15. Sienna
Sienna
T he ride to Matt’s house was silent, smooth, and far too long for comfort. I sat in the back of the black car he’d sent, the windows tinted and leather soft, every inch of it expensive and impersonal, and tried to convince myself that this wasn’t a mistake.
I wasn’t going over to see him. I was going to hear him out.
Closure.
That was it. The truth about Ryan, the inheritance, the tangled history between two brothers who somehow managed to destroy everything in their goddamn path, including me. Curiosity was the only thing that drove me. Had to be.
But that wasn’t the whole truth. I knew that.
I could have said no. I could’ve blocked his number, ignored the offer, slammed the door on whatever this had turned into, and lived my life one hundred thousand dollars richer. But I hadn’t. I’d gotten in the car.
Not for closure, not entirely.
Because of him.
Because I still remembered the way he’d looked at me in the dark, like I was one of the only real things in his life.
Because I still felt the warmth of his hands on my skin, still heard the softness in his voice when he’d asked me if I was okay.
Because despite him giving me every reason not to, part of me still wanted to believe in him.
The gate opened without a sound after the driver punched in a code, the car gliding onto the property with ease. His house was all dark stone and glass, two stories, modern and clean, if it weren’t for the toys on the front porch. Every other part of it was intimidating and imposing, like him.
I stepped out of the car with my pulse thudding hard, already rehearsing exit lines in my head in case this went sideways. But it would be fine. It had to be. Margot would be here, and Zach. We had buffers, reasons not to say something stupid, reasons not to scream at each other.
The door opened before I could knock.
Matt stood there, his hair styled but his clothes casual—just a t-shirt and jeans, barefoot—like he’d come home from work and immediately changed out of whatever he wore to the office. His stubble was longer, his eyes tired, his face unreadable.
My throat closed.
“Where’s—”
“They’re not home,” he said, his voice like gravel. He stepped to the side, motioning for me to come in. “Margot took him to the aquarium. He wanted to see the tiger sharks.”
I didn’t know why that hit me so hard. I blinked too quickly, looking away, my jaw steeling. I should’ve gotten back in the car. I should have turned and walked?—
“He’s been asking about you.”
I froze.
That wasn’t fair . He knew it wasn’t, knew he was hitting on a nerve, knew damn well without even asking that I’d grown a soft spot for Zach.
I swallowed down the lump forming in my throat and shouldered past him, stepping inside.
The house smelled like cedar, laundry, and him .
Dark floors and slightly lighter walls, everything in its place as I stepped into the living room.
Expensive leather furniture and trinkets up on the shelves beside the massive television, a gold airplane that looked like some kind of award next to an Atlanta Fire hockey stick and a framed stick figure drawing in crayon. Lived in, but not quite homey.
He came up beside me, gesturing toward the doorway to the kitchen on the other side of the living room, walking in front of me with an expectation that I would follow. And I did. Warily.
“I told you I’d explain,” he said, opening the fridge and pulling out a bottle of white wine like this was some kind of date night.
He plucked two glasses from a cabinet and set them down in front of me on the marble island, a piece of printer paper at one end with scattered crayons that Zach had abandoned.
“You’ve got five minutes,” I said, willing my voice to sound cold.
He didn’t flinch, didn’t even rush as he pulled a corkscrew from a drawer and worked at the top of the wine. “My parents were old money,” he said, the words calm and collected. “Like, Vanderbilt old. No love, really, just legacy. I’m sure you’ve seen if you’ve googled my last name.”
I hadn’t. I never saw the need to when I was with Ryan, didn’t see the need to now.
“My mother thought affection was undignified , as she’d called it.
My father only paid attention when you disappointed him,” he continued, and I blinked at him, not having fully expected that.
“Ryan was the golden child. He was charming, loud, wild . They loved that. Thought he’d bring the Strathmore’s into today's era, thought he’d turn into someone that would give us relevance again. ”
He poured out a glass and pushed it across the counter to me, not quite meeting my eyes. “I’m fine,” I said.
“Have a fucking drink with me, Sienna.”
My eyes met his instantly. There was a bite there, irritation behind his words, and I stared at him, not quite sure whether I needed to go or if the anger simmering behind his eyes was about me at all.
