48. Genevieve
Chapter forty-eight
Genevieve
Waves rolled in beyond the glass doors.
I stepped out onto the balcony, the warm Pacific breeze brushing my hair back.
The estate below glowed like something out of a dream.
Manicured cliffs, infinity pools spilling over into the edge of the horizon, staff who never asked questions, never made eye contact, never broke the illusion that all of this was… freedom.
Despite its beauty… it was still a prison. A prison that reminded me every day of the decisions I made over twenty years ago. I could still hear the way my little boy called after me, his laughter I looked forward to in the morning, his little cranky voice he’d use when he was tired or frustrated.
I knew I wasn’t allowed contact. It wouldn’t have been acceptable.
But as the years went on, and the restraints loosened, I still tried…
and tried and tried. Letters I pleaded with Alexander to send, landline phones I prayed worked, messages that remained unsent.
Every attempt had slipped into the void, the same way my life did when I vanished.
Gregory made sure of that. He intercepted most of my attempts… I’d only found out when Reid showed me a letter written with all kinds of threats for me to stop.
Reid wasn’t upset at me entirely, but we weren’t technically supposed to be alive to the world. He knew I was breaking every day as my decision was eating me alive, but he also knew I’d do it again for him.
I leaned against the railing, taking in the sun.
Would they hate me?
Does Eugene even remember me?
Would he recognize me now?
The only pictures I saw of them was when I received a letter from Jamie many years back.
She was still as sick as she was when I left, still fighting the cancer, being the brightest light in the miserable experience we all know as life.
I hadn’t talked to her in so long. Didn’t know how Raymond was doing with his cancer or how their treatments had been going.
Reid could’ve known, but he never brought up the subject.
To keep my mind off the past, I tried to keep myself busy when he was away given I could only bear so much corporate nonsense in a day. I’d read three books this week. Or maybe it was four. The pages blurred together after a while.
I cooked when I wanted something else to do, watered the plants I dragged through every flight since we were never in one country for too long. On the good days, I let myself actually enjoy where we’d landed for as long as I could before we were back on the jet again.
Behind me, a low hum sounded, the rotor blades chopping the air in slow, heavy pulses as the helicopter descended onto our private pad. The same pad tucked so deep into this island that even maps pretended it didn’t exist.
As the propellers slowed, I let out a soft breath of relief.
Reid was home.
I smoothed my hands down the front of my dress. It was a soft cotton one with a milkmaid cut he loved on me.
A few moments later, the sliding glass door opened. And before I knew it, warm hands slipped around my waist from behind, pulling me back into a chest I knew too well. His scent, expensive and masculine, settled around me.
“Sorry I’m late,” he murmured into the side of my neck, his lips brushing my skin.
“The helicopter had issues on takeoff, and Adams refused to end the meeting without three more contingencies.” I gave a small smile as he continued.
“He’s convinced he needs more safeguards to protect his company.
I told him the world has more immediate problems…
but you know first-hand, billionaires love to fantasize about hypothetical disasters instead of dealing with the real ones. ”
When he noticed I wasn’t answering, he turned me in his hold, pulling me closer as he gazed into my eyes.
“You okay?” he asked quietly.
I didn’t answer. Just looked at the man I got to call mine. The man who noticed every little thing and made me his priority over the entire world. He obviously had more important things to worry about than my constant pouting or sadness. But he always put me first.
Time was doing him well. While he was consistently noticing the amount of grey hairs peeking through, I couldn’t help but notice them for a different reason—a rather lewd reason that led to me ultimately pulling said grey hairs as we made love on the beach front.
But with the way he was looking at me… I had to save the dirty thoughts for later.
“I’m fine…” I muttered, kissing him on the lips briefly.
He rested his head against mine, pressing his fingers into my hips. “You know I know that’s not the truth.”
“It is.”
He nipped at my lip. “Liar,” he murmured against my lips.
A quiet giggle slipped out of me before I could stop it, my hands finding the sides of his face. My thumbs grazed his jaw, the silver threaded through his light stubble, the hints of grey at his temples.
God, those grey hairs made me weak.
His fingers pressed a little deeper into my hips, pulling me out of my head.
“Vieve,” he whispered knowingly. My throat tightened. Reid tilted his head, brushing a tender kiss across my cheekbone. “You only get that look,” he murmured, “when you’ve been thinking about them.”
