Chapter 37 Break – Rory
brEAK
RORY
The interior of Barrington Manor was cool and blessedly deserted. “I’m going to take him to his room, if that’s okay with you,” Maria said, her brow creased into a V of worry.
“Of course.” I hesitated before saying, “Maria, about what Gigi said about me—”
“Please, you don’t need to say anything. Gigi is…” She glanced down at Luke’s tear-stained face. She sighed and shook her head, mom-code for I won’t say it in front of him.
“You don’t owe me an explanation.” She looked worn out from the scene, but her voice was kind. “You have a good heart. Luke cares about you, and so do I. Thank you for helping him.”
Touched, my eyes filled with tears as she scooped him up, kissed him softly on the head, and swept him off to the peace and safety of his room.
That poor kid. It was evident from her drama outside that Gigi only cared about money. The way she’d yelled at Luke, yelled at all of us in front of Luke, then gripped his wrist told me everything I needed to know about her.
I had a mother like that.
The parallels were not lost on me. In one day, both my mother and Gigi had wreaked havoc at Barrington Manor.
Tammy Harris had shown up, caused a scene, then gleefully accepted a bribe.
Gigi Barrington had just done the same. The moment Rhodes offered her cash, she immediately let Luke go.
She hadn’t even spared her son a backward glance while Rhodes was making his offer.
It made me sick.
Transaction, transaction, transaction. That’s all that was going on at Barrington Manor. Rhodes had offered to pay my mother off, then I’d closed the deal when I offered her more. Then Rhodes had bribed Gigi in order to get her to stop shrieking and quiet down about me being a two-bit hooker.
That’s all we did, Rhodes and I. Paid people to be quiet. To keep our secrets. To support the facade.
Just like he’d paid me to come here and live a lie.
I’d never thought of money as a bad thing.
I’d never thought that people who were wealthy were corrupt, or wrong, or greedy just because of the things they had, or because of the money in their bank accounts.
I still didn’t think that, but what I now understood was that there were plenty of people who would do anything for money, for power, for control.
Great wealth seemed to invite gate crashers, parasites looking for favors, not to mention a certain brand of socially acceptable lunacy—the trading of one’s values for dollars.
I was just as guilty. I’d traded my very self for cash. Just because I’d deemed my cause noble—saving my grandmother’s farm, keeping Josie and Bo fed—did it really make me any different from Gigi or my mother?
Or for that matter, from Miranda and even… Rhodes?
All of us were guilty. All of us were greedy.
Each of us had our reasons, of course. Miranda wanted Barrington Enterprises.
So did Rhodes. Gigi and my mother wanted money, as did I.
All of us thought we “deserved” to get what we wanted.
We had our rationales, and our individual experiences and perspectives to support them.
But now I could see it more clearly.
Coming to Barrington Manor had been a mistake.
Under the guise of protecting my family, I’d traded my integrity for cash.
And then I’d fallen for my fake fiancé—a rookie mistake if there ever was one—before understanding that he was the king of trades, that his life was one big transaction of which I was merely a line item.
I couldn’t judge him for paying Gigi off. I’d done exactly the same thing hours before with my own mother. But it broke me to see his ease with it, his way of moving through this world, to recognize that even though he was doing for Luke, he was also doing this to Luke.
He was teaching his nephew how to solve a problem by throwing money at it. The child was going to be stuck in this web forever with no way out. It was horrible to be a Barrington. Everyone wanted something from you, always. Even the people who were supposed to love you.
Rhodes had managed me by choosing to hide his offer to my mother. He was managing Luke by paying his mother to go away, too. Did I blame Rhodes for what he’d done? No. Did I think he was a bad person? No. Did I still have feelings for him? Absolutely.
But was I going to be a fool for this man, and give him my heart?
Not anymore.
Because Rhodes did not suffer fools; he paid for them to go away.
That was how he made his way through the world.
He’d paid for me to stand at his side, to recite my wedding vows, to be a mother figure for his nephew.
I would do those things. I would fulfill the contract.
Even though I felt like what both my mother and Gigi had called me—a prostitute—I was clear-eyed and accepting in my decision.
I was saving my grandmother’s home, and I was protecting my little brother and sister from our mother.
My integrity was worth that trade. That was my choice.
But I would not let my heart fall victim to the decisions of my head.
It wasn’t safe for me to love Rhodes; I could never trust him.
We were not living in the same world. Where I saw emotion and connection, he saw liability and risk.
There was nowhere for love to bloom in a spreadsheet, a contract, or a corporate disclosure.
I wandered down the empty hallways of Barrington Manor and stumbled into Rhodes’s gorgeous primary suite, feeling lost. The welcome of the air conditioning wore off, and I shivered.
The tiny bud of hope that had sprouted in my chest was shriveled, shrunk away.
I’d prayed for love, and instead found duty.
There were worse things, I supposed.
But as I locked myself in the private bathroom, allowing myself exactly five minutes to cry, I couldn’t think of any.