12. Chapter Twelve #2
It took a few seconds for it to show up in Tallulah’s lawyer’s inbox. Before it did, another one of the women who shared my heart decided to take their shot at saying something to us from Boston.
“I just wanted to say… please give Eliza a hug from all of us.” That was Lakshmi, who sounded like she’d been arguing with herself the entire call on whether or not it would be ‘okay’ for her to chime in. “We’re just all so happy she’s finally home.”
I glanced over from my study of the lawyer.
We’d stuck Caroline in a chair by the window, at a slight remove from the business proper.
She’d been lounging right up until she heard that—when she did, she suddenly went very quiet and very still.
Her cheeks flushed, and this time it had nothing to do with anything Tallulah was insinuating about how she’d spent the previous evening.
Her hand went to her mouth. I could still see her smile through it. She blinked back tears.
I understood instantly. Sometime between waking up this morning and sitting down with Tallulah, someone—Marcie, or Caroline, or (far more likely), both of them—had texted someone in the family. Told them all about what had happened.
What was it I’d said about the speed of light versus sorority girls spreading gossip?
They used her real name, I told myself. They didn’t do that for no reason. That was a signal.
I knew what it meant, and so did Caroline.
It meant that the Avery clan—in a single morning, without a vote or a full-group meeting or even a discussion, had decided that the woman we’d put in handcuffs all of two days ago was now one of them.
Welcome home, I thought, watching Caroline try not to cry.
She took a moment to compose herself, then leaned forward. “Is… is Samantha there?”
I blinked. Samantha?
Even in the short time she’d been with our family, Caroline had developed something of a special relationship with my babygirl.
She called her babygirl, for one thing, which was normally a Jack-only piece of work.
And she’d been the one Samantha wanted around her during her darkest moments, when the health and future of both herself and her baby were potentially in jeopardy.
So maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that she was who Caroline wanted to speak to.
“I’m here,” Samantha said, her voice brimming with warmth. “Welcome to the circus, honey. You’re an honorary member of Delta Rho now, you know that?”
Caroline laughed. “It’s a little late for that, I think.”
“Never too late to be a pledge,” Samantha insisted. “I put your name in the Book of Rho myself. I hope you don’t mind…”
Caroline clearly didn’t. “I just wanted to say thank you,” she said, waving a hand to try and steady herself. “All of you, but you especially, babygirl. I’m… I’m really looking forward to coming home.”
“We’re looking forward to having you,” Samantha said.
“Okay, now I’m going to shut up because Mona is looking at me like she wishes I were upstairs chained to the radiator instead of down here running my mouth.
” I heard her giggle. “I wouldn’t mind being chained up when you get back, Daddy, just for the record—”
“I have the contract!” the lawyer said, his voice strangled. “Jesus, I’ve got it. Can we talk about that now?”
Tallulah chuckled. “It sounds like my people want to wrap this up as soon as possible.”
They certainly did. Once we got the additions to the contract approved, the rest was—as Tallulah said—signing a stack of paperwork that was almost as tall as we were.
We worked our way through it with admirable aplomb, after which Tallulah popped another bottle (I got the impression it was a usual thing with her) and called for a second toast.
Caroline and Marcie both abstained. This time, so did I. “I’ve got to drive,” I said. “The rest of the Avery Company’s eager for me to get back to work, I’m sure.”
In one sense of the term or another, I thought, remembering those voices on the other end of the call.
After the toast, Tallulah snapped her fingers. “Before you leave,” she said, rising from the table, “I have something for you. Don’t say no; it’s bad form to turn down a gift.”
I shared a glance with Marcie. A gift?
It came in a small bag, which a servant brought. “Just something for the house,” she explained, looking at Marcie as she said it. “It has sentimental value, which is the best kind of value. I don’t think you’ve ever seen it—”
Marcie gasped as she pulled the item from the bag. “Oh my God! Dad!”
