Chapter 12
Gabe
What is that?” I asked when Tori entered the apartment, a white dress bag in her hands.
“That is my wedding dress.”
My heart thudded at yet another nail in my coffin—invitations, cake, and flower selections, and now a dress. There was no turning back, and yet I still hadn’t broken the news to Liv.
“That didn’t take long. I thought dress shopping took months.” As if I knew anything about it other than what I’d seen in the plethora of bridal magazines that now took up the length of the coffee table and her bedside table.
“I found it when I went shopping with Mom and the girls,” she said, hanging it in the back of the closet.
I leaned on the doorframe as she exited, kicking her heels off. “I picked it up on my way home after they called me today to let me know it was ready.” Reaching up on her toes, she gave me a kiss. “I can’t wait for you to see me in it.”
“Well, try it on now.”
A look of horror crossed her features. “I can’t do that,” she exclaimed as if I’d suggested we rob the local bank.
Laughing, I snagged her waist and pulled her into my chest. “And why can’t you?”
“Because it’s bad luck. You must wait until I’m walking down the aisle for the big reveal.”
I nuzzled her neck, pulling her blouse from her skirt. “Damn. Well, if I can’t see you in the dress, then I guess I’ll have to settle for you in nothing at all.”
She giggled just as my phone rang. Ignoring it, I scraped my teeth over her neck.
“Don’t you want to get that?” she asked, trying to free herself from my hold.
“Over a chance to have you come undone around me? I don’t think that’s even a choice.”
Laughing, she tipped her neck back further. The call went to voicemail, and I backed her into the room. Not two seconds later, the phone started again. Dropping my head to her neck, I groaned.
“Go. Someone wants you.”
“Not as much as I want you,” I said, reluctantly releasing her. I had a suspicion it was Liv, and I wasn’t ready to tell her about the wedding yet. I’d been dodging her calls, and she was losing patience, irritated that I’d stuck to email and texting.
“Go,” Tori said, pushing me out of the room. With an exaggerated sigh, I snatched the phone from the table, seeing that I’d been spot on.
“It’s my sister,” I told her.
“Then answer it, Gabe.”
“I’m going to take it outside. Make sure you’re naked when I get back.”
But her playfulness had faded, and I had a hunch mine would be nonexistent after this call.
“Yeah,” I answered, giving Tori a wink as I left the apartment. She would assume it was because of the rift between me and Liv, the fake rift, but I knew this discussion would be heated and involve information I still hadn’t given her.
“That’s the way you answer me, jerk?” Liv sneered on the other end. “After two weeks of avoiding me?”
“I’ve been busy, Liv.” I ran my hand through my hair and put more distance between me and the apartment, following the sidewalk toward the pond.
“What the hell is going on, Gabe? You’ve got me worried. Is this about that woman?”
Pinching the bridge of my nose, I knew I had no choice but to come clean. “Yes. And yes, I’ve been avoiding you.”
“What happened?” Suspicion layered the question.
Tucking my hand in my pocket, I stared at the fountain in the middle of the pond. “I asked her to marry me.”
“You what?” she erupted. I held the phone away from my ear as she spouted colorful words that emphasized her anger.
“She’s the one, Liv. I want to marry her.”
“You’ve gone mad. For eleven years we’ve been planning, Gabe. Eleven damn years and you’re going to blow it all on her?”
“I can let her in. I’ll tell her the truth, and we can still do this.”
Although every day closer to the wedding had buried me under more lies.
Invitations that listed a false name, a planned trip to the courthouse in two weeks where I would present a driver’s license that wouldn’t match my birth certificate because my father had used his influence to get me an alternate ID when I’d moved.
Making calls to his buddies to get me into the companies under my pseudonym.
Sure, they had my correct information for their records and reporting, but in company systems I was a Hughes and not an Icinda.
All of that was about to blow up on me, and I had yet to tell Tori the truth.
The silence on the other end of the phone was the reason, and I could picture the pinched expression on Liv’s face.
“We made a promise to each other, little brother. A promise that we would let nothing come between us taking him down. We’re so close and you pull this shit? You selfish ass.”
“Come on, Liv. When have I ever done something for myself? I spent years working for this. For us. Taking accelerated paths to get my business degree in three years, spending two years getting my MBA, more years of working for financial firms to earn Dad’s approval and get experience.”
