20. Miles
20
MILES
M agnus : I want to see you in my study. 3:00 p.m. sharp.
If anything, the text from Magnus couldn’t have come at a better time. After a week of tormenting myself, cursing every decision I had made for months, regretting taking my mother’s stories at face value, seeing him again would at least bring an end to things.
I deserved whatever he had in mind.
Nothing could be worse than what I’d put myself through—a week of questions, forcing myself to go back through memories to see what I’d missed. There was something to be said for beginning indoctrination from a young age. I was living proof of that. From the time I was a small child, I’d been given a version of events. As I’d gotten older, it had never occurred to me to question what I’d been told.
All of those late nights were spent alone and hungry. Mom hadn’t gotten home until three or four in the morning, usually with a new man. Men who would give her money. Now that I had begun thinking, memories I’d forgotten for years came rushing back, hearing her ask one of her dates for money to buy groceries before he left in the morning. Had she bought groceries? Had she purchased new clothes for me when she came home with bags full of new items for herself? She used to call them work clothes, though looking back, I couldn’t imagine the sort of job she would have dressed for in knee-high leather boots and a nearly sheer tank top. I didn’t believe she was a prostitute, but she’d used men for money, certainly. Once they’d gotten tired of her antics, she had moved on to the next.
It was her doing—all of it. I’d been so damn blind, hardened beneath layer upon layer of the same stories, accusations, and excuses.
Now, I was on my way to face my fate. Magnus had made good on his word to send my things to the suite at The Plaza. Other than that and the text he sent earlier, I’d had no contact with anyone involved with him or his family. They had written me off. They had every right to do so.
It was Aria I missed most. My body craved hers until I couldn’t think, eat, or sleep. The memory of her distraught expression, the pain in her eyes, and that quivering chin seized my heart and stole my breath a week later. I would have given anything to take it back and hold her one more time. Anything more than that was beyond what I deserved.
Riding the elevator to the penthouse meant the possibility of meeting with her. No, he would never ask me to meet him at home if there were a chance I would see her. If he destroyed my life, she would be the reason why. Forget what I’d done to him. I had hurt her. That was unforgivable. I knew I certainly would never forgive myself for being so fucking blind.
It wasn’t Magnus who answered the door when I rang the bell. “Miles.” Evelyn opened the door wider and stepped aside. “Magnus is waiting for you in his study.”
Gone was the warm, welcoming woman I once knew. She was cool and clipped, which, all things considered, was the best possible outcome after what I’d done. There was no shaking the sense of walking to the gas chamber as I followed her down the hall to Magnus’s study.
He stood in front of his desk, arms folded, looking me up and down, nodding toward one of the two chairs before him. “Thank you for your promptness,” he gritted out as I approached. I had sat in that chair the day I first arrived in his home, recording our conversation for the sake of AI training. Looking back, I shuddered at my ignorance and unforgivable arrogance.
Evelyn sat beside me, angled in my direction with her hands folded in her lap. The way they both stared at me, silently judging, told me I was expected to lead off the conversation. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know,” I offered. “That’s the least I can do.”
“Damn right, it’s the least you can do.” Lifting his brows, Magnus added, “Exactly what did you think would happen? Would anything change if you blew my family to pieces? Would your life have improved in any way?”
“Of course not,” I murmured as I forced myself to hold his gaze. Nothing he said could top what I’d told myself for a solid week.
“I understand you had it rough. I’ll give you that,” he grumbled. “Leila for a mother. A father you never knew.”
“How do you know I never knew him?”
“I know a lot about you, or haven’t you figured that out yet?” Now, I sat before the real Magnus Miller. Gone was the warm, almost overly welcoming father figure. “Your father was some nobody from Brooklyn who dropped your mother the second he found out she was pregnant. Sabrina Duncan told me so. You met her at the gala. I saw the two of you chatting and tracked her down after you left. She set me straight on a lot of things, and I went about confirming what I could. The only thing I can’t confirm so easily is your mother’s motives, though I have no trouble believing she’d be so mercenary.”
His smirk sent a chill down my spine. “What a shame Sabrina couldn’t have introduced you to the true Leila before you took advantage of my family’s kindness and broke my daughter’s heart. For what it’s worth, I would never have rejected you. If only your mother had given me a chance.”
My soul shriveled beneath the weight of his judgment and the justifiable rage simmering just beneath the surface of his words. It revealed itself in the tightening of his jaw, the way every word felt forced.
“And that flunky of yours,” he continued, teeth gritted. “That was some performance you two put on for everybody’s sake. The little fight that landed him in the hospital. Does Aria know it was an act? Do any of them?”
When all I could do was gape at him, shocked, he released a derisive snort. “You honestly thought you were going to stroll in and pull the wool over my eyes? Like I’m some rube? I can see how it was so easy for your mother to get you twisted up.”
“Magnus…” Evelyn murmured while I regretted breathing.
He knew.
He had always known.
Magnus ignored her. “It was your meeting at that shitty little diner that brought everything together. Did you think doing business in a different borough would throw me off your scent? You’re an amateur.”
There was nothing I could say and no defense I could mount. I could only sit and take it, looking back through every step, every foolish mistake.
“Here’s what I want to know.” Unfolding his arms, he gripped the desk to either side of his body, his gaze unwavering. “Here you are. You made something of yourself despite everything life handed you from day one. No father, a mother who was absent more than she was present. You managed to avoid the pitfalls she dropped into. And there’s nothing but a bright future out there for you. Why in the hell would you waste that for the sake of settling a score that wasn’t yours to settle?”
