Chapter 30
"Little Lies," Fleetwood Mac
Cruz
When she roused, we went for another round then I dragged her to the shower.
She tied her hair into a top knot, but when I slid my fingers inside her, her head dropped into the stream of water …
so after she came I washed her hair. She hummed in contentment as I massaged her scalp, her face blissfully relaxed.
All the tension I’d fucked out of her returned when her phone rang. She toweled off, pulled on a tank top and leggings, and answered with false cheer.
“Hi, Dad. Yes, I got the invitation. No, I’m not avoiding her, but I don’t know if I can get the time...” She listened, head bobbing. “I told you we’re not together.” She massaged her temples. “It’s just me.”
Normally she hid her emotions, but she was so focused on keeping her voice calm that her apprehension showed, making my heart ache.
As soon as she hung up, I impulsively offered, “Need a plus one? I’ll go.”
Whatever it was couldn’t be that bad, right?
“You want to come to my grandfather’s 80th birthday party?”
Oh fuck, no I didn’t. Not at all.
But hope glimmered in her eyes, so against my better judgment, I nodded. “Think of me like a palate cleanser. Whoever you bring home next will be compared against Alex. I’ll lower the standards for your future husband, really shake up the party.”
Her hand bridged her brow, warding off a headache while resting her elbows on her knees. I snuck a peek down her tank while she calculated the risk.
Finally she marched into her office, rifled around in a file cabinet and stared at a piece of paper like it contained the answers to the universe.
“I think it’s a little late for the sex contract,” I smirked.
“It’s a non-disclosure agreement.” She focused intently on the paper, which trembled in her hands.
"I should make you sign this. When I shared what I'm about to tell you with my divorce attorney, I was slapped with a defamation lawsuit.
" She finally looked up from beneath her blonde eyelashes.
"If you leaked anything you see next weekend to the press… "
"You think I'd do that?"
"No," she answered, holding the contract to her chest like the legal language comforted her. "And there will be so many guests, it would be hard to prove the source." She let out a shaky breath, placing it on her desk.
"What if I give you something that means more to me?" I asked. "In first grade, I got into a fight at school. When I came home with a split lip, I insisted to my mom that he started it."
I expected Mama to yell, but she crouched to my height and gripped my shoulder. "Mijo, cuando juras por tu madre, es porque lo dices con el corazón. Y si mientes, se rompe un pedacito de ella."
"She made me swear, on her name, that I was telling the truth—and if I was lying, a little piece of her would break. And I admitted that, ok, yeah, I shoved first." I shrugged, and she grinned. "From then on, I never lied to her, not even when the truth made me look like an asshole."
I used my thumb to draw a cross over my heart. "Lo juro por mi madre."
She tracked my thumb intensely, then she scrolled on her phone and flicked the screen to me. “Do you know who this is?”
The screen showed a distinguished white man with round glasses, sporting a seersucker. “The popcorn guy, right? Orville Redenbacher?”
Her eyes widened as she shook her head.
“I’ve seen him before …” I snapped my fingers. “Colonel Sanders. Please, baby, tell me you’re secretly a fried chicken tycoon and this quiz comes with a complimentary chicken and biscuits bucket.”
Her lips quirked as her head continued to shake.
“Don’t tell me …” Finally it clicked: “Milton Bradley. The Monopoly man, with the top hat and the monocle?” I pantomimed a circle over my eye.
She scrubbed her face, disguising a smile. “That's Richard Sinclair.”
She handed me the phone to skim his Wikipedia page: Real estate investor and business magnate, blah blah blah. Took the reins of The Sinclair Group from his father in the early 1970s, yada yada. Seventeenth richest person in the country, married twice, lives in Manhattan.
And then a chill went down my spine as I recognized the logo.
On the backstop behind home plate at Yankee Stadium.
On overdue payment letters addressed to my mother.
On the “Foreclosure” sign of my stepdad’s business.
Seventeenth richest person in America. A fucking billionaire.
Bile rose in my throat as I realized what I’d volunteered for.
She lifted a thick hardcover off her bookshelf featuring his face: Sinclair’s Skyscrapers: An Unparalleled Legacy. A handwritten note on the title page confirmed my suspicions: To my treasured granddaughter Victoria, the bright future of Sinclair Larsson.
I choked on my spit. “You’re the bright future of Sinclair Larsson?”
