Chapter Thirteen
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Having the capacity to love someone did not make her a fool. Loving her husband did not make her a fool. Wanting to be loved back did not make her a fool.
Bree felt like one anyway.
And she was so tired of it! Maybe Jax hadn’t promised to love her, but she was still disappointed that he didn’t. It was even more disappointing to contemplate years of being stuck—again—in this state of yearning and wishing and feeling unworthy.
She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t. This was exactly the anguish she’d been trying to spare herself when she had decided to be a single mother in the first place.
They barely spoke as they boarded the jet and slept in the stateroom most of the flight.
Actually, she tossed and turned. Jax was only beside her for a few hours, barely sleeping at all.
By the time she rose, Bree had a dull headache and gritty eyes. She accepted a coffee, then remembered she was trying to get pregnant and should avoid caffeine.
Was she, though? She had left her prescription in the bin at the villa, but maybe that had been mistake. Maybe this marriage had been a huge mistake.
Jax didn’t look half as wilted as she felt. He had shaved and put on fresh clothes. When she joined him, he lifted his grave gaze from his phone.
Her declaration of love—and his inability to say it back—sat between them like compressed air.
“I’ve…” She cleared her throat. “I’ve decided to stay with Mom while you carry on to New York.”
His blink was a tiny flinch, one he covered so quickly she might have imagined it.
“For the weekend?”
“I don’t know, but I need time with her.”
With someone who loves me .
She lifted her chin. “I need to decide whether I want to be in a marriage where I’m more emotionally invested than you are.”
Something flared in his gaze, but he didn’t say anything, only studied her, unmoving except for the tick in his cheek.
A knot formed in her chest, tightening and tightening.
Fight for me , she willed him. Prove that I’m important to you.
“If that’s what you want.” He dropped his gaze to the phone he held.
His words slid into her like a cold knife. A lump formed in her throat and she looked to the window, eyes hot.
The flight attendant asked them to prepare for landing.
Her mother was on the tarmac when they landed. She climbed from the car with Sofia, who hugged them with all her might, bringing tears of happy reunion into Bree’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, piccolina ,” Jax said as he held her. “I have to see Zio Nico in New York.”
“You can talk to Papà on my phone, though,” Bree assured her as Sofia pouted.
“I’ll call tonight,” Jax promised.
“Let’s get out of the wind,” Bree said. It was a beautiful day, if considerably cooler than the tropics, but that wasn’t the reason she felt chilled to the bone and hurried to the car. She was hurt and angry and, for once, she needed to be the one who walked away.
It wasn’t any less devastating, though. It felt as though she was being torn in half.
Jax helped Sofia into the car and stayed on the tarmac as they drove away. Bree didn’t have to look back to see him watching them leave. She felt the force of his stare.
“What happened?” her mother asked gently.
Bree took a shaken breath, eyes welling with hopelessness. “He didn’t say it back.”
“Oh, my baby girl.” Melissa took her hand and squeezed it.
***
Jax was encased in ice as he flew the final leg to New York. Bree’s refusal to accompany him had been a slap in the face, but he hadn’t argued with her. Now that he knew how susceptible she was to him, he feared hurting her even more if she came with him, especially considering his reason for rushing to see Nico.
He hadn’t had the foresight to distance himself from those he cared about when he first tangled with Tucker. A painful sense of deprivation had accosted him the moment she had said she wouldn’t come with him, but he refused to draw them into the line of fire.
In the years immediately after Tucker’s departure to Brazil, the man’s family of lawyers, politicians, and media personalities had targeted the Visconti Group in that country. Romeo had sold off their properties in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro since they’d become less profitable anyway.
It had been a tactical error, essentially giving Dom and his father carte blanche with that territory. Christo had moved to Hawaii to oversee the Pacific Rim, including some highly successful properties in Peru, Chile, and the Patagonia region, but Dom had taken over the larger share of South America. It became another foothold to bolster his position against the Visconti Group after his father died. Jax still felt responsible for that.
Now he had a new weight on his conscience. It had taken time for Tucker to learn about his aunt being kicked out of Dom’s wedding reception and put his revenge into place, but he was here and he was out for blood.
