36. KATE
36
KATE
A t exactly 9 pm, I arrive at the door to Nico’s apartment. It’s so high that my ears popped in the lift on the way up.
I’m exhausted, both physically and mentally. I thought my anger might dissipate, but it hasn’t. Nor has the empty ache of fresh loss for the father I thought I knew. I grieved when he died, but it turns out I’d grieved for a man I didn’t know. A man who didn’t exist.
I feel raw, like someone has rubbed away my defenses with a scrubbing brush. Part of me knows I shouldn’t be here. Nothing good is going to come from confronting Nico right now. I ought to go home. Call it off. Take time out to get my head together. But I have to know if what Martin said is true.
I want it to be lies with every fibre of my being. I want to move back to a time when I was blissfully unaware.
I want to live in a world where I know my father, trust my brother and—my heart stalls and pitches at the next thought—fall in love with Nico Hawkston. But none of them are who I thought they were. I’ve never felt so alone.
When Nico opens the door, he’s still wearing his suit trousers and white shirt, with a tie knotted at his neck. He can’t have been home long.
Standing in the doorway, I absorb his energy, feel his presence, and long to be cocooned in his arms. But there’s something between us now that wasn’t there before; an invisible partition, a separation that can only be felt .
He senses it instantly, the warmth in his face fading. “What’s wrong?”
I step into the apartment, and even through the haze of anger, I can see this place is amazing. Insane. Beyond the imagining of mere mortals like me. The furniture is sleek, contemporary and expensive-looking. Steel columns rise between the sofas. The ceilings are ten feet high, the external walls sheet glass.
We’re dizzyingly far from the ground, and just like the night we fucked in the office, the sunset blazes outside. Only this time I don’t see it as beautiful.
This time it looks like hell.
I clutch my handbag tight to my side. Nico’s eyes flick to it, and his frown deepens.
“Did someone hurt you? Because I swear, if they did—”
“You did,” I grit out.
His gaze sweeps over my face, his eyes narrowing. “I don’t understand.”
“I spoke to Martin Brooks.”
His reaction is subtle. A flicker, a bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallows. “Kate—”
“What’s that?” I cut him off, looking over his shoulder to where a framed picture is leaning against the sofa.
It’s the charcoal drawing I did of my father, except it has been expensively mounted and reframed, a red ribbon tied around it.
“I had it fixed. To remember your father.”
“My father?” Anger thins my voice, and the words quiver. “Who the hell was my father? Because I sure as shit don’t know.”
Nico’s shoulders compress, and he looks at me like I’m about to break and he doesn’t know whether to take cover or try to catch the pieces.
“You knew, didn’t you? You knew what kind of man he was?” Fire flushes my veins, heating my body, raging through my limbs. It infuses my brain and blurs my vision.
I drop my handbag to the floor, stalk past Nico, and pick up the picture, turning it so he can see it. “Is this a joke? Is this a fucking joke?”
“No. God, no. It’s a gift.”
“A gift? Keep your gifts, you lying bastard!” I raise the picture over my head. Nico’s features contort with alarm as he reads my intention. He steps towards me, arms outstretched.
There’s a split second of clarity, where I know I could pull back, should pull back, but then it’s gone. I’ve passed the limit of rational thought, and anger consumes me. With a scream that comes from somewhere dark and wounded, I slam the picture to the floor. The glass shatters; the frame breaks.
Nico stills. “What the fuck is going on?”
“My father embezzled millions from the company. He destroyed it. That’s why you didn’t buy it. Is it true?”
Nico’s eyes are full of pain. “I couldn’t make it work.” There’s a reluctance to his words that fuels my anger. He still doesn’t want to tell me the truth.
My hand flies to my mouth and emotion swells in my throat. “It’s true? You knew? All this time, you knew?”
“I did.” His voice sounds apologetic.
Tears spill down my face as my words from Jack’s party return to haunt me. Dad didn’t deserve it. He was a good man. A hundred times the man you’ll ever be . I yelled it in Nico’s face and he barely blinked, when all the while he knew exactly what type of man Gerard Lansen was. Shame rushes through me. I’ve been such a fool.
Nico walks towards me, one hand outstretched.
“No.” I hit at his arms. “Don’t touch me.”
He stops. “Kate…”
“No!” I scream. “You lied to me. You swore you wouldn’t, and all this time… all these years…” I close my eyes, my hand clasped over my lips, chin trembling beneath my palm. “Why did no one tell me?”
“Your father. He asked us not to. We swore to him.”
“Why? Because I wouldn’t be able to understand? Because I’m too young? A child? A woman? What was it?” With each word, the pitch of my voice rises. I’m strangely detached, as if the person losing their mind isn’t really me at all, but someone I’m watching from a distance.
“We did it because he asked us to. He made us swear we’d protect you.”
“From what?”
“The truth.”
The word silences my senses before anger screams in my veins. “You can’t protect someone from the truth! You can only hide it from them.”