“And you’re going to throw it all away for some bimbo—”
“Shut up, Liv. You don’t even know her. She’s not a bimbo. She’s intelligent and sweet. She’s amazing, and you know it because I would never risk this for someone who wasn’t.”
Her sigh resonated through the phone. “I gave things up, too. Things I can never get back. We had a plan.”
I palmed the back of my neck, guilt hammering me. After a few moments of silence, she said, “At least tell me you’re not going through with it until after this is over. That you’re waiting.”
My grimace was severe. “Well, I was planning to, but she got excited, and it’s…” Shit, how was I going to tell her this. She was already pissed at me. “It’s in April.”
“This April? In two months?”
“Yes.”
“Damn it, Gabe. You really have lost your mind. Not only are you betraying me, but Dad will disinherit you. You know the conditions. The trust doesn’t kick in until you’re thirty-two and you can’t be married. That’s still over four years away.”
“I know, and I don’t care. I’ll give it all up for her. We have enough from the other businesses. If I unwind them—”
“I’ll be out, too, Gabe.”
My step faltered. “What do you mean?”
She drew in a ragged breath. “The conditions of the trust are that you hit thirty-two.”
“But you’re almost there.”
“No, Gabe. It’s not contingent on me. It’s on you. My trust requires you to meet the requirements. The asshole only cares about you. He doesn’t care if his selfishness leaves me alone and miserable the rest of my life.”
“So if I break the terms of the trust, you get nothing?”
“Yes, and I’m out of a job. I’m sure that in his vindictiveness he’ll ensure I’m blocked from any other company.” And he would, because I may have stopped him from hitting Liv that day, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t punished her repeatedly since then in ways like this.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. You can’t marry her, Gabe. I know you love her, but you need to walk away.
Break it off with her before he finds out.
If he hasn’t already. You know his men still watch you, right?
So, whatever you’re doing down there that isn’t behind closed doors and under your massive computer firewalls, he knows. ”
My eyes flicked up as I canvassed the area.
I’d gone lax in the months Tori had kept me distracted, no longer looking for evidence that his men were tracking me.
Protection he had insisted on when I’d first left for college and in the years following, but they’d gotten good at hiding from me before Tori walked into my life.
After that, they’d become another piece of my past that she muted.
“I can’t leave her, Liv. She’s my everything now.”
“I had my everything once, and I left him behind. It’s your turn.
Focus on the plan, Gabe. You’ll be twenty-eight in three months, then it’s only four years and you can find her again.
You’ll be a billionaire and CEO of what’s left of our father’s dynasty after we send it crumbling to the ground.
Our chance to rebuild it the way Mama would have wanted and in her name. Remember why we started this.”
She disconnected, and the silence was deafening.
I continued my walk around the pond, debating what to do.
Coming clean to Tori made the most sense.
This had gotten out of hand. I’d gotten caught up in her excitement and the thrill of knowing she would be mine forever.
The wedding was in two months; she’d sent the invitations and bought her dress.
All the while I’d justified it, telling myself I could give up the inheritance, the vengeance, the work I’d done for the last eleven years of my life. But I couldn’t.
My father had leashed me, just as he had my entire life.
No matter how many secret businesses Liv and I had built, no matter the fortune we had amassed and stashed in secret offshore accounts, no matter how many companies we’d swallowed under our umbrella, I would always be under his finger.
Only when I could walk into that conference room and watch him sell off the last piece of his dynasty, see his expression when he realized it was his children who had pushed him to the brink of bankruptcy would I ever be free of him.
My phone rang again, and dread strangled me. No one else called me. Liv was it. My friends knew to text. With hesitation, I pulled it from my pocket, my fear validated when I saw my father’s name.
As if the dashing of my happy ending hadn’t already ruined my day.
I was clinging to the thought that if I confessed everything to Tori, she would forgive me and stay with me until I could give her the wedding I’d promised.
That if I walked back into that apartment and told her the truth, she would willingly wait for me.
I stared at the phone, each ring like a sledgehammer to that last piece of hope.
“Father,” I answered.
“William.” I hated that name. The reminder that I would always be his son, his namesake.
“I’m in the middle of something.”
“No, you’re not. You’re walking around the pond of your apartment complex.”