Chapter 8
ADELINE
Ifelt sick to my stomach before we even pulled into the parking lot, the nausea lodging right under my ribs and not loosening its grip no matter what I did. Simon didn’t even seem to notice, or maybe he did, but he just didn’t acknowledge it.
He drove with the same singular purpose he applied to everything else in his life, completely uncaring of anything outside of his immediate objective.
Today, that objective was getting to the slate-gray skyscraper we were disappearing under.
It was built entirely out of glass and steel, exuding an air of corporate intimidation and importance.
As we descended into the parking garage, the light dimming more and more with every level, I frowned and glanced over at him. My cousin had flown in from Virginia last night and then he’d arrived at my door this morning, announcing that he was here to help me finalize my divorce.
He was an attorney for the Morris Company, and apparently, a good one at that. From what I’d heard, he was sharp and methodical, making people nervous wherever he went. Despite our familial connection, I felt that same effect applied to me.
I let out a long, deep breath, trying to keep the nausea from climbing even higher. Right at the beginning of this debacle, he’d offered me his help, but I’d turned him down. I hadn’t been in the right head space to involve the family back then.
A year ago, I’d still been blaming them for my predicament and doing everything within my limited power to try to secure my girls.
Now, however, the numbers were adding up, and with Louis making threats to take the kids from me, I wasn’t fighting Simon’s involvement any longer.
Frankly, I was running out of time to pretend I could handle it all alone.
As he eased into a parking space, I swallowed hard and tried to steady my nerves. “Where are we? I thought you said we were meeting my lawyer.”
“We are.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and reached for the door.
I shook my head and followed him out of the car, but not moving away from it. “No, this isn’t where his offices are. They’re across town.”
He glanced at me. “Not anymore they’re not.”
“What do you mean?”
“Louis is still pushing, right?” Simon asked, his tone suddenly laced with a cool, clinical seriousness I assumed meant he’d shifted into work mode.
“Yes,” I said as I finally closed the door behind me. “His lawyers keep going back and forth with mine. It’s constant.”
“What’s your lawyer saying?”
I hesitated for just a second, not wanting to call a colleague of his useless even though the two had never met and didn’t work for the same firm. Naturally, Simon noticed the pause and sighed. “He’s an idiot, isn’t he?”
“I just don’t think he’s equipped for this,” I admitted quietly. “He keeps saying we’ll work it out, but it’s not happening.”
“Because Louis isn’t interested in working it out,” Simon guessed out loud.
“No, he’s not.”
He took my hand and pulled with me him, and we crossed the polished concrete floors of the garage together, our footsteps echoing faintly as we walked.
I still didn’t quite know what we were doing at this particular, incredibly fancy building, but my cousin knew I couldn’t afford whoever worked here.
And he’d brought me anyway.
“He’s going for full custody now,” I said softly as a pair of glass doors slid open upon our approach. “I told you that, right? They’re saying they’re going to take my girls if I don’t relinquish my trust.”
“Yeah, you told me.” His teeth ground. “You have a prenup, right?”
I frowned. “I do.”
“That’s why this hasn’t settled yet,” he said simply. “Don’t worry, Adeline. I’m here now and I’m taking over.”
Simon pressed a call button and an elevator slid open in front of us with a soft chime. He dragged me inside and pressed the number of the floor we were headed to without any hesitation whatsoever, like he’d been here a dozen times and knew exactly where we were going.
The doors slid shut and he finally let go of my hand, giving me a reassuring smile. “They’ve been dragging this out intentionally, applying pressure, and waiting for you to fold.”
“I’m close to doing exactly that,” I admitted before I could stop myself. “I can’t lose my kids, Simon. I won’t.”
“I know.” He met my gaze evenly. “You don’t have to deal with this anymore, okay? I’ll handle it. You’ll be officially divorced within a few weeks and you and the girls won’t have to worry about Louis ever again. You’ll be taken care of. I’ll make sure of it.”
My heart fluttered, but I tamped down on that hope trying to take root. “That’s a pretty big promise.”
“It’s not a promise,” he said. “It’s a plan and you know how I am with those. Once I’ve made one, I follow through no matter what.”
I nodded, but I was too exhausted to keep rolling through the mental gymnastics anymore.
I didn’t even know what he’d meant when he said we would be taken care of, but I trusted him.
He knew everything, from my financial situation, to the family politics, to my background and how this all happened in the first place.
“What are we doing in this building, though?” I asked, glancing up when he turned to face the doors. “Is this your satellite office in Chicago or something?”