Her mouth puckered like she was swallowing lemons. “I was on my 18th birthday, when he wrote that.”
Victoria flipped to the centerfold photos and tapped on a smiling woman balancing a toddler in a frilly dress and pigtails on her hip.
“My mother, Regina Sinclair Blackstone, was the Chief Operating Officer of The Sinclair Group.” The book lingered on that page, the spine cracked.
I’d assumed that Victoria hadn’t had time to hang family photos, but this book might be the only safe place to keep this truth about herself, on the bottom shelf between her textbooks.
“My grandfather Richard had been preparing her to take over as CEO.” She held out a weathered copy of Fortune magazine with the same redheaded woman, a few years older, and a white man with close-cropped dark hair and gray eyes.
The headline said, “Regina Sinclair and Arthur Blackstone: The Future of New York Real Estate.”
Regina and Arthur. The power couple from her drunk ramblings.
“When she died …” she cleared her throat. “Dad barely functioned. Richard was so devastated, he made some poor business decisions. Not enough to declare bankruptcy, but close.”
She started to pace, her voice flat, detached from her emotion.
“My dad didn’t want Mom’s legacy shattered, so he stepped in to save The Sinclair Group.
He led a round of layoffs which saved the company in the short term but made him a villain to the staff.
Richard was over-leveraged with the banks and selling his personal property would have tipped people off.
So he found an investor: Calvin Larsson. ”
Her face scrunched in disgust. She flipped a few pages in the biography, tapping a photo of her grandfather with a smarmy-looking blond guy, probably 20 years younger.
“Calvin was a self-made billionaire from an internet startup, but he wanted what money can’t buy: reputation. After fifty years as New York’s premier real estate empire, the Sinclair name means something.”
She took a rough breath. I put down the book to steady her shoulders, her arms trembling beneath my fingertips. She blinked in confusion, like she’d lost track of time and space. I gathered her materials, guided her to her living room, and sat beside her on the couch.
“Calvin bailed him out with three conditions: adding Larsson to the business name, retaining my dad as COO, and …” her eyes rose to the ceiling, “a marriage between our families.” She blew out a heavy breath. “My grandfather was 63. He married Calvin’s 32-year-old daughter Beverly.”
“Gross,” I said immediately.
“Right? The grossest,” she grinned at my rapid reaction. “Beverly agreed for the wealth and status, not Richard. She never got pregnant like Calvin hoped.” She gazed out the window, her gray eyes stormy. “Calvin also had a son. Spencer."
Shit. She’d mentioned him when she was drunk: the dumb twat from New Jersey. I forced down my anger, mentally preparing to punch the shit out of a heavy bag during my next workout.
“Spencer started paying attention to me when I was 15. He was 22, finishing his MBA at Columbia. The girls at my boarding school fawned over him when he visited. He sent flowers and took me for long walks through town for ice cream.” Her lips tightened. “Staking his claim.”
Her gaze locked on the book. “Richard wanted me to take over as CEO, but without my mom to guide me, he said I’d need support. Spencer would ‘help out’ as my CFO. My father hated the plan, but I wanted Richard's approval so badly that I went along with it.”
Her thumb traced her ring finger. This was the cheater. The ex-husband. Fuck.
“He proposed when I was 18, during the New Business section of a board meeting. When he dropped to one knee, holding my grandmother’s ring, I was speechless.
The next thing I knew, the ring was on my finger and Richard was shaking Calvin’s hands.
They set the date for the summer after my freshman year of college so the wedding wouldn’t distract my studies. ”
From her pile of paperwork, she retrieved an aged newspaper—The New York Times wedding section—where she stood next to a blond guy who oozed arrogance.
Goddamn, she was stunning on the cover, beaming at the camera—so young, hopeful, and alive.
An ache formed in my chest at the lightness in her expression that I'd never seen.
“Spencer was everything I wanted: handsome, rich, successful. He showered me with expensive gifts, bragged to everyone about being with me. I thought if I married him, I could be CEO and fill the gap my mom left. Just like Richard always dreamed.” Her eyes softened, tracking out the French doors to her terrace.
