33. Sterling
33
STERLING
“He’s been using client’s money to keep the loan sharks off his back.”
I run a hand over my jaw as I look at the paperwork that Denver’s managed to get ahold of. It’s all here in black and white. I could ruin Rory if I choose to.
“No one will know if he pays it back in time. But if he doesn’t, he’ll lose his job, his license to practice, he could face jail.”
“Stupid boy. He could have sorted all this with what I gave him. What’s he done with half a million?”
Denver looks at me from beneath his dark brows. “My guy in London has been keeping some tabs on him. He’s already gambled a lot of it.”
I shake my head as I drop the papers onto my desk.
“And he spent a night in a hotel with two hookers,” he adds.
I snort out a disgusted grunt. This is the man who thought he was worthy of Hallie. Who actually believed he stood a chance with her.
“You want me to tell my guy to keep an eye on him?”
I sit back in my chair, steepling my hands in front of my face. Hallie has been so happy since we came back from England. She knows Rory didn’t get those bruises her mom mentioned from a clumsy fall. She’s also told me she understands that Beauforts do anything for family.
And she’s one of us now.
I’ll dispose of every Rory on this earth that so much as breathes in her direction if I have to.
But she’s also asked me to leave it in the past. She wants to move forward, and she doesn’t want Rory’s parents to hear what he’s been up to from someone else. Just like she didn’t want hers to hear about Vegas from someone else. She’s always seeing the good in other people. She wants to believe that he’ll tell them himself and deal with his problems like a man.
I can guarantee he’ll be a coward and not come clean to them.
But Hallie’s asked me to leave it behind us.
“No. Tell him he can stop. If Rory has the balls to come back here, I’ll deal with him.”
“Boss.” Denver nods as he rises from his seat.
“Denver?” I say as he reaches the door of my office.
He turns back.
“Keep Killian and Jenson here from now on. They’ve spent long enough chasing thin air in Cape Town.”
He nods, his eyes holding mine. “We still have some people to identify on the CCTV.”
“Finish it. And after that…”
He doesn’t need to say anything. I know from the look in his eyes that he understands. It’s been two years and we’ve gotten nowhere. Nothing is going to bring them back. Living in the past suited me until now. It gave me a purpose, chasing an answer that I thought had to exist. But now I have a real reason to keep going.
Denver closes the door behind him as he leaves, and I pick up my phone.
“I just wanted to hear your voice,” I say the moment Hallie answers.
I close my eyes as we chat, relaxing in my chair and just listening to her excitement flowing from her as she tells me about another new client who has reached out to her today.
When we finally hang up I’m smiling.
This is living in the present. This is what I need. No matter how many times I tell her what she’s done for me, I don’t think she’ll ever truly know just how much I love her.
She’s given me a future.
The intercom on my desk phone flashes and I reach out to answer it.
“Yes?”
“Boss?” It’s the security guard from the main door. “Ms. Weston is here for you. Shall I bring her through?”
I exhale, my shoulders dropping. “Yes, show her through.”
I stand and walk around my desk, hands going into my pant pockets. A few minutes later the door opens and Lavinia steps through. My security guy closes it behind her.
“Lavinia. This is a surprise.”
She walks to me, sweeping me into a double-cheeked kiss.
“I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop in.”
She walks to the two sofas facing one another and places her handbag down on the floor in front of one as she takes a seat.
“Would you care for a drink?” I walk to the cabinet where I keep everything and reach for the fridge to get out some water or juice.
“Some of that will do.”
I turn and follow her line of sight to the crystal decanter on top of the cabinet.
“It’s after lunch.” She laughs nervously.
“I didn’t say a word.” I offer her a small smile as I fix two glasses.
I turn and hand her the glass of brandy. She shifts as though she’s making room for me on the couch next to her, but I move around the coffee table and take a seat on the couch opposite her instead.
She takes a large gulp from her glass.
“I came to congratulate you on your engagement.”
“Thank you.”
She fiddles with a diamond tennis bracelet on her wrist, a Beaufort design from last year, before taking another large gulp of brandy.
“I understand why I had to hear it from someone else. We aren’t… we’re not as close as we once were. I’m not the one you confide in anymore.”
I bite back my retort that she has never been the one I confide in. That one night we had. That mistake has completely skewed her interpretation of our friendship. If I could erase that night I would. She was there when I felt alone. But I’ve never confided in her. Not once. I never told her about Elaina’s affair, or about how my entire life felt like a lie some days. How I was never in love with my wife in the way the world believed.
“I would have told you myself,” I say. “Just like I would have told you that Hallie and I were dating. But we both agreed to tell our families first, and I haven’t seen you since Sullivan’s viewing evening.”
Her lips lift into a small smile. “I figured out there was something between you both that night.” She brushes some invisible lint off her skirt. “You’ve chosen well. Halliday is a lovely young lady. I hope she will make you happy.”
I take another drink, my grip on the glass tightening at the way Lavinia slides the word ‘young’ in.
“She already does. I’m happier than I’ve ever been.”
Lavinia’s brows shoot up before she recovers herself. “Good, that’s wonderful.”
I allow a few seconds of silence to stretch between us. She’s on edge. Her eyes keep darting around the room and she’s fidgeting, her fingertips drumming against the side of her almost empty glass.
“Was there something else on your mind?”
I know Lavinia well enough to know she won’t mention the evening she came to my place and suggested we spend another night together. Especially now she knows I’m engaged. If she had wanted to discuss it, we’d have done so already. I haven’t pushed it because that seemed like the gentlemanly thing to do.
But looking at her now, I wonder if it was a mistake not to clear the air sooner.
“I just wanted to see you to…” She sighs. “To make sure you know what you’re doing.”
