Chapter 32
THIS ENDS NOW
Margot
I’ve never loved my parents’ home, but pulling up to it today, there’s a new level of distaste in my mouth.
I look down at my phone again, at the message from Rhys, short enough to see in the preview without opening the full text.
I believe in you and I’m not giving up on you.
My heart thumps with equal parts pain and hope.
I’m not okay.
I do have a lot of work to do.
But maybe I don’t have to do it alone.
Even if I’m still terrified I’ll hurt him.
My driver opens my door, and I step out into the sunshine, then just as quickly into the shadows as I make my way up the steps of the Upper East Side brownstone that my grandfather bought and then passed down to my father.
The house I grew up in.
The house that will never be home in any sense of the word again.
I ring the doorbell, and the housekeeper lets me in.
She and I catch up as she shows me to the dining room.
How did I do it?
How did I come to Sunday afternoon dinner here with my parents once a month for the past four years?
How did I sit under the paintings of our family that were swapped out after Daph was disinherited and didn’t come running back home begging for forgiveness the way my parents thought she would?
How did I stare at the moose head on the wall?
It makes me ill now, the thought of my grandfather hunting the ancestor of that majestic creature who scared the shit out of me over the wood pile at the triplets’ cabin.
If he’d done it for food—but no.
It was for sport.
Maybe I do know how to love.
Maybe I do have it in me.
My father strides into the room, dressed down for the weekend in casual slacks and a polo.
Probably spent the morning golfing and networking.
His hair is more gray than brown, but it’s slicked back in his usual style, and I can’t look at him without seeing Lucky, Decker, and Jack now.
The eyes.
The nose.
The ears.
For a hot minute, I wondered if maybe my father wasn’t my father. If maybe my mother had cheated.
But no—there’s so much familiarity that it would be impossible for him to not be the biological father to all of us.
“Margot,” he says as he takes his place at the head of the long dining room table. “I trust your little vacation was fruitful.”
Barely a month ago, he tracked Daphne and Oliver down on their accidental road trip—intentional road trip on Oliver’s part, accidental where Daphne ended up with him on it—and essentially told Oliver that Daphne wasn’t his first pick of daughters to marry to merge our family’s companies, but she’d do.
She’d do.
His own daughter.
Good enough for a business deal even if she wasn’t good enough to be a part of the family anymore.
“It was what I needed,” I reply in the measured tone he expects.
“Good. You should be back in the office. Long vacations aren’t acceptable when you’re at the top. Too many people watching you to set the example.”
“I don’t expect anyone else will make it necessary by stabbing me in the back the same way again,” I murmur.
The words taste like vomit.
Daph didn’t stab me in the back.
She hid away and fell asleep in the back seat of Oliver’s car while waiting for him to get in so she could tell him he wasn’t good enough for me.
The irony that they’d grown into being what each other needed isn’t lost on me, but mostly, I’m happy for them.
He adores her, and she deserves that.
She’s head over heels for him, happier than I’ve seen her possibly ever, and she deserves that too.
“Margot, my darling, you poor thing.” My mother sails into the room, pausing to kiss my cheeks and giving me a hug that I wouldn’t have considered limp until Rhys hugged me.
The man knows how to give a hug.
I miss it.
I miss him.
But I keep my eyeballs under control while my mother hustles me into a seat and then walks around the table to her own seat, more or less ignoring my father.
I wouldn’t ignore Rhys if he were at the table with me.
Ever.
He’s too fascinating.
Too kind.
Too easy to love.
Daph—she was right.
I do know how to love. I still have so much to learn, and I’ll still make mistakes, but it’s in me. There’s love in me.
The housekeeper and chef both slip into the room with plates for us, moving silently. My father’s pouring wine. My mother’s fussing with her napkin, like it wasn’t folded properly before deigning to take a spot in her lap.
Now, I tell myself. Do it now.
“Wine?” my father says to me.
“No, thank you. I’m not staying.”
My father nods. “Good, good. Get back to the office. Catch up on the weekend.”
“Or maybe you’re seeing friends?” my mother says. “Friends are so important during major life crises.”
My heart is pounding hard and steady, but there’s no panic.
Only relief at what’s finally about to be over. “I’m not seeing friends. And I’m not going to the office.”
My father grunts. “Think of the example, Margot.”
“I’m quitting.”
He snorts.
My mother looks at me, and for a split second, I think she’s seeing me, but then she laughs her tinkling fake laugh. “Quitting. Oh, Margot, you must have had quite the adventure if you’re making jokes.”