I couldn’t take any more. I would’ve rather he hit me than withstand this verbal onslaught. It was more than the words. It was the truth behind them. A truth that crushed me to the point where I bent forward, holding my head in my hands as the two of them watched. “I don’t know anymore,” I admitted. “I told myself to do it for her. I had blinders on. I couldn’t see anything else.”
“But why, dammit?” he growled out when Evelyn remained silent. “You were here. You lived with us. We took you in, we made you part of our family. How could you look us all in the face, knowing what you planned?”
“Have you ever had something drilled into your skull so many times, for so many years, that it becomes part of who you are?” I lifted my head from my hands, looking up at the man I was so sure had destroyed my chance at a normal life. It had never occurred to me to remember I’d built a damn good life despite everything.
“What are you talking about?” he asked, that cold gaze weighing on me.
“ All my life. For as long as I can remember, she fed me the stories. I know, it’s easy to blame her now that she’s gone,” I pointed out when his eyes narrowed. “That doesn’t negate the truth. Everything that ever went wrong was your fault. She led me to believe you knew about me all along and didn’t want to be a father. That you abandoned us for Evelyn. You humiliated her. You left her with nothing… no friends, no reputation, and certainly no money. The nights I spent hungry and alone were your fault, not hers. Hell, it never even occurred to me she wasn’t working. She was partying, for fuck’s sake.”
I barked out a laugh at my own stupidity. How could I have continued believing her all these years? “Can’t you understand? I promised to make you pay for something she fabricated. After a lifetime of feeling like I was the reason she couldn’t make you stay with her, that I was the reason she ended up with nothing. Succeeding in spite of everything, punishing you, it became my reason for living. Everything she told me became the only truth I knew, and every step I took resulted from it. Can you imagine what that’s like?”
“I don’t have to imagine.” It wasn’t Magnus who spoke. It was Evelyn, still sitting in the chair beside me.
I lifted my head, looking at her in confusion. “What do you mean?”
She turned away from me, looking up at her husband. “When you think about it, it was the same for me,” she murmured. “Every day of my life, someone told me how worthless and ugly and stupid I was. Over time, I believed I deserved to be hurt. You remember how I was when we first met and how long it took to undo all that damage.”
She released a long breath, looking down at her folded hands. “And still, I have my moments.”
Magnus groaned, his head tipping back until he looked up at the ceiling. “Fuck.” That single word contained an entire volume.
“It’s the truth,” she pointed out in a soft voice. “And we both know what Leila was capable of. Nothing he’s saying comes as any surprise to me.”
“That’s the thing,” he muttered darkly. “I’m not surprised either. Why not use her own son to get back at me for something she did to herself thirty years ago?”
“I swear to you, I didn’t know,” I insisted. “Not until the night of the gala. I wanted to take back the envelope, truly,” I told Evelyn, turning to her, silently pleading for her to understand. “But it was too late. You had already picked it up. I wish I could take it all back.”
“I believe you,” she whispered, nodding.
Something inside me broke at the sound of those three words. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I am sorry. Truly, deeply sorry.”
“That doesn’t change a damn thing,” Magnus reminded me. “You’re lucky I haven’t gone to the authorities yet. I have in my possession a device containing fabricated audio files compiled using recordings I did not consent to. I assume that’s how you did it, right?”
I nodded, my heart sinking. This was it. I knew it was coming. “Are you going to the authorities with this?” I asked, miserable but knowing I deserved it.
“Don’t have to,” he decided. “All I have to do is talk to my good friend, Connor Diamond, and the world will know the lengths you’re willing to go to. Even if it means manipulation, hacking, and manufacturing false records. Your name won’t be worth shit a week from today.”
By the time he finished, he sounded downright gleeful. “Once the dust settles, your company won’t be worth shit either. Which is when I will purchase it, dismantle it, sell it for scrap.”
Everything I had worked for. All of it, up in smoke. I looked forward to a future now devoid of meaning, hope, and purpose.
I felt nothing. In the end, what did it matter?
“Do what you have to.” I looked him in the eye again so he would know I meant it. “I won’t stop you.”
His head snapped back before he smirked. “Am I supposed to have a change of heart?”
“Not at all. I mean it. Do what you need to do, whatever you feel is necessary.” Sitting back in the chair, I shrugged weakly. “I owe you that much, at least. I can never make up for the trust I broke. Or for the heart I broke, which you referred to earlier. The least I deserve is to lose everything I built because you’re right. I lost sight of it. I don’t deserve it.”
Evelyn made a strained, strangled sound, staring up at her husband. I watched her from the corner of my eye while waiting for his reaction. It took time for his blank expression to shift to skepticism. “This is a trick.”
“Try me,” I invited. “See if I offer a fight. Do what needs to be done for all of you. Especially for Aria.” Speaking her name was torture. It brought her precious face to the forefront of my mind. A face filled with pain and disbelief, thanks to me.
“Very well.” Magnus shrugged at Evelyn before pushing away from the desk. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
“Wait!”
At first, I was sure I had to be imagining her voice. Aria . My bruised heart leaped at the sound, and I turned in my chair, stunned to find her rushing into the room and headed my way. “Wait, Dad. Hear me out.”
“I thought you left,” he muttered while Evelyn gasped, standing.
Aria came to a stop beside me. She wore workout clothes not unlike what I’d first seen her in, though she’d clearly lost a bit of weight.
Because of me? Fuck.
Without meeting my gaze, she faced her father. “You can’t hurt him, Dad.”
Snorting, he asked, “Why not?”
“Because you would only end up hurting me too.” At long last, she looked at me, and I could breathe again. How had I existed this past week without her? “Because I love him.”