Elena settles the bill, and Elise glares at her the entire time. “If you had that card, why did you come ask Dad for money?”
Elena freezes, and I see the nerves and shame in her eyes. I pull her closer and press a kiss on top of her head. “Because my girl is stubborn,” I tell Elise. “Because for whatever reason, she thought her father has a heart, because she wanted to give him one final chance. For the longest time, she flat-out refused my help.”
I nod at the security guard by the door, and he rushes up to me. “Get her out of here. I’m done entertaining her. I don’t ever want to see her in any of my malls again.”
I can tell she wants to make a fuss, but she knows she’d only embarrass herself.
“Good riddance,” I say, sighing. “Where the hell is your security team, Buttercup? Little fruit flies like her shouldn’t be able to get anywhere near you. Enough of this bullshit.”
She rises to her tiptoes and wraps her arms around me before pressing a kiss to my cheek, startling me. “Thank you,” she whispers. “For everything. I know you only really entertained her so I could have a bit of payback. It’s petty, but I needed that. I… thank you, Alexander.”
I bury my hand in her hair and shake my head. “Elena, you’re my wife. Any insults thrown your way, I’ll take personally. Besides, I don’t like it when people mess with my possessions.”
Despite my words, Elena smiles at me, as though she can see straight through me.
Chapter 26
A lexander
The waitress leads us to a secluded spot by the window, but Elena doesn’t even notice the view. She’s absent minded. Even ring shopping didn’t seem to excite her. I offered to buy her additional jewelry, but she wasn’t interested.
I move my chair closer to her, so I’m sitting next to her rather than opposite her, and she looks at me, a sad smile on her face.
“My father hasn’t checked up on me since I turned eighteen, but he takes such good care of Elise,” she says, her voice breaking. “He doesn’t even seem to care whether I’m dead or alive.”
I see the tears pooling in her eyes and grab her hand. Seeing tears in her eyes, fuck. I can’t stand it. “I know it isn’t the same, but you have me now, Buttercup,” I say involuntarily.
She looks at me and nods. “I do. I do have you,” she says, her eyes never leaving mine. “There are a few things I want to do, Alexander… but I can’t do them by myself. Will you help me?”
I raise my brows, and she tightens her grip on my hand. “I… I want to hire a private investigator. I’d like to look into my mother’s car accident. I know it’s been years, but I just need to know. Besides, Elise clearly had access to my mother’s former nurse somehow. It doesn’t sit well with me.”
I smile at her and lift her hand to my lips. “Elena, you don’t even need to ask me for something like that. You have a whole security team at your disposal, most of them ex-FBI. Give Aiden a call and tell him what you want done. I’ve already told you that cost isn’t a concern.”
She looks at me as though I’ve just given her the world, and it kills me. Every single thing she’s ever asked me for has been for her mother. She’s not once asked me for anything for herself—not even my time. Every woman I’ve ever dated has selfishly asked me for anything that came to mind, but not Elena.
“There’s more,” she says, her voice soft, insecure.
I drag my chair closer and wrap my arm around the back of her chair. “Tell me.”
She bites down on her lip, and I hate seeing her so breakable, so vulnerable. She’s my wife, easily amongst one of the most powerful women in this damn country, yet here she sits in front of me, uncertain and hurt.
“When I left home, my brother and father got me to sign some documents. At the time, my father told me that if I was going to leave, I’d better be serious about it. He told me he’d cut me off, and I agreed. So, I signed.”
She hesitates, her eyes dropping to her lap. I place my index finger underneath her chin and raise her face.
“What is it you want, wife? If it’s within my power, I will give it to you.”
She nods and inhales deeply. “I want the shares I signed away back. I want everything that’s my mother’s. I don’t care about my father’s stuff, he can keep that. But I want every single thing my mother has worked for. I don’t want Jade getting her hands on any of it.”
I nod and smile when I see the flash of determination in her eyes. “All right, Mrs. Kennedy. Then let’s make that happen. What about Matthew’s shares?”
She hesitates and stares at me as though she’s trying to guess what I’m thinking. “I want those too,” she says eventually. “I know you hate him, and though I don’t know all the details, I know there’s bad blood between you two. Take whatever you want from him. I don’t care. He was happy to let Mom die, so I don’t see why he should have anything she left him.”
I nod. “With pleasure,” I tell her. “This is hardly a request. More of a present to me, really. Another way to screw over your brother? I’ll do it happily.”
Elena laughs, but I see the heartache she’s trying to hide. She still loves her brother, but she’s lost faith in him, she’s given up on him. Matthew is a fucking idiot.
“Tell me about your childhood,” I say. “You’ve told me about the last few years, but you never told me how you ended up becoming estranged from everyone you love, how you ended up deciding to leave home.”
Elena sighs, her expression heartbreaking. “It was all very gradual,” she says. “My mom got into that car accident, and she fell into a coma. For months, my father, brother, and I were a team, we were united, we were hoping for her recovery. My grandparents passed away years ago, so all we had was each other. I didn’t even notice Dad slipping away. I was completely blindsided when he introduced me to Jade, and I was a wreck when he told me he wanted to marry her. I expected Matthew to side with me, but he didn’t. He welcomed Jade and Elise with open arms, and they returned the love he showed them.”
Elena inhales shakily. “I couldn’t do it, and it caused a lot of friction, a lot of arguments, and endless accusations about my refusal to accept Jade into our family. Over and over again I’d be told that I was ungrateful for not wishing for my father’s happiness, for wanting him to live in the past. And it wasn’t that at all, you know? I was just sad about my mother, and all of a sudden, I was asked to pretend my mother doesn’t even exist. At that point, I didn’t even know my dad was trying to get the doctors to declare her brain dead.”
A tear drops down her cheek, and I catch it with my thumb. Elena smiles shakily, and she looks so damn broken, so hurt. It makes me want to tear the world apart for her. She was never supposed to mean anything to me. She wasn’t supposed to be someone I’d care about. All I wanted her to be was my trophy wife, someone to keep my bed warm, someone that’d keep my mother happy and entertained, and my grandfather off my back. I shouldn’t care about her tears, but I do.
“I found out about that the day my father married Jade. That’s when the insurance company called me to say they’d stop paying for her care. I was foolish, because I laughed it off. I was Elena Rousseau, after all. I knew we had the money. What I didn’t expect was how hard Jade was going to work at erasing every trace of my mother. It started with things around the house, and then it moved to the relationships we had. The Kennedys, and your mother in particular, are close friends of my mother’s, so Jade stopped me from hanging out with Lucian, probably because she didn’t want the reminder. If I refused to listen, she’d make sure that I couldn’t go see my mother at the hospital for weeks, so I obeyed, and slowly but surely, I ended up losing all my friends. I’d been so focused on my mother, and I’d been so young… I just didn’t realize what she was doing, not until it was too late. When she convinced my dad to stop paying for my mother’s care, I was all alone. I had no connections left, no one to reach out to. All I had was my trust fund, and I just prayed it was enough. Maybe I shouldn’t have left home, but at that point it had all just become too much.”
I try my best to suppress the rage I feel, the need to punch Alaric Rousseau in the face. I can’t believe everything she’s been through. Despite all that, she never lost hope, she never stopped fighting for her mother. Why is it that there’s so much about my wife that I’m only just finding out about? I guess it’s because I never bothered to get to know her, to talk to her.