My breath hitched.
He didn’t push further, never did when it came to this. We didn’t talk about the children often. When I cried, he just held me instead, arms tight, firm and warm around me as he made me whole again every time I fell apart.
I leaned into him now, forehead pressed to the hollow of his throat, breathing him in until my lungs hurt.
“I don’t want to forget their faces,” I whispered. “But every year… it gets harder to see them clearly.”
His arms tightened protectively. “You won’t forget,” he said against my hair. “I won’t let you.”
My lips trembled. “You say that,” I breathed, “but what if they… what if Eugene forgets me?”
Reid pulled back just enough to look at me. “Genevieve,” he murmured, “a child never forgets the mother who made them feel loved.”
My breath shook. “He might hate me now,” I whispered.
“Then he’ll hate you,” he said simply. “But he will not forget you. He will not erase you. And when he’s ready, when the world allows it, they will know the truth. And I will bring you home,” Reid whispered. “To them. To yourself. Even if I have to tear down every dynasty in this country to do it.”
My vision blurred. “Reid…”
He kissed the tear before it fell. Then another as my arms wrapped around his neck. He lifted me off the ground, his arms locked around me, lifting me just slightly off my feet as the waves crashed on the shore.
“Je t’aime,” I whispered.
He held me tighter.
“Je t’aime encore plus, mon amour.”
For a fleeting moment, I let myself believe him. Believe that one day, this wouldn’t hurt so much… that one day, my children would know I never stopped trying and the world would let me be their mother again.
But that day was not today.
The months had gone by as normal. Traveling with Reid across the globe had become more of a habit over the years. Currently, we were en route to Shanghai, and I was roaming the cabin of the private jet as we crossed over the Pacific.
The crew on board were tidying up after breakfast and Reid seemed nowhere to be found. It wasn’t like he could go far; he was probably in the cockpit talking to the pilots.
I walked over to where he’d been sitting, eyeing the stack of contracts Alexander had given him. His laptop was open, pages and pages of legal jargon for him to review on display.
His tablet sat opened, unlocked, and my eyebrows furrowed gently as I looked it over. I’d almost walked past it entirely… but something made me stop.
A wedding photograph of a couple. The woman dressed in white, her dark brown hair in an elegant updo. Beside her a man, arm wrapped around her waist. He held the growing bump that was her stomach.
Her features… her mouth, nose, smile… all of it seemed too familiar. Almost like a mirror. I reached for the tablet before my mind could register it.
And suddenly… the breath from my lungs felt like it had been knocked out of me.
It was… her.
Brielle…
My daughter… my baby… full-grown, glowing, radiant in a wedding gown. I felt my legs go weak as I sat. I almost couldn’t believe my eyes. It didn’t feel real. Didn’t compute to me that the baby I held had grown up.
She looked so… happy. Truly happy.
My hand flew to my mouth before the sob even left me.
And I hadn’t seen her walk down the aisle. I wasn’t there to fix her veil or hold her hand when she found out she was expecting. I had missed every version of her. The girl she was, the woman she became, the mother she was about to be.
My hand clamped around my mouth, shock curling in my throat.
Before I could even think, the tablet was pulled from my hand. I looked up immediately, watching Reid turning it off before he set it to the side and walked towards the jet’s bedroom suite.
I stood abruptly. “Reid,” I called after him, watching him from behind as he rubbed his temples.
“You weren’t supposed to see that.”
My brows furrowed as I stopped in the door frame, watching him run a stressed hand through his hair. “I wasn’t supposed to see our daughter? What does that mean?”
“None of this was supposed to reach you,” he said, clipped.
“Well I didn’t leave the screen open on display for the world to see, you did. And why do you get to see her and I don’t…? And why is she in a news article? How did you even know about this? Who is the man she’s marrying?”
“This is exactly why I didn’t show you,” he murmured, “exactly why I keep certain things off your plate. You’re not ready for it.”
“My only daughter is pregnant and married,” I hissed. “How ready do you think I needed to be?”
His eyes snapped to mine. “You’re still fragile about them.”
“I’m still their mother.”
“And that is exactly why I don’t let you see everything,” he snapped. “Because the simple thought of them destroys you every time. You spiral, blame yourself, and then it takes me days, Vieve, to pull you out of your head sometimes.”