Chapter ThirtyTwo
It turned out that not even death wanted a piece of Reynolds.
The morning after Laurence’s unexpected declaration to save Evelyn, she received a phone call from one of her father’s carers.
We were sitting at the kitchen table, my mind filled with scenes from the night before and unable to look away from the indents her nails left behind on the wood when she got the call.
I thought they were calling to announce the old man had finally bit the dust, but it turned out to be the complete opposite.
He was awake.
If I hadn’t been standing in Reynold’s bedroom, seeing him sitting upright in his bed, eating a bowl of porridge and laughing at something Flynn said, I’d have thought it was a joke.
The medical staff called it a miracle.
Evelyn was over the moon. She didn’t believe the phone call either, thinking that there must have been a mix-up, but sure as the sun shone, he was awake and seemingly healthier than before.
I hid my skepticism from them. Don’t get me wrong, medical miracles happened, yet witnessing Lexington hug his son like it was the last time, I didn’t believe I was in the midst of one.
Not wishing to further the war waging in my head by being around the man I was supposed to destroy, I left Evelyn and her brother alone with their father. I didn’t want to leave without my wife, so I busied myself exploring the rest of the house and was quick to find her former bedroom.
It resembled much of how our home was decorated. Gold and greens everywhere. She hadn’t taken everything with her to the home we shared, with still a lot of trinkets and personal items making up the room. A floor-to-ceiling bookcase still housed several books. I skimmed over the many romance titles. Near the bottom shelf were bundles of paper. Flicking through them, pride swelled in my chest at the recognition of Evelyn’s writing.
Articles. Blog pieces. Short stories. Workings of a novel.
Evelyn was a talented writer who deserved the recognition.
The wall beside her bed was covered in personal photographs. Pictures of her friends, family, work colleagues, and, low and behold, her ex-fucking-fiancé. Her whole former life was mapped out in front of me, the life she had before I came along and upended it.
Lifting the photograph on her bedside table, I smiled at the rosy-cheeked Evelyn in the center, dressed as a mermaid and surrounded by her two best friends who wore similar attire.
There wasn’t a morsel of unhappiness in the photo.
“That was for a charity function.” Evelyn leaned against the frame of her doorway, her eyes roaming the room before falling back to me. “Mermaids and pirate themed to raise money for the coast guards. Always thought the theme was a bit tacky, but it was an amazing night.”
“It looks like it.”
“I wanted to go as a pirate, but Laurence wasn’t having it. He said it was unladylike.”
“Have I told you yet that your ex is a piece of shit?”
She laughed lightly. “I think when you broke his nose and ribs you made your feelings for him quite clear.”
“He deserved a lot worse than that.” I set the photo down. “How’s your father?”
She shrugged, her foot toeing the line of the door.
“Something wrong?”
“I am over the moon he is awake, but the past couple of months have been hell. All his dirty company secrets, the fact he paid to silence those poor women, and don’t even get me started on the mob stuff. I am finding it hard being in that room with him acting like everything is fine.”
Those two things were only the tip of the iceberg.
From scouring through Kerry Zhang’s encrypted folders, I knew there was something bigger, something seedier that Lexington had hidden in those secure files. I just hadn’t pushed to find out exactly what that was.
“It was easier when he was in a coma,” she said. “That way, I didn’t have to look him in the eye knowing what I know and pretend that, although I love him, I don’t particularly like or understand him.”
“I’m sure he believes he has reasons for the things he did.”
“He did a lot of shitty things. Things I am struggling to forgive him for. He should have to answer for what he did, right?”
“Is that what you want to happen?”
“I know he is still incredibly sick, but what he has done is wrong. God, I am an awful person, aren’t I?”
I shook my head and walked to her. Opening my arms, she fell into them and buried her face into my chest. “You’re not awful, you’re simply being honest. Trust me, ma douceur, there isn’t anything you could say to me to make me believe you’re an awful person.”
“What if I told you I stole candy from babies?”
I huffed a chuckle. “You’d probably have some reason for doing it. Whatever the reason, I’d help you hide your loot after I took my own cut, of course.”
She smiled against my chest. “I feel like I could show you every side of me, ugly and twisted, and you’d love me, anyway.”
“Every side of you is beautiful to me.”
We stood there, her perfectly slotted into my arms, until footsteps sounded in the hallway. Flynn cleared his throat. The siblings hadn’t spoken since Lexington fell into a coma, but Evelyn informed me that it was the youngest Reynolds doing that Laurence found himself on our front doorstep.
