Chapter 2 #2
I know she means that honestly, but it sounds like a joke to me.
Troy is a disgusting lech, and since Olivia has shown her true colors, I can’t help but think that the Stanton family isn’t much better.
But maybe she’s right. Something elaborate and fancy on the outside, but shallow and forced underneath is exactly what this wedding is going to be like. It’s exactly what it deserves.
“Then you’ll be married,” she continues, nodding as if I’ve said something in response. “And I can finally get to work rebuilding the Stanton legacy as I always intended to.”
It’s so clear that this is nothing but a business arrangement for Olivia.
She doesn’t care about me or my feelings.
She’ll be tying her empire to Troy’s, gaining more money and power through the union—helping to improve her standing and her wealth after her husband was betrayed by his business partners and apparently lost a good bit of their money.
The truly disgusting thing is that from what I’ve seen, Olivia is still very wealthy.
She doesn’t even need to do this. But she wants to be as obscenely wealthy as she was before, wants to claw her way back to the top of Detroit’s upper-class echelon, and she’s willing to do whatever it takes to get there.
Even if it means she has to essentially pimp out her granddaughter to the highest bidder for a marriage I don’t want.
I swallow past the lump in my throat, my stomach in knots and bitterness on my tongue.
“What does Troy get out of this?” I ask her, wadding up the bloody handkerchief in my hand. “I know he’s not doing it out of the goodness of his heart.”
“Our family name still carries a lot of weight in Detroit. And I have business connections that can help him and his family. It’s a smart match.
” She looks at me, her lips twisting downward a little as if she’s tasted something sour.
“On top of that, Troy has always been… intrigued by you. I had hoped to have a virgin granddaughter to auction off, and I was highly disappointed that the Voronin brothers ruined that plan. But it turns out that Troy is somewhat more forgiving of that failing than other men might be. He’s more fascinated by the fact that your adoptive mother was a prostitute, and that you were raised by trash. ”
Her tone of voice makes it sound like she’s disgusted by that, but the little smile on her face says that she’s pleased with it. Whatever makes him open to this arrangement is apparently a good thing in her book, but the way she talks about his fascination with me makes me want to throw up.
I knew Troy was a lecherous creep from the moment I met him, and this just confirms that.
I remember how he looked at me when I was at the country club trying to learn how to golf, how he ran into me and Joshua and made those insinuations about what kind of person I must be after being raised by Misty.
I thought he was just a rich boy who thought he could get away with saying shitty things, but it turns out it was even worse than I could have imagined.
Olivia doesn’t even seem to register the effect her words have had on me. She keeps talking, returning to the subject she cares most about as she adds, “I’m very hopeful that this marriage will help return my estate to its former glory.”
“I’m so happy for you,” I can’t resist grinding out, irritated at the tone of her voice.
Her eyes snap to mine, narrowing for a moment before she shakes her head. Her gray hair is pulled back from her face in a classic style, and she runs a hand over it even though there isn’t a single strand out of place.
“This didn’t have to be this way,” she reminds me, her tone cool.
“And I honestly don’t understand why you’re so resistant to all of this.
This is your family, Willow. This estate is your birthright.
It’s in your blood, and you didn’t make the right choice for it.
I thought I was teaching you to see the bigger picture and to understand the importance of our legacy and making the necessary sacrifices for it.
You are the one who forced my hand here. ”
Anger rises up in me in a hot rush, and I glare at her, not flinching away from her stare.
“I don’t give a shit about that,” I snap. “I don’t care about the money, or the Stanton legacy, or your standing among the other wealthy families of Detroit. It doesn’t mean anything to me.”
And why should it? For most of my life, I’ve been considered trash.
Raised by a hooker, working overtime and then some just to be able to get by, missing so much school that I didn’t even get my GED until several years after I should’ve graduated.
People like my grandmother have been handed everything on a silver platter, and it’s still not enough for them.
Olivia’s face hardens, any hint of softness vanishing from her features.
“You’re too much like your father,” she says. “Too willing to follow your feelings, only thinking of yourself. He was never interested in what it took to maintain our family’s legacy either.”
I blink, caught off guard. “What do you mean?”
“I had a perfectly acceptable woman lined up for him to marry. Someone who would have lifted our family to a higher station and benefitted both families in the process. But that wasn’t good enough for him.