The elevator chimed again as it came to a stop, the doors sliding open smoothly and without making a sound. I stepped out when he swept his hand out, motioning for me to precede him, but I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw the logo on the far wall.
Once upon a time, I’d known that logo better than I knew my own reflection, regularly seeing it everywhere I’d looked, from Zach’s insignia ring to the letters he’d received from home. It was polished and unmistakable on that wall, large enough that it was impossible to ignore.
Westwood and Sons.
My heart skipped, then slammed to a stop for a split second. Simon didn’t give me a chance to ask what I was doing here, his hand at my back, directing me down a hallway that was too clean and too quiet.
Right at the end of the hall, conference room doors opened before we’d even reached them and a full sweep of the Chicago skyline was visible through floor-to-ceilings windows at the other end of the room. Simon didn’t stop moving until we were inside. The doors shut again behind us.
My heart started hammering in my ears. I’d been prepared to meet with lawyers—new or old—but not this.
Zach and Alex, who I remembered from way back in the day, sat at the table with their father and my grandfather, and my breathing immediately faltered.
There were other people in the room too, but I didn’t even check to see who they were.
Those I recognized were already bad enough.
The edges of my vision blurred, icy tentacles of panic winding around my insides. Zach stood the second I walked into the room. “I have to be the one to tell her.”
His voice was sharp and clear, commanding in a way I’d never heard it before.
Obviously, I’d always known that he would grow up to take his rightful place in these corridors of power one day, but there was something to his tenor here that was so very different that it even made it past the ringing in my ears.
There was a beat of muffled movement behind him. Someone saying his name and then another voice, trying to rein him in. I couldn’t process any of it, but he was already moving straight toward me.
“Zach,” Alex started, but he didn’t stop or even look back.
His hand closed around my wrist, his fingers warm and his touch still entirely too familiar. When I looked up at him, he was already turning, pulling me back toward the door like we could just leave. “Come on. Let’s go.”
I might not know what was going on here, but I did know that we wouldn’t just be allowed to walk out. I stumbled half a step, caught off guard by the contact with him, but also by the fact that he didn’t seem to care that we probably couldn’t just go.
More than that, somehow, in some way, this meeting related to my girls. To keeping them and to finally ending the divorce. All of which meant I wasn’t leaving here until Simon had at least let me in on his plan.
“Wait,” I said softly, but he didn’t slow, just gently dragging me toward the door. I planted my feet and stopped, pulling back and forcing him to pause. “Zach.”
He turned, and for just half a second as our eyes locked, he wasn’t the controlled, distant man who’d been looking through me like we were strangers ever since I’d come back. Instead, he was… him.
The guy I remembered, who’d made me laugh until I couldn’t breathe and who’d looked at me like I was his certainty in an unsteady world.
“What’s going on?” I asked carefully, my voice quiet.
Something darker settled behind his eyes then, and as much as I didn’t want to be able to identify it, I could. It was guilt. That was the only emotion that fit.
My stomach bottomed out, my pulse spiking until it was kicking against my veins. “Zach?”
He didn’t answer, but behind him, a throat cleared. Instinctively, I knew it was my grandfather. A moment later, the suspicion was confirmed when he spoke.
“Adeline,” he said gently, like there was nothing to be afraid of in this room at all. “Come sit down. We have business to discuss.”
Cold, familiar dread slid into place along my spine, winding itself around my skeleton and taking control of every bone in my body. The last time I’d heard those words, I’d been twenty-one, sitting in a room not unlike this one and being told I was about to get married to someone I didn’t love.
Hell, to someone I barely even knew.
Suddenly, I couldn’t move because I knew what this was now—and it wasn’t a meeting with the Westwood lawyers about my divorce. Simon’s plan didn’t include working with them to make sure we finally wrapped things up.
That would’ve been humiliating enough, but this was so, so much worse. My gaze flicked back to Zach, who was still standing too close to me and holding my wrist like his touch might shield me from what was coming.
The very worst, most confusing, and most unbearable part of it all, however, was that when I looked at him, I felt relief. I even felt a flicker of something I hadn’t let myself feel in years—excitement.
Underneath it all, the guilt was still there. Still as thick and suffocating as ever, but those other emotions were very real too.
None of this was happening in a vacuum. It, whatever it was, was happening on the ruins of everything I’d already broken, but the foundation Zach and I had built back then had been solid, strong enough to withstand the test of time.
At least, that was what I used to think. Right now, I could only hope that I’d been right.