Tears stream down my cheeks. I can’t stay here. I need to get out. I grab my handbag, fix my gaze on the door and stride towards it. My heels crunch over shards of broken glass with each step.
Nico blocks my path. “Where are you going?”
“Away from you.”
“Let me explain,” he begs.
“Explain what? That you didn’t cover up a crime? That my father didn’t steal from his own company? That you aren’t as much of a fucking criminal as my father was? That you didn’t hide it all from me for years? That when you swore to me that you wouldn’t lie to me, you knew you were lying about this?”
There’s a storm of emotion in his eyes as he watches me speak, but he makes no attempt to answer me.
“Can you deny any of it?”
The silence seems to quiver with hope. Desperation. Longing for some other reality than this one.
With a pained look, Nico replies, “No.”
I never knew one tiny word could be so destructive. I clutch at my chest like I can hold myself together as sobs wrack my ribs and tears drip to the floor.
“Fuck, Kate. I’m sorry.”
“Sorry?” I gasp. “Do you know how painful, how humiliating it is to have your ignorance exposed by someone you barely know? Someone who comes at you with such malice? You didn’t protect me at all . None of you. Not my father, not my brother, and certainly not…” My throat is thick, my voice shaking with emotion. “You… whatever you are to me. Whatever you were to me.”
“Were?” Nico’s voice is as unsteady as mine and the sound of it nearly brings me to my knees.
“Yes. Were. This”—I wave my hand between us—“is over.”
His face blanches. “Over? You can’t walk away from this. This is once in a lifetime—”
I don’t let him finish. “Cut the crap, Nico.” The words croak out in a pitiful shout. “This isn’t once in a lifetime. This is lies and dishonesty and a dozen other red flags I should have seen a mile off. I deserve more than this. It’s over. We’re finished. I’m finished.”
The words choke me and heartbreak looms at the periphery of my awareness. One more second in this room and it will swallow me. I pace towards the door. I don’t need to look to know Nico’s following me; the dominating crack of his footsteps splits the air.
He grabs my upper arm and spins me around. His handsome face twists with emotion so intense I want to shy away from the force of it.
“No.” He grips my wrist in his other hand. “You’re wrong. This is only the beginning. I’m falling in love with you. I am in love with you.”
The wreckage of my chest cracks, splinters, breaks into a thousand pieces. It’s beyond excruciating. “Love? It’s only been weeks,” I scoff, trying to pretend I wasn’t feeling the same thing.
“Years, Kate. I’ve been in love with you for years.”
I can’t breathe. If Nico says love again, in that tone that resonates deep in my core, everything I’m made of will dissolve.
I cling to the fragments of my anger.
“Years?” I wrench my wrist free. “You haven’t loved me for years… you’ve avoided me for years.”
“Because you’re the one person I didn’t want to lie to.” His voice is hard but with a brittle edge, as though it might fracture at any second. “And I had to lie… I fucking had to.”
“You didn’t.” My voice breaks.
We stand, arm’s breadth apart, not touching physically, but tangled up in every other way. His agony is mine, and mine is his. It coils around my throat, wrapping so tight I have to fight for air.
“I can’t do this.” I wrench my gaze from his and something deep inside tears wide open, the pain blindsiding me.
I can’t let him see me fall apart. I pace to the door, my hand on the handle when he speaks again.
“This isn’t over. If you walk out of here, part of me is going with you. Part of me will always be with you.”
I stiffen at his words, as if I can somehow harden myself against them… But each of them is a poisoned arrow that sinks into my skin and infects my flesh. Controlling to the very last; I can’t even leave without Nico declaring what happens next.
“Don’t fucking manipulate me.” My index finger points like the barrel of a gun. “It’s always about you, isn’t it? I don’t know what you think love is, but it isn’t ordering me not to walk away because your feelings take priority. Love is listening and respecting, and letting me go if that’s what I want.” I let out a painful groan, hands falling to my sides. “Fuck this. We can’t work together. I’m resigning from the spa project. I don’t want it anymore. It’s tainted with lies and Martin fucking Brooks. If he wants it, let him take it. I don’t give a shit anymore.”
Nico walks towards me, his expression lethal, his steps so rapid I have no hope of escaping him. “You don’t give a shit about the biggest spa project in London? The project that will make your career? That meant so much to your father? That you’ve been working on for years? You’d give it all up?”
“I would.”
His jaw hardens, its already strong lines even more severe. “Then know this: people who give up never get anything they want in life. If that’s the path you choose, then I can’t follow because I don’t fucking quit, and I cannot be with someone who does.”
His gaze lacerates me, and I know he’s not talking about the spa project anymore.
He’s talking about us.
If I walk out, it’s over.
But to stay? I can’t. It’s all too much. I don’t trust a word that falls from his lips.
I turn back towards the door.
“You’re leaving?” he asks, exposing the merest hint of vulnerability.
I shift the angle of my chin, defiant. “Yes.”
And then I leave, knowing exactly what that means.