A mistake I wished to ensure Flynn knew not to repeat.
“Sorry,” Flynn said, avoiding all eye contact. My arms remained locked around Evelyn as she unhid her face. “I didn’t mean to disturb you. Dad is asking for you.”
Evelyn exhaled. “Okay, I am coming…”
“Not you,” Flynn interrupted. “He’s asking for Jaxon.”
Now, I didn’t see that coming.
Evelyn assured me that she was only down the stairs if I needed her, and that she was going to take the chance to speak to Flynn properly about what he disclosed to Laurence. I didn’t bother telling her that talking to Flynn was as useless as trying to catch smoke.
He needed a hell of a lot more than someone talking to him.
And I really wanted to be the person to do it after his latest stunt.
Closing Lexington’s bedroom door, he watched me enter the room, his fingers tapping in rhythm on a notebook. He didn’t deign to speak until I sat down on an armchair at the side of the room.
My skin crawled. The dimly lit bedroom smelled no better than the last time I was in it. A sterile, glorified hospital ward with no open windows to counter it.
“My memory isn’t what it used to be.” Lexington waved the notebook. “Trying to write it all down, making sure it’s all there even when I’m not.”
“Ah.”
He coughed. The sound was wet and strangled. “The way you’re looking at me, I’m guessing you know as well as I do what exactly is happening.”
“I have a theory.”
Terminal lucidity. Over the years, Elliott spoke of witnessing it firsthand at his job as a surgeon. A person’s sudden rally, as if nothing were ever wrong, just before they finally passed away.
Lexington nodded with a grunt. “Don’t tell Evie or Flynn. Let them think that it’s going to be okay, even if it’s short-lived.”
“You don’t think that’s cruel?”
“If this is my last day on earth, I don’t want to be surrounded by crying. I want to leave this world with the last image being the smile on my children’s faces.”
“Ah.”
How incredibly selfish of him.
He wasn’t going to be the one left to pick up the pieces of his children when he died. He wasn’t going to have to watch Evelyn’s heart break into a million shards—the same heart that was only freshly healed after the last fucker in her life broke it.
“Is there a reason you wanted to see me?”
“You’ll look after her, won’t you?” He wheezed. “Make sure that she doesn’t lose her way too much when I go. She acts tough, thinks she needs to be strong for me and Flynn, but deep down, she’s fragile. She bottles everything up until she is ready to explode. I need you to be there for her.”
He opened his notebook, finger running down the page until he found what he was looking for. “There’s something else I need you to do, something Evie cannot know about. I need it done and taken care of before Flynn takes control of the business.”
My pulse quickened. “What is it?”
“I wouldn’t ask but I fear I am running out of time. Kerry won’t answer her blasted calls. She is off on holiday to Thailand for a week and her useless phone isn’t picking up a signal. I’m going to need you to get a message to her when she returns back to work. She needs to delete these files.” He motioned to his notebook. “Remove them for good. I don’t care if she has to burn her entire hard drive, tell her to do whatever it takes.”
I moved from the chair to his bedside, lifting his notebook. “And what exactly are these files?”
“Mistakes I won’t have my children pay for.”
I tried to maintain my composure.
“We’re businessmen. Our whole lives revolve around our companies. I’ve done things I am not proud of, but I did what I had to do to succeed. You understand, don’t you?” Lexington asked. “I was young once like you, and eager to make a name for myself by any means necessary. I did a lot of things to get where I am today. I did them out of sheer necessity, not because I wanted to do them.”
There were three files named.
Two of which were already public information.
“Can you do this for me? If I ask Evelyn, she will only make it her mission to uncover the truth.”
“And Flynn?”
He sighed, his chest rattling. “Flynn still has a lot of growing up to do. I hope that once he graduates and steps into charge, it will help him step up.”
“This one.” I pointed to the third. “What exactly is in this file?”
“A mistake.” His brows scrunched together. “If you love my daughter like you claim, then you will ensure those files vanish before she and Flynn have to pay the consequences. They don’t deserve that.”
Holding the notebook tightly in my grasp, blood drummed in between my ears as the realization hit me.
Lexington Reynolds just handed me the key to taking down his entire company.
Everything Frederic and I ever worked toward was in my clutches.
So, why did I feel physically sick?