It began as a whisper campaign that Eve was pregnant and it was the reason for her quick marriage to Dom. She and Dom shrugged that off.
“Time will tell,” Eve said, but it was still infuriating that she was being targeted when she’d done nothing to Tucker or Paloma or anyone.
Worse were the planted stories of bedbugs and food poisoning that began to surface online. They were false reviews, but were picked up by influencers and reported in other media. Those rumors would be costly to quash and were liable to persist for years.
Dom didn’t say anything about the strain on his family relationships, including his marriage, but this had to be difficult for him. That ate at Jax, too.
“What the hell do I do? Pistols at dawn?” Jax paced before Nico’s desk.
“We do what we’re already doing,” Nico said flatly.
They were calling in favors with broadcasters and countering the negative publicity with friendly celebrities and promotional packages. Even so, they were seeing record numbers of cancellations including two weddings and a charity gala.
Eve walked in without knocking, closed the door behind her, and declared, “ That’s annoying.”
“What now?” Jax asked through his teeth.
“He got the Department of Justice to open an antitrust investigation into the merger of our two companies.”
“It’s an alignment,” Nico said in a beleaguered tone.
“That’s what I told legal. They advised we put things on hold while they figure out if they have a case. I’m preparing a statement to the team, offering full pay for a month and a warning they might be furloughed indefinitely.”
“Including Bree,” Jax said with a wince.
“Do you want to tell her before the memo goes out?”
Things between them had deteriorated. Two days ago, she’d called to ask with frustration, “Why am I hearing through Eve that Tucker is there?”
“Because I don’t want you drawn into it.” He was embarrassed that he was still causing his family to suffer. Having his wife and child affected would be unbearable.
“Is it dangerous?” she asked with concern. “Are you worried he would come after me or Sofia?”
“No, I don’t have any reason to believe he’d resort to violence, especially when he’s being so careful to keep his fingerprints off these other actions.” Legal was looking into a defamation suit, but had little evidence to tie the unfounded reviews to Tucker. It was incredibly frustrating. “But he would take any chance to treat you the way Odelia did. I’d rather spare you that.”
“I don’t care about snide remarks. Do you want us to come to New York?”
Desperately. But he refused.
“No. Stay where you are. I’ll come get you as soon as we’ve dealt with him.”
“‘We’ being you and Nico?”
“And the rest of the family, yes.”
On the screen, the concern left her face as her expression stiffened. He heard his own words and realized he was making it sound as though she wasn’t considered family.
“Bree—”
“Yes, you can show Papà your donkey. Here you go.” She put Sofia on and he listened politely as she told him about the stuffed toy that had come with the book Gigi had given her.
Every time he had called since then, Bree had given the phone to their daughter as quickly as possible. The way his marriage was imploding was eating him up, but he needed Tucker out of the way before he tried to patch things up with Bree.
So much for that. She was going to be furious.
He moved into an adjacent office and placed the video call.
“Sofia, Papà is on the phone,” Bree said as soon as she answered. “Do you want to sit down to talk to him?” It was a rule that Sofia could only hold a phone or tablet while seated.
“Wait,” he said. “I need to tell you something first.”
He explained and watched her expression tighten.
“So I’m fired? What about my job with WBE? Should I go into the office?”
“Nothing’s been figured out yet. This is a courtesy call. Eve will send out a memo with more details.”
“Thanks, I guess,” she said flatly, seeming to search his expression through the screen. “That’s the only reason you called?”
She was giving him room to make an overture, even though it was probably hard for her.
I won’t ask you to love me back.
All he had to do was say he needed her and she would hurry to his side. He knew that. But it would be the most selfish act of his life.
At his silence she said, “Here’s Sofia.”
His daughter’s face came on and her first question expanded the fissures in his heart.
“When are you coming? I miss you.”
“Soon.” That felt like a lie. He spoke to her a moment, then said, “Can you put Mama back on?”
She called for Bree, then said, “She’s in the bathroom.”
He ended the call, temper frayed while a deeper sense of guilt ate at him.
He went to tell Eve that he’d talked to Bree and found her alone in Nico’s office, curled into the corner of the sofa, eating a breakfast burrito.
