She repeated my message to my father, wincing the entire time.
Jude appeared at my side, squeezing my biceps and looking up at me with a smile. I pulled her into a hug and kissed her forehead. I had a lot of damage control to do when it came to the way people perceived us as a couple in this place.
When Brianna ended the call, there was a pause, after which the entire newsroom erupted with a lengthy standing ovation. She laughed. I smirked.
When I turned around to walk back to my office, Mathias was standing at the door, waiting for me. Next to him stood my mother, fresh off of her private plane, judging by her casual clothes.
Her eyes were horrified.
I knew mine were dead.
Showtime.
“Can I offer you anything? Bourbon? Whiskey? Water? Perhaps a lie-detector?” I motioned to the mini bar in my office, my smile casual and charming—the way they’d taught me at the Swiss summer school my parents had dumped me in every year.
My mother seated herself on the couch in front of my desk, staring at her hands in her lap, and Mathias paced, pulling at his ear in a nervous tick. I was the only person in the room whose heart didn’t seem to be beating a mile a minute, and that’s because I knew something they didn’t.
“I’m so mad at James for telling you,” my mother muttered. “I was only trying to protect you, Célian. Think about the way it would have been perceived in our circle. In any circle, really. You’d have been a bastard. Your blood is blue. You are a Laurent.”
“My blood is red, and being a bastard is better than being his son.” I walked over to the front of my desk and leaned against it.
“Listen, Célian,” Mathias raised a hand.
“Not even a word, Mathias,” I warned, arching a brow. “Not. Even. One.”
“I don’t know what you think you have on me—”
“Oh, I think you do. That’s why you’re shitting your pants as we speak.”
“You can’t use it in court. Dan was not supposed to record those private conversations,” Mathias stressed, his left eye ticking.
He had a point. After I’d left James’s apartment last night, he’d emailed Iris and Mathias a file with the recording, along with a brief note about how he’d come clean to me.
Ignoring his words, I threw Mathias a pointed look. “You will drop the ads, terminate the dodgy contracts, and hire back every single person you have fired from my team by the end of the day. And if any of them are unavailable, you will find me a top-notch replacement. If I were you, I’d start working right now. Work is a foreign concept, so it will take you time to get the gist of it.”
Mathias laughed. “What makes you think I will do anything for you? Nothing has changed, other than the fact that you now know why I couldn’t stand your face from day one. You weren’t mine. Your mother messed up. The only good things about my marriage to her were LBC and Camille. And you took them from me, too.”
My mother darted up from the couch, walked over to him, and slapped his face, hard.
I watched them, emotionless. What a fucking mess. Surely I could dump some of the responsibility for me being a heartless prick on the fact that these two clowns had raised me.
Mathias stared at her, dumbfounded, and rubbed his red cheek. He narrowed his eyes. He was about to raise his hand to her, but thought better of it once I stepped between them and shook my head.
“I will fuck up your face so hard, you will have six new holes to sneeze from,” I said dryly.
He took a step back, clearing his throat and fixing his gaze back on her. “You always loved him more than Camille.”
“You always treated him like he was garbage,” she countered. “And what happened to Camille was your fault, not his. You lied to me because you wanted to isolate him from his family.”
“And you were the ignorant little thing who was too busy chasing fitness trainers to go to your son and ask him yourself.” Mathias smirked, cocking his head with a devilish glint in his eyes.
He was right, and she knew it. I had visited my mother many times after what happened to Camille, but we’d never shared an actual meal, let alone a conversation. I’d tried, and every Sunday night, as I’d made my way back from JFK to my apartment, I’d wondered why I’d done that to myself in the first place.
“Now he’s buried with the Brooklyn girl, and he has to wait until I drop dead before he takes over.” Mathias waved a hand in my direction.
“Thanks for bringing her here, by the way,” I interjected, clucking my tongue in approval. “She was the answer, and the solution.”
“Huh?” He spun on his heel, staring me down.
I took sick pleasure in slowly pouring myself a glass of something I was never going to drink, whistling and thinking about white Chucks—of all fucking things in the world—and how damn good they were going to look with a white wedding gown, or better yet, without anything else at-fucking-all.
“Everything turned out for the best,” I explained. “I met Judith, and we’ve found something you two miserable assholes will never have.”
I swirled the liquid in my glass, looking up and saluting my parents. My mother looked on the verge of fainting, and despite everything, I still had sympathy for her.
“And I get to keep LBC,” I added.
“How so?” Mathias parked his hands on his waist, scowling.
A vein in his neck began to pump visibly. I traced my finger over the rim of the glass, staring at it intently as I answered him. I was worried I was going to get a hard-on simply from seeing him crumble if I looked up.
“Life works in mysterious ways. When Lily came here a couple months ago and told me Madelyn had died, I was crushed. I rushed to the Davises’ house and spent time with them. You probably weren’t aware, but I had a very close relationship with Madelyn. I craved human contact, something I didn’t have in spades at home.” I rubbed my jaw. “So imagine my surprise when they called me a few weeks after her passing to confirm that she had left her granddaughters with millions and millions of dollars and the estate, and little ole me with her ten percent of LBC.”
I didn’t tell them about the letter Madelyn had also left me. It was more of a note, really. But it brought my situation with Judith into a sharp relief.
With business out of the way, it’s time to listen to your heart.
Don’t lock my granddaughter in a loveless marriage.
Don’t lock my favorite boy inside one, either. It’s a miserable place to be. I’ve been there with Lily’s grandfather, and I never want my loved ones to pay this place a visit.
Make me proud.
Love,
Madelyn
I watched in my periphery as their eyes widened and reality set in.
My mother was guilt-stricken and on my side with fifty-five percent of the shares of LBC. I had ten additional ones. I could now throw any decision Mathias had made, easily.
“No,” Mathias said, stumbling backward and collapsing onto the sofa.
“Yup,” I confirmed, popping the “p” for good measure. “You’ve gotten everything you ever wanted by walking over people and making a fucking mess, Mathias, while I managed to save my company by forming a genuine relationship with an elderly, somewhat lonely woman who just needed someone to be there for her. Karma is a bitch, and I do believe she just justified her reputation by shoving a ten-foot pole up your ass.”
My mother galloped in my direction, throwing her arms around my neck. I let her. Not because I wasn’t mad at her. Not because I wasn’t livid, and not because I thought her behavior was remotely acceptable.
No. I let her because if my little Chucks could forgive me for being an inglorious bastard, maybe I could forgive Maman for lying to me in order to protect me, even though it was the truth that ended up setting me free.
Maybe I could break the cycle of hate.
Maybe I wouldn’t have any more misunderstandings that resulted in the unnecessary deaths of people I loved and cared about.
Maybe I could live. With Judith by my side.
With good music and bad exes.
And with so much sex, she couldn’t fucking see straight.
Making headlines dirty between the sheets.