“For a wedding present, Richard gave us the townhouse in Chelsea where I grew up. Told us to start filling it with kids. Spencer wanted me to transfer to Columbia, but I wanted to graduate from Yale, like my mom did. I spent my summers and weekends living in our place in Chelsea, working at Sinclair Larsson. Everything was going according to all their machinations, until one Friday my classes ended early. I surprised Spencer in his office,” she drew her lips into a tight line. ”Found him with his secretary.”
I jumped to my feet, ready to burst. How the fuck could they—her whole fucking family—treat her like this? How could they dismiss this incredible woman like she was nothing?
Her hands held my cheeks, her steady eyes drilling into mine. “I’m fine, Eric. I’m telling you this now so you can decide if you want to come with me to deal with all these assholes.” She tried for a snarky grin, then faltered.
I took a long, shaky breath, seeing how my outburst impacted her. She was already so tense, my anger wouldn't help. "Sorry."
“You asked me once why Alexander and I broke up.
" Her shoulder tilted back in defiance. "He was my date to Spencer’s wedding. The divorce had been finalized for a decade, so the invitation was a challenge—it would have looked weak if I didn’t go.
With hundreds of guests, I hoped we'd go unnoticed, but Beverly cornered him at the reception.
" Her lip wobbled, but she steadied it. "He dumped me on the plane back to San Francisco.”
Then she was in my arms. I didn’t make the conscious choice to pull her closer. Her family stories hadn’t driven me away, they'd steadied my resolve. I wouldn’t let her face her family alone.
“I’m still in,” I said into her hair, unbothered by the strands sticking to my lip.
Her shoulders relaxed slightly, her voice muffled, “The story isn’t done.”
“I don’t care,” I murmured. “I’m not letting you go without me.”
I thought she would protest that I wasn’t letting her do anything … but she didn’t. Her body slumped into my embrace.
“None of this is your fault, you know."
“The story isn’t done,” she repeated.
“Does it involve you committing cold-blooded murder? Because I wouldn’t blame you. Hell, I’d be your accomplice. You be the brains, I’ll be the brawn. We’ll go out in a blaze of glory.”
I sat on her couch and pulled her onto my lap, wrapping my arms around her hips.
“I need to finish the story,” she said, "so they can’t pit you against me. I’m not the only cobra in the den.”
“Nest,” I corrected, and a soft light played in her eyes. “Vipers live in dens, cobras have nests.”
“Some women in our world could turn a blind eye, but I couldn’t live like that. Seeing him…” She blinked until she regained control. “The day I found Spencer, I gave back the ring and flew to Los Angeles without a plan. I filed for divorce at 23.”
I ran my hand over my mouth as a wave of nausea rose. Married at Luisa’s age, divorced by Adriana’s.
“My attorney suggested I take a pregnancy test, to have it on file. Thank God Yale’s clinic provided birth control or else...” Her voice tightened. “The clinic told me I had chlamydia.”
My heart tore in two. I wanted to pull her closer, to rub her back, to softly kiss her forehead … but her whole body was a live wire. “But that’s treatable, just a course of antibiotics.”
“Yeah,” she sighed, relaxing at my nonchalant reaction.
Had she expected condemnation? “They caught it early, so no lasting side effects.
My attorney brought the results to divorce court as proof of his infidelity, but his attorneys said there was no way to prove I'd been faithful.
More than a dozen women employees at Sinclair Larsson testified that he was sexually active in the workplace—they worried about their job security if they declined his advances.
This was 12 years ago, before #MeToo. A huge risk for those women.
" She took a shuddering breath, the weight of their bravery heavy on her shoulders.
"Once the floodgates opened, more women came forward to file a class action suit against his father. Calvin blamed me for starting the trend and sued me for defamation.”
“After nearly two years of court proceedings, Spencer signed the divorce papers. And by then, after all the court dates and legal fees, I gave him everything, including the townhouse. I just wanted to be free.” Her hands fidgeted in her lap.
“I transferred to Stanford to finish my MBA and also enrolled in law school. The divorce dragged out so long because I’d signed a prenup that fucked me over, and I never wanted to face that uncertainty again. ”
“And where’s this bag of dicks now?”
"France, according to my dad. Cannes now, Monaco next weekend for the Grand Prix.”
Damn, that was some rich dude shit … which meant he wouldn’t be in the Hamptons next weekend. "If I ever meet Spencer, I’d like to punch him in the face.”
“You and me both,” she said wryly.
My face lifted into a cocky smile. “I can help with that.”