“Where’s Nico?” he asked.
“Gym.”
Jax could use an hour of throwing weights around himself. God, he was frustrated. He was eating his heart out, missing his wife and daughter, hating himself for being apart from them. Suffering this rift over an action that was so far in the past, it shouldn’t still be having this kind of impact on any of them.
“There’s more if you want one.” Eve used her burrito to wave at the kitchenette.
“No. Thank you.” He would promptly throw it up. He dropped onto the sofa beside her. “I told Bree.”
“She’s upset? Understandable, but she knows we’ll find something for her, right? I just talked to Dom. He’s going to talk to Tucker—”
“No.”
“And remind him there are pressure points he could bring to bear. An entertainment agent doesn’t want to get on the wrong side of an award-winning music producer, for instance.”
“Jevaun? Astrid’s husband? No, Eve. I do not want your husband asking a man I met once to clean up my mess. I’ll figure this out myself.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? Because it’s not your problem to solve. It sure as hell isn’t Dom’s. You shouldn’t even be married to him. That’s my fault, too.” Then he’d gone and pressured Bree into marriage when he patently didn’t deserve her.
“Oh, my God, Jax.” Eve set her burrito on the plate on the coffee table, then curled her legs beneath her as she faced him. “Do you remember when I graduated and went to the Amalfi Coast with friends and you wanted to drive down to go clubbing with us?”
“I didn’t want to. Mom asked me to keep an eye on you. Why?”
“I wasn’t there. I was in Budapest. Getting up close and personal with Dom.”
“What?”
“We only kissed a bit.” She looked away blushing, suggesting it had been more than “a bit,” not that he wanted to contemplate what more than “a bit” might mean. “We didn’t know who the other was, but once we realized, we went our separate ways and tried to forget about it. Then we wound up on that island last year. Now we’re married. Because we’re in love . So get over yourself. My marriage to Dom has nothing to do with you.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that,” he muttered. “You were twenty-one.”
“Two,” she insisted, then added ruefully, “Almost. But at least he didn’t leave me pregnant . How old was Bree when you were fooling around with her in Como?”
“That was different.”
“Different than what? Every other couple who can’t keep their hands off each other?”
“I never should have approached her. I know that.” Culpability had him lurching up from the sofa to pace with agitation. “I shouldn’t have slept with her. I shouldn’t have left it on her to call me. I shouldn’t have forced this marriage on her.”
He had pushed and pushed for her to commit and she had. She’d fallen in love with him. She’d gone off the pill.
Only to have him drag her into his old, humiliating scandal.
“That’s a lot of ‘shouldn’ts.’ Why did you do all of those things, then?”
“Temporary insanity?” He could remember so clearly that first moment of being drawn to her in a way that was different than anything he’d felt before. She’d told him she was hurting and he’d wanted to make her feel better. It hadn’t been about seducing her. Yes, the sexual attraction had been off the scale, but he’d wanted to know more about her. He’d wanted to touch her and be with her. Make her smile and impress on her that she was perfect exactly as she was. Any man would want her. He wanted her. So damned much.
But he hadn’t felt deserving of her. That was the stark truth. Not while he was living in exile, still making stupid mistakes like allowing Dom to get the upper hand over his family.
“Jax, I saw the way you looked at her that day in the boardroom. Every time I see you two, do you know who you remind me of?”
“Don’t.” He closed his eyes as if that could close his ears, but he already knew what she was going to say. He felt it in himself. He had felt it from the beginning and hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it because he knew what it meant.
“Nonno adored Nonna so much .”
Jax winced. “And look what happened when she gave in to him.” Two generations of vengeful hell with the Blackwoods, all because Nonna had followed her heart.
“You think being married to Bree is going to cause something like that? How?”
“No, but she’s…” The light in his life. “ I’m the one causing her pain. None of this should be happening. I shouldn’t be putting any of you through this again, least of all her. Bree shouldn’t be affected by my past mistakes.”
“Do you really see calling out Tucker for sexual assault as a mistake?” she asked with an askance frown. “You did the right thing, Jax. We’re all behind you on that. We always have been. Yes, we’re mad right now. At Tucker. Bree probably is, too. She wouldn’t side with him the way Paloma did, would she?”
