Own Me (The Wolf Hotel, #5)

Henry and I steal a glance at each other before he stoops to collect the envelope, sliding a stack of paperwork from it. It’s legal size, the bottom section bent in an awkward fold.

“What does it say?” I ask.

Henry shakes his head absently as he speed-reads through the first page.

And then his face blanches.

Oh my God. “It’s true?” My jaw drops with my stomach.

He doesn’t need to answer me with words. His expression says it all.





CHAPTER 7





Henry charges through our front door to the phone and punches the key to reach security. “The girl who came down the elevator,” he barks into the receiver, “is she there?” He listens intently, then curses. “Stop her if you can. Please.”

For once, our speedy elevator is not a benefit. She must have left the building already.

I edge in closer as Henry waits for an answer, my pulse pounding in my ears. “So, it’s true? Violet’s your daughter?”

Henry’s eyes flitter to me, a look in them that I’ve never seen before—a mixture of shock, confusion, and possibly hurt. “I don’t know.”

But I know. I saw it in Violet’s delicate features. The similarity.

Henry has a child.

Unbeknownst to him, but a woman out there is the mother of his child.

I feel like I’ve been punched in the stomach, and I’m sure it’s nothing compared to what he must feel.

“Yes,” he answers in a rush, and then his shoulders sink. “Thank you for trying. If she returns at any time, keep her there and call me immediately.” He drops the receiver and sinks against the wall, the back of his head thumping as he studies the ceiling.

I bite my tongue against the question burning to escape. Who does the love of my life, the future father of my children, already share a child with?

He must sense it lingering there. “Her mother’s name is Audrey,” he whispers, so softly I nearly miss it.

“Was she a girlfriend?”

“I wouldn’t call her that.” Henry tosses the paperwork on a side table and strolls to the living room bar cart, where he pours himself a scotch.

I trail after him, wanting to give him space but desperate for more details.

He sucks back a mouthful of the amber liquid. “Ms. Audrey Campbell,” he says, staring out at the panoramic view of Manhattan from the windows. “My sophomore year English teacher at Hartley.”

“Your teacher? Henry!” I gasp, trying to process this. “How old was she?”

“Twenty-nine.”

My mouth hangs as I do the math. “She was fourteen years older than you.”

“So what? I’m eleven years older than you.”

“It’s so not the same. What that was is … is … illegal!” Henry isn’t the type to shy away from indiscretions, but she should have known better. “And we’re only ten and a half years apart, by the way,” I add in a mutter.

He peers over his shoulder, sees my horrified expression, and chuckles. “I know it’s not the same.” He pours a second glass and holds it out to me.

I accept it wordlessly, downing it in one sip that burns and makes me cough. I’ve only ever tasted scotch on Henry’s tongue, but tonight’s news bomb warrants it.

“She was smoking hot. Sexy and confident.”

“And that makes it okay?”

He sighs. “No.”

“What would a twenty-nine-year-old, smoking hot, sexy, confident woman want with a fifteen-year-old boy? There’s no way you looked like this”—I wave a hand at his chiseled body—“at that age.”

“I was a lot scrawnier,” he admits. “But I had my charm. And she was a good teacher.” A secretive smile touches his lips, as if he’s reminiscing.

“She’s sick.” Wait until the media gets hold of this. Another scandal involving Henry, one where he was more prey than predator. It won’t matter to them. A juicy story about the Wolf family is a juicy story, nonetheless.

His amusement fades as he wanders over to collect the stack of legal documents again. “Every guy in my boarding class had a massive hard-on for her. We all flirted shamelessly. We had bets going to see who she’d flirt back with. But she always laughed us off.”

“Apparently not always.”

He studies the liquid in his glass. “We were on a school ski trip. She was monitoring the halls and caught me trying to sneak back in from somewhere. She’d been drinking. That night, she didn’t say no.”

My anger flares. While it’s impossible for me to picture Henry as anything but who he is—which is far from innocent—at one time, he was. “And after that?”

“We fucked a few times. Once, on her desk, during a detention she gave me”—another smirk as he remembers and I quietly seethe—“and then I left for the summer and when I came back, she was gone. She was no longer on the staff.” He shrugs. “I didn’t think anything of it, but I should have known.”

“You should have known that she was pregnant by her fifteen-year-old student?” Just saying it out loud makes my face twist with disgust.

“No, that my father was somehow involved in her leaving.” His face turns sour as he hands me the stack of paper.

I see the familiar name at the top almost immediately. “He knew.”

“He liked to keep tabs on us, make sure we weren’t fucking up our lives.”

“Sounds like he had good reason,” I mutter.

“I don’t know how he found out about Audrey, but he did, and he threatened to disinherit me if I ever went near her again. William Wolf’s favorite pastime—dangling money over his loved ones to control them.” Henry sucks back another gulp of scotch.

“Would he have?” That’s all I’ve heard about since I met Henry: William’s threat to give Wolf Hotels to Scott if Henry got caught up in another inappropriate relationship; his threat to out Henry’s mother as a lying, cheating thief of a children’s charity if she didn’t leave their lives.

“I don’t know anymore. But he made good on his threat to cut Scott out.”

I scan the legal jargon but am quickly overwhelmed. “What does all this mean?”

“It’s an agreement for financial support as long as Audrey makes no contact with me and I never find out about this child’s existence. Ever.”

“So, all these years, he knew he was a grandfather. He knew you were a father, and he never told you.” William Wolf looked his son in the eye and lied by omission.

“I’m sure he thought he was protecting me.”

A dark thought hits me. Henry’s father had cancer and was given only a few years to live. That was cut even shorter by Scott and his accomplice, but had it not been, would William have confessed on his deathbed to hiding this human from Henry, or would he have taken this secret to his grave? The fact that he had a detailed letter included in his will about Scott’s true parentage, and about funneling money out of the company in his search for diamonds—just in case something happened to him—but no mention of Violet, makes me think the latter.

The depth of betrayal in Henry’s family seems bottomless. “And Audrey agreed to this.” Obviously, she did. Her signature is somewhere on these pages.