotel lights. The bone-deep terror that’d robbed me of breath and the cold, pervasive silence that’d fallen over the room like a white sheet over a corpse.
“Easton and I both tried to talk her down, but she was too drunk and upset. The next thing I knew, he was trying to wrestle the gun away from her. It went off by accident, and it…” My breathing shallowed.
Screams. Cries. Blood. So much blood.
“The bullet somehow hit her. She’s alive, but she’ll never walk again.” The knowledge smashed through me like a wrecking ball, scattering jagged splinters and shattered grief through my chest. “She didn’t—I mean, she shouldn’t have taken out the gun, but she was…it wasn’t her fault. Her husband cheated on her with me, and she’s the one suffering for it.”
A sob racked my shoulders. I hadn’t talked about it in so long. Even my friends didn’t know the full truth of what happened. They just thought I’d had a bad breakup with a cheating asshole.
Talking about it with Kai broke the dam on my emotions, and everything—the guilt, the anger, the horror, the shame—rushed over me like a flood sweeping over a plain.
Kai engulfed me in his arms and held me as I cried. Easton, Valhalla, the National Star, my manuscript deadline…every fuckup and mistake I made over the past few years. They poured out of me in a river of grief until I was hollow and aching.
“It wasn’t your fault,” he said quietly. “You didn’t know. You didn’t make him cheat on her, and you didn’t make her bring the gun. You’re as much a victim of the situation as anyone else.”
“I know, but it feels like my fault.” I pulled back, my voice raw from my sobs. “I was so stupid. I should’ve caught on…”
“People like that are expert cheats. You were young, and he took advantage of that. It wasn’t your fault,” Kai repeated firmly. He brushed a stray tear from my cheek. “What happened to him?”
“Last I heard, he moved to Chicago before his business went bankrupt and he’s estranged from his kids. They’re over eighteen now, and I don’t think they ever forgave him for what happened with their mother.”
I didn’t know where Easton was now. Hopefully rotting in the pits of hell.
“I see.” Kai’s expression sent a dart of trepidation down my spine.
“Don’t track him down,” I said. “I mean it. I just want to leave him in the past, and I don’t want you to get in trouble.”
A hint of amusement bloomed at the corners of his mouth. “What do you think I’m going to do to him if I do, hypothetically, track him down?”
“I don’t know.” I wiped my cheeks with the back of my hand. “Maim him?”
“That’s certainly crossed my mind,” Kai muttered. “I—”