“I submitted my resignation to human resources ten minutes ago,” I say. “My last day with Aurora Gardens was three weeks ago.”
My father finally looks at me too. “You’re not quitting.”
“I am.”
“I don’t know what the hell kind of vacation you went on that you’d come home thinking you can—”
“I wasn’t on vacation. I was meeting my half siblings. The half siblings you all pretend we don’t have. Fascinating people. Surprisingly powerful friends.” I lift a shoulder. “Must be something about nature there.”
My mother’s going pale.
My father’s going red. “You will stop telling stories right now.”
I look him square in the eye. “Make me.”
His jaw flaps.
“You are an adulterer and a terrible human being,” I say to him.
“I want absolutely nothing to do with you for the rest of your natural life. I’m only here for the satisfaction of telling you that no matter what you do, no matter where you go, no matter who you pretend to be, I will always know that you’re a wretched human being who has failed to take me down that miserable path with you. ”
I rise. “And you,” I say to my mother, “I’d feel sorry for you if you’d ever, ever, just once in the past four years, reached out to Daphne.
Your daughter. Your daughter that you abandoned in the very worst possible way.
I don’t care that you’re married to a serial cheater.
I don’t care what stories you tell yourself to justify what you’ve done to Daphne.
I don’t care that you’re my mother. You don’t deserve the title. ”
Saying it doesn’t make me happy.
Only sad.
But saying it—I have to.
For Daphne.
For me.
For the two little girls we were who thought that our mother would love us and protect us and cherish us.
“Where do you think you’re going?” my father roars as I head toward the door.
“To a happier life,” I reply.
“Stop her,” he orders the housekeeper.
I lift a brow at her. “If you’re looking for alternate employment, I’d be happy to write you a glowing letter of recommendation and pass your name around a few circles.”
“You cannot—” my father sputters, but I cut him off.
“I can, in fact. I have no noncompete. I have plenty of ideas that have nothing to do with Aurora Gardens. My attorneys assure me that I can do more or less whatever I wish, with whomever I wish, whenever and wherever I wish. And what I wish—”
Something clatters outside the room, interrupting me.
The housekeeper purses her lips and lifts an innocent gaze toward the ceiling, then quietly slips out of the room.
And then someone walks into the dining room.
Someone tall.
With brown hair.
Brown eyes shaped like mine.
Ears like mine too.
I suck in a wobbly breath as Lucky grins at me. “Hey, sis. Did we miss the show?”
“Who the fuck are you?” My father’s angry shout behind me is almost enough to make me flinch, but my brother’s pulling me into a tight hug, and nothing—nothing—could make me afraid now.
“Where’s my security?”
That’s an excellent question that I suspect my brother can answer, and I cannot wait to hear it.
“He really is an ass, isn’t he?” Jack says behind Lucky.
“You’re here,” I whisper as I spot Decker too.
“Family sticks together, good times and bad,” Decker says.
I shudder and jerk my head toward my parents. “This is not family.”
“They know,” Daph says cheerfully.
“Daphne?” I gasp.
Lucky lets me go and steps around me.
Jack and Decker follow him.
Daphne grins at me.
“So you’re our sperm donor,” Decker says.
Jack glances at Lucky. “I thought he’d be prettier.”
“My medical training says he’s on the verge of a stroke,” Lucky replies. “I should probably leave while I still have plausible deniability about walking away from a medical situation.”
“Who the actual fuck are you?” my father demands. “And what the actual fuck do you think you’re doing here?”
Lucky’s hand shoots in the air. “I know! I know this answer. We’re Karla Sullivan’s sons.”
“Remember her?” Jack says.
My father sneers at them. “I have no idea who that is.”
“You fucked her in a hotel room in Denver while your wife was pregnant with Margot,” Decker supplies.
My mother gasps.
“And a DNA test says we’re Margot’s half-brothers, so either you’re our father, or you’re not hers,” Lucky adds.
That finally lands.
“Get out of my house,” my father roars.
Daphne, who hasn’t flinched at all, tucks her arm into mine. “I like them,” she whispers.
“How—” I start.
Her grin keeps growing. “They came looking for you at the burger bus.”
“So here’s how this is gonna go,” Decker says. He and Lucky and Jack are a wall between our parents and Daph and me. “You’re gonna quit your job and retire somewhere that none of us ever have to think about you.”
“You’re also going to give us each fifty million dollars to pay for college, the emotional damage done to our family by your actions toward our mother, and for the horrible way that we had to find out we’re related to such a piece of shit,” Jack adds.