“Sorry,” he sighed after a moment, pouring himself a glass and downing nearly half of it like that was a completely fine societal norm. “This isn’t… It’s not easy for me to talk about my family. You don’t have to drink it if you don’t want to.”
My fingers closed hesitantly around the stem.
He took a deep breath and pushed his free hand through his hair, clutching at the strands briefly before letting go.
“Ryan got everything. Every cent he asked for, every ounce of approval. They didn’t even try to hide it.
I mean, for fucks sake, I was around for twelve years before they had him, and it was like I didn’t exist. Like didn’t have a son until they had him . ”
Matt’s jaw worked as he leaned forward onto the kitchen island.
“I was just the spare. The one who worked. The one who tried to build things honestly. Ryan was the one who got rewarded for doing nothing but spending, for going out and getting drunk on the weekends, for wrecking Dad’s Aston Martin when he was fifteen and decided to go on a joy ride.
I had nothing handed to me, which is saying a lot when you grow up in a family as wealthy as mine was. ”
I took a hesitant sip of my wine. “Why didn’t you fight them on it?”
His brows furrowed as his gaze snapped to mine.
“I did,” he huffed. “You think I didn’t fight?
You think I didn’t argue, beg— beg , Sienna, for the seed money to start StrathOne?
I had to sit there while they handed Ryan a condo in St. Lucia and a Porsche before he even had a job, and I had to pitch to them like I was a CEO looking for an investment from people I didn’t know. ”
Matt started pacing, his glass clutched in his hand, his eyes everywhere but me — or maybe nowhere.
“They didn’t believe in me,” he continued, taking another gulp of wine.
“Not really, at least. They humored me, gave me a tenth of how much they’d easily spent on Ryan by the time I’d turned twenty-eight.
And you know what? I made it work. I built the airline.
I earned every dollar I have now. And you know what they said when I started to turn a profit?
He stopped, his gaze cutting across to me, a fire behind his eyes.
“They told me not to be smug about it. Told me not to tell Ryan because he was still ‘finding his path.’ Told me to keep it all to myself, not to tell family.”
My eyes widened for a split second. “Christ.”
He went silent for a moment, his tongue raking over his teeth, his breathing loud enough to hear.
He set his glass down on the counter as he stopped, watching me carefully.
“They left everything to him,” he said quietly.
“That part of what he told you was true. But they left me as a trustee. Nothing in my name except a responsibility.”
I blinked at him in confusion. They left nothing to Matt?
“I can show you the will if you don’t believe me, if it matters,” he huffed. “But I never stole his inheritance. Everything was in his name, that wouldn’t—I couldn’t do that if I wanted to. But I did cut him off.”
I sucked in a breath. “So, you did ? — ”
“I didn’t do it lightly,” he explained, his fingers rapping against the countertop.
“Fuck, I didn’t want to do it at all . He was supposed to have to go through me when he wanted to remove money, at least until he was fifty.
Those were the rules on the account. Our parents were smart enough not to give him full access.
But they failed to consider how sneaky Ryan could be. ”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean that a few months after everything was in place, he snuck into my fucking house and found the log in details for everything.”
My throat closed. “He what ?”
“He started making withdrawals without needing my approval, scrubbed the notifications. Was blowing the money on anything and everything, Sienna. Cars, vacations, cruises, throwing massive fucking parties in our parents’ estate.
All the while, occasionally asking me to release ten grand here or there to keep up the act.
I wasn’t looking at the balance, I wasn’t paying attention until it was almost too late—until I authorized a seventy grand request so he could put a down payment on a house, and it came back with transaction declined . ”
I blinked at him in horror. I didn’t know how much money the Strathmore’s had when they left it all, but it was certainly in the millions . “How had he…?”
He shook his head, his lips going thin. “I don’t know.
I don’t know half the things he was spending it on.
All I know is that almost all of it was gone,” he rasped, pouring himself another glass.
“I could have called the police for it, could have put him away from fraud, maybe I should have—but I couldn’t.
I didn’t want to make it worse, not when he was already furious. ”
“ He was furious?”