I clear my throat to stop myself from speaking too harshly.
“I appreciate your concern. But I know exactly what I’m doing.”
She nods, her lips twisting like she’s chewing on the inside of her cheek.
“Hallie is?—”
“Halliday,” I correct. No one calls her Hallie since she lost Jenny. No one except me. Not even her own parents.
Lavinia’s eyes snap to mine, and she purses her lips. “Halliday is twenty years younger than you.”
“I know how old she is.” I take another sip of my brandy, wishing I’d poured a larger glass.
“As your friend, I want to make sure you’ve thought about this. She might want children.”
“I understand that. She’ll be an incredible mom.”
Lavinia’s brows shoot up her forehead for the second time since she walked into my office.
“You… That’s something you want to do again?”
“That’s something Hallie and I will decide together.” I place my now empty glass down onto the low table between us.
“I see. I suppose I never saw you getting married again. Not after the way your marriage to Elaina started. I thought you were put off for life.” She presses her lips together like she’s said too much.
“Lavinia.” I lean forward over my knees, holding my hands out. “I know you were Elaina’s friend all those years. And I know you were there when it all started. But you were also there all those years we were married, and when we had our children. Maybe neither of us chose the other. Our parents made that choice for us. But I wouldn’t change it. I have Sullivan and Sinclair. And for as long as he was here, I also had?—”
“She cheated on you,” she hisses, her eyes flashing with an uncharacteristic hate that I’ve never seen in her before.
“She did.”
“She never gave up on the man who broke her all those years ago. She had you. She got to marry you . And yet she still talked about him. Wondering what he was doing. Whether he’d met someone else. Even after I lost Jared.” She presses a hand to her lips and blinks rapidly at the mention of her late husband. “Even after I lost him, she still couldn’t appreciate what she had. Couldn’t see from my loss just how lucky she was.”
“It’s all in the past.”
She shakes her head, ignoring me. “Such a selfish woman. She never deserved you. I had to listen to her pine after him like a puppy,” she spits.
I wait for the betrayal to hit me like it used to, carving itself into my gut like this deep, ugly cancer. But nothing comes. No matter what happened, it’s all done now. I refuse to take any lingering resentments forward into my life with Hallie. Yes, I felt betrayed at what Elaina did. But I wasn’t heartbroken. Because she never had all of my heart, just like I never had hers.
“She made her choices, Lavinia.”
She sniffs and looks at me with glassy eyes.
“She did. She could easily have said no if she’d wanted to. But I knew for certain that she didn’t deserve you the minute she told me she’d replied to his letter.”
I sigh. “Elaina wrote to him first.”
I damn well remember that much. How when I found the box of letters that Elaina had hidden, the earliest dated one was from him, Neil, thanking her for reaching out and tracking him down online. That’s what hurt the most when I found them. That she’d been the one to initiate contact.
“No, she didn’t.” Lavinia picks up her glass and drains what little is left inside it. “I was so fed up listening to her that I found him online and messaged him, pretending to be her. I thought if he replied that it would be a wakeup call and make her come to her senses. That she would do the right thing. That she might finally look at you the way you deserved.”
My heart thuds in my chest as I stare at her.
“You did what?”
Lavinia looks at me, her eyes brightening like I’m actually about to thank her. Tell her she was so smart, and I’m grateful.
She’s damn well deluded.
“I gave her an opportunity. One to prove that she deserved you. And she failed. She wrote back to him and started up their filthy little affair behind your back. I told her she had to tell you, and she promised she would. I volunteered for a charity mission overseas because I couldn’t bear to watch as she made a fool of you every day.”
“You were the one who started it all?” I all but growl.
She falters.
“I didn’t make her reply to him. I didn’t invite him back to your old apartment and have sex with him in your bed the very first day I saw him again.”
I fly to my feet. “You need to leave.”
She looks at me, her mouth dropping open.
“You don’t mean that. I did you a favor. I was going to tell you myself when I came back if she hadn’t. But then the accident happened and… I did it for you, Sterling. You deserve better.”
She stands and faces me, her eyes burning into mine.
“You’re a gentleman, like my Jared. You and I could have been together after what she did to you. I would never have treated you like that. I would have loved you the way you needed.”
“You’ve been lying to me for years!”
She flinches as my voice rises.
“You put my wife back in touch with a man she wasn’t strong enough to say no to. A man who walked all over her years ago and left her alone. What kind of a friend does that?”
“She was fucking him for months before she died. She had to get tested when he gave her something. Did you see that in those letters? How he gave her some disgusting infection? Maybe you need to talk to Halliday.”
“Leave,” I growl.
She swipes up her purse from the floor, her facade cracking as she looks into my eyes.
“Sterling, I?—”
“Now!”
She swallows, her lower lip trembling like she’s about to cry.
“I’m sorry. I never meant to cause you pain. I just wanted her to either realize what she had, or move out of the way so I could...” She sucks in a shaky breath and then turns and walks to the door.
I glare at her back, saying nothing as she pauses and looks back at me.
“I’m sorry, Sterling. I did it because I love you. One day I hope you’ll see that.”
“This friendship is over, Lavinia,” I say calmly.
She straightens her shoulders and gives me a pitying look.
“I guess it’s true what they say about middle-aged men losing their mind over sex with a younger woman.”
“Get. The. Hell. Out,” I hiss.
Her lips part before she clamps them together tightly and attempts to disguise the sob from her throat. She spins and marches through the door, and I fight the overwhelming urge to put my fist through the wall. Instead, I pick up my crystal tumbler and refill it. I lift it to my nose and inhale the warm hit of alcohol curling up my nostrils.
I tip my head back and drain it in one, slamming the glass back down.
“Jesus Christ.”