“No. Never.” He rubbed at the tension in his jaw. “But I can’t ask her to side with me. I can’t ask that of you. Look what it’s costing all of you.”
“You’ve stood with me in battles and collected your share of bruises. That’s all this is, Jax. And I genuinely don’t care what people think or say about me because I have Dom. And you and the rest of the family, obviously, but knowing Dom loves me makes me feel able to withstand anything. That’s why I don’t understand why Bree’s not here with you. I would swear she loves you and would want to be supportive.”
“I told her not to come.” It would have gone a long way to mending things between them, but he’d hurt her instead. Again. He’d seen it. “I’m trying to protect her.” But he was failing. Miserably.
“Her?” Eve asked in gentle challenge. “Or yourself?”
“You think I’m protecting myself?” He released a choke of humorless laughter. No, he was punishing himself, he realized. And hurting Bree in the process, which made him feel even worse.
“What then? Do you love her?”
He sent his sister a helpless look, unable to fight it any longer. Yes, he loved his wife. With everything in him. Being apart from her was killing him.
“Have you told her?”
He looked away, growing even more sick with himself.
“Oh, Jackson,” she said with deep disappointment.
Yeah. He’d messed up. So badly.
“I need to go see her.”
“Yes, you do,” Eve muttered to his back as he walked out.
Two hours later, he was buzzing Melissa’s condo, but wasn’t getting an answer.
He tried texting Bree. Nothing.
He tried Melissa. Melissa replied.
We’re visiting Q’s family in Miami.
With Bree?
Three dots came and went a few times, making him swear under his breath.
Finally…
She said she’ll be in touch when she’s ready.
He hit the button to place a video call to his mother-in-law.
“Hello, Jackson.” Melissa’s smile was friendly enough, if wearing a hint of tested patience.
“Is she with you?” he asked.
“No.” She seemed surprised by that.
“Where then?”
“Jackson—” She held her breath, then exhaled. “I have to let Bree take lead on this.”
He was standing in full sun, trapped in the oven-like alcove at the entrance to her building, but he was suddenly covered in a cold, clammy sweat.
“I’ve become one of those relationships you let her manage on her own, haven’t I?” Like her father? The one Bree had cut out of her life for good a week ago?
Knives turned in the pit of his gut.
Melissa smiled more gently, but he could hear her telling him the night before their wedding, I’ve learned my lesson about offering second and third chances. You won’t get any.
“Would you let her know I’m here?” he asked. “And tell her I’d like to know where the hell to tell my pilot to land.”
“I will, but maybe go back to New York and wait for her to call.”
“Thanks,” he muttered and let her go.
In the car, he tried Bree again.
To his relief, the call connected. Sofia’s smiling face appeared.
“ Piccolina , where are you?” he asked.
“At home,” she said, as though that was obvious.
That was when it clicked. The last few times he’d spoken to her, he’d seen only the back of a sofa and a photo above her that he recognized as one that Melissa’s husband had taken showing Melissa and Sofia posed in painter’s clothing near a ladder. He’d seen it in their condo when they’d dropped Sofia in Virginia Beach on their way to Saint Martin.
But that wasn’t the only copy. There was another.
“Which home, Sofia?” He strained to keep his tone even. “The one in New York?”
“Uh-huh.” She nodded.
“Will you please get Mama? I need to speak with her.”
She called for her and Bree’s voice said something indistinct.
“She can’t talk right now. Nanny is coming so Mama can go see— What’s it called again?”
“A headhunter,” Bree said off camera.
Sofia giggled. “Not like Easter eggs.”
“No, not like Easter eggs,” Bree confirmed in a stronger voice. “Tell Papà I’ll call him later.”
“Bree,” he said through his teeth, barely restraining himself from barking it, not wanting to alarm Sofia.
“You didn’t ask, Jax.” Bree appeared on the screen and carried the phone into the bedroom. “I thought you might want some emotional support,” she hissed. “But you have made it very clear that you don’t need me. If your goal was to kill what I felt for you, then job done. I have an appointment. I’ll talk to you later.”
She ended the call.
The sensation in his chest was so painful, he nearly wept.