” She sneers. “No, he fell in love with a woman far beneath him. Someone he had no business being with in the first place, who would have been very bad for our reputation. So when I found out about her and the fact that they’d had a baby together, I took care of it. ”
“You… took care of it,” I echo on a whisper, not even sure what to make of that.
Before today, I would have thought she meant that she helped them, gave them money to take care of the baby, and made sure they didn’t have to struggle to get by. But after what I’ve seen? I know that’s not what happened.
“What do you mean?” I press, and my lips feel numb as I force the words past them. I’m not even sure I want to know the answer, but I can’t stop myself from asking.
Olivia lifts her chin, holding my gaze, her face impassive.
“I killed her in a fire,” she tells me. “The woman he was so in love with. And I had hoped it would take care of the problem of the baby as well. A clean slate, if you will.”
Her words hit me like a slap in the face. The problem of the baby, she said.
Me.
I was the baby.
When I first met Olivia, she told me that my mother died in a fire that my mother herself had set. She had mental and emotional issues, supposedly, and it was her fault I was burned so badly.
But that was a lie.
Olivia has clearly stopped trying to pretend that she’s a good person, or that she’s ever cared for me at all, because she just flat-out admitted that she killed my mother. That she tried to kill me.
I stand frozen in place as I stare at her, stunned. There are too many emotions clogging up my chest for me to process them all. Hurt and anger are at the forefront, but everything else is just a confusing jumble.
Before I can think of anything to say, another man comes walking into the room. I jump, startled by his sudden appearance. I don’t recognize him either, but he’s also tall and muscled, dressed in a black suit and wearing dark gloves.
Olivia waves a hand at me, looking annoyed by my skittishness.
“Jerome will take you home,” she says. “And make sure you don’t do anything foolish.” She smiles, but it’s that cold, sharp-edged one. Her true smile, I’m coming to realize. “I’ll be in touch soon. There will be a lot to do to get ready for the wedding, and there’s no time to waste.”
I’m escorted out of the sitting room, and then out of the house altogether.
Jerome opens the door to a nondescript black car, and I get in without argument, my head in a daze.
Part of my mind rebels at the idea of letting a stranger take me anywhere, but the truth is, my situation can barely get worse than it already is.
And no matter where he ends up taking me, at least I won’t be stuck in Olivia’s house any longer.
Just like Olivia’s other driver, the man she called Jerome doesn’t speak at all. I sit in the back of the car, the fingers of one hand wrapped around my still aching wrist, as I gaze blindly out the window, barely aware of the scenery passing by.
After what feels like an eternity, we pull up outside the luxury complex where Olivia helped me rent an apartment.
“Get out,” Jerome tells me, jerking me out of my thoughts.
I scramble to comply, but when I slip out of the car and head toward the front door of my building, the vehicle doesn’t pull away.
Instead, Jerome just sits there, and it occurs to me that he’s probably been given orders to watch the place, making sure that I’m under guard.
Between that and the tracker she had put in me, Olivia has made it impossible for me to slip away easily.
My feet carry me up to my apartment unit, and once I get inside with the door closed behind me, the heaviness of everything that’s happened hits me in a vicious rush.
I drag in a sharp breath and then another, but it feels like glass in my lungs, stabbing me over and over again.
I keep seeing Olivia’s cruel smile, hearing the way she spoke to me, the threats she made.
I keep thinking of my birth mother, killed in a fire for the sin of loving a man with an evil harpy for a mother.
Olivia wanted me dead. She called me a problem that she needed to correct.
But now that I’m grown up and have reappeared alive and well, she wants to use me.
She never cared about me or my happiness.
She never wanted to be my family. Not in the proper sense.
She just wanted another pawn. Someone else to use on her path to more money and power.
She never loved me.
The first sob hits me hard, and I put my hands over my face, tears spilling down my cheeks as my shoulders shake.
Several more wracking sobs tear through my body, and as I drag in a ragged breath, a soft sound to my right catches my attention.
My head snaps up, panic already bursting through me.
I’m half expecting it to be Jerome or some other employee of my grandmother’s, sent here to drag me back to her house.
But instead, I look over to see Malice climbing through my window, followed by Ransom and Victor.