Chapter ThirtyFour
“Excusez-moi mon frère, I must have shit in my ears because I don’t believe I heard you right.”
“You heard me correctly,” I said. “I’m done with all of this. Whatever you think is going to happen by pursuing this any further, you’re wrong.”
My eldest brother’s face turned several shades brighter.
He wasn’t accustomed to being denied. Throughout our lives, whatever Frederic said was gospel. Sure, we all argued between ourselves, but we always knew when not to cross the line with him.
I started working with him because it was what he wanted.
I became CEO and owner of Dade Diamonds because Frederic told me to.
I married Evelyn Reynolds because my big brother commanded it.
I was seeking revenge in the wrong place because it was what Frederic desired.
But no more.
Not when moving forward meant that I was going to hurt the one woman I ever truly loved.
“You can leave now.” I pointed to the door. “There’s nothing else here for you, Frederic. Taking this company down—it’s not the answer.”
“You’ve gone soft.”
“That might be so.” I shrugged. “But I know that ruining this place is not going to bring you the peace you think it will.”
“Lexington killed our mother!”
I shook my head. “She killed herself. It’s taken me a long time to realize that, to see clearly, but Lexington is not truly to blame for her death. She wasn’t well, Freddie. She didn’t see any other way out.”
“Because of him,” Frederic spat. “If Reynolds hadn’t crippled the family business, she wouldn’t have gotten depressed.”
“Maybe. Maybe not.” I rolled my shoulders back. “Maybe if our father fought back or didn’t turn to alcohol to soothe himself and was an attentive husband, then maybe she wouldn’t have gotten so sick.”
“A year ago, you would have shared that file with the world without a second thought. Now? You’re only saying all this because of her.”
“She’s my wife, and as long as I am married to her, and even after that, I won’t let you do anything else to hurt her.”
Frederic laughed lifelessly. “You’re pathetic. The second she learns the truth, she will leave you, and then you’ll wish you had released the file to the world.”
There was no version where I knew I would be able to walk away still calling Evelyn mine. She deserved to know the truth, and I was planning on telling her everything. I wanted to tell her from the second Reynolds handed me his notebook, but between his illness and his death, I was unable to burden her with the ugly truth.
Something always got in the way.
My own selfishness to be with her was my biggest obstacle.
Tonight. I’d lay it all out on the table for her, tell her every horrifying thing, and more importantly, how I felt about her.
She’d walk away, I knew that for sure, but at least she’d know the truth, and maybe, just maybe, she’d find room in her heart to forgive me.
“If she leaves me, then so be it, but I am not giving you the passwords to the file,” I stated. “It’s deeply encrypted. Not even Zhang knows the truth about what’s in it, or half the passwords to access it.”
“One way or another, I’ll get into it, and I’ll be the one to release it into the world. I’ll do what you don’t have the balls to do.”
My jaw flexed. “If you find a way into it and decide to do that, prepare to only have two brothers in your life, Frederic. Because the second you share that with the world, we will no longer be bound by blood. You can run the company by yourself.”
“You’re picking her over your own flesh and blood?”
I nodded without hesitation. “Let me make one thing clear to you. I will always choose her.”
My brother stormed out, slamming the door behind him for good measure. He was pissed, but I struggled to find a single ounce of me that cared. I refused to let him or aid him in doing anything else that harmed Evelyn.
Fuck revenge. Fuck whatever notion I had of retribution. None of it mattered anymore.
She was all that mattered to me.
She didn’t deserve the pain and suffering her father’s past would cause.
Usually, I relished in silence. No distractions, nothing to grate and bury its way under my skin until I wanted to rip out my own bones. But sitting in the silent office, staring at the closed door, I longed to be home with my wife.
Her laughter, her perfume, her voice—I wanted it all even if it was possibly for the last time.
Weaving my bike through the streets of New York back to the place that felt more like home than my empty apartment in Ontario, I tried to piece together how exactly I was going to come clean.
The leaks to the media. Her father’s history with my own. The notebook her father gave to me. The very reason we got married in the first place.
There was so much deception threaded throughout our months together.
If I told her the truth, if I spilled every twisted and fucked up thing that I knew about her life and how it intertwined with my cursed life, would she forgive me? Or would she run and never look back?
Was I ready to lose her forever?
Opening the front door, I knew something was wrong in an instant.
It was bizarre. Standing there, keys in my hand, the unsettling sensation that something was amiss crawled up onto me and sank its claws into the base of my spine.
Poppy’s singing didn’t flitter through the house. The purring bundle of fluff didn’t saunter from my office and rub itself all over my legs like normal.
There was a coldness. An emptiness that wasn’t there before.
“Douceur?” I called out.
Nothing.
“Evelyn?”
My steps echoed throughout the house. The silence nipped at my exposed flesh. Checking the kitchen, I found nothing. Up the stairs to my bedroom, I found only an empty bed. Knocking on the bathroom door, no one replied. I paced to her office where her laptop was no longer sitting on her desk and several books were missing from the bookshelves.
Stay calm.
Stopping outside her bedroom, I braced myself for what I knew deep down I was going to find.
The room was empty.
Fuck, fuck, fuck. Please, no.
Every last hint of her was gone.
Even the fucking cat I’d grown way too fond of was gone.
It was as if someone sucker punched me square in the kidneys. I fell to my knees at her bed, gripping handfuls of the duvet and bringing it to my face.
Her scent still lingered.
She was gone. She was gone.
There on the bedside table, folded so fucking perfectly that I wanted to rip it into a million shreds, was a piece of paper. My fingers trembled as I peeled it open, the sensation against my fingertips made me want to bite each of them off. Any hope I held for the contents of the letter plummeted hard as her wedding and engagement ring tumbled out from between the folds.
Jaxon,
Do not try to contact me. Do not try to find me.
I hope I served my purpose for you and your brother.
Whatever the pair of you are wishing to achieve, I want no part of it.
I hope you found the justice you were looking for.
You always said this was business and nothing more, I guess I should have listened.
A means to an end,
Evelyn Reynolds.
PS. I want a divorce.
I re-read the letter over and over. Each word was a knife twisting in the gaps of my ribcage, reaching for my thundering, black heart.
How did she know? How did she discover the truth? Did Frederic tell her? He was angry enough to do it. He’d hurt me, hurt her, and hurt the whole world in his need for vengeance.
Fuck, what the hell was happening?
A million and one questions raced through my brain, attempting to piece back the jagged pieces of my world shattering around me.
But all I could focus on was that she left me.
She left me.
I was more than versed in being alone, thriving off the comfort solidarity gave me, but for the first time in my life, kneeling on that bedroom floor, I was utterly and hopelessly lonely.
And it was entirely my own doing.