I looked. In Marcie’s hands lay a framed photograph, covered by a thin sheet of glass.
It showed two men standing atop a small footbridge—one I couldn’t not recognize considering the deal we’d just signed.
They were shaking hands and grinning, their faces flushed and foreheads covered in sweat.
Daniel was actually carrying a freaking shovel.
“That was taken the day the footbridge was finished,” Tallulah explained, blinking hard. “That's your father and my Carl, the day they finished it. I want your child to know that his grandfather was young once. That he built things that lasted.”
Marcie’s jaw hit the floor. “I have never seen this picture of Dad before,” she said, holding a hand over her heart. “Tallulah, thank you so much…”
“Don’t thank me too hard,” she said. “It’s not the original. That’s somewhere in Carl’s papers.” She looked at the other man—the one she’d been married to—in the photograph with a sad smile. “But it’ll keep. Listen, Marcella…”
Marcie listened.
“At some point, you should come back for a proper dinner,” Tallulah said. “One where it doesn’t feel like the fucking Stasi are in the room with you.” She lifted her head and looked Marcie in the eye. “And bring your girls.”
It was about the last thing Marcie had expected. “All of them?”
“The wives and the sultan’s girls,” Tallulah laughed. “I want to see with my own two eyes what kind of man builds a thing like that and holds it together by sheer force of personality.” She glanced over at me, her eyes narrowing a fraction. “You’re something else, Jackson Avery.”
“He certainly is,” Caroline agreed. “Here, I’ll take that—and the keys?”
The keys?
“I’ll bring the car up,” she suggested. “Unless you want to make a pregnant woman walk all the way down that hill in her dinner shoes?”
I supposed I didn’t.
Marcie fished the keys out of my jacket pocket and tossed them to Caroline. “Here. I’ll hold onto the photo.”
Caroline caught them. “Be right back,” she said, flashing me a grin.
“That monstrosity,” Tallulah snickered. “I may have put my trust in you, Jack, but the one thing I cannot trust is your taste in automobiles…”
“Don’t fall too in love with the driver’s seat in that thing!” Marcie called as Caroline neared the door. “The second Kiki wears Jack down and gets him to pivot to minivans, Yui already has it earmarked. You wouldn’t believe how much Mrs. Tanaka likes that thing.”
“I would never presume to cut the line,” Caroline called back with a wink.
Then she was out the door, heading down the steps into the pale morning light.
Tallulah watched her go with a laugh. “I remember leaving hotel rooms like that,” she said, shaking her head. “Back when Carl and I were young, he had to make time to see me on the road. We didn’t have these voice calls and Zoom sessions…”
My phone buzzed in my pocket. “One second,” I said, reaching for it. “I probably need to take this—”
My mouth snapped shut when I saw the name written across the screen.
Victoria Ruocchio.
Fuck.
I showed the phone to Marcie, who flinched. “Maybe she wants to extend her congratulations?”
“Fat chance,” I muttered, putting the phone to my ear. “Probably she wants to announce her brand-new podcast about what a bastard I am. Give me just a minute…”
The call connected.
“Victoria?”
“Jack!?”
That single word froze my blood. It wasn’t the first time Miss Ruocchio had referred to me by my first name, but every other one felt false next to this. She yelled it at me like I was about to fall off a cliff I couldn’t see.
She was right.
“Victoria?” My fingers tightened on the phone. “What do you want—”
“Don’t get in the car!” The words tore from her in a near-shriek. “Jesus fucking Christ, stay away from your McLaren! Where are you right now? Are you still in Tallulah’s mansion?”
My blood froze for multiple reasons.
“How do you know where I am?” I shouted. “Wait—what about my car!?”
Every head still in the parlor turned to me.
“There’s a spy in Tallulah’s house,” Victoria said.
It all came out in a rush, so fast that I could barely distinguish one word from the next.
“I flipped a member of her household staff, right after she kicked me out, because I wanted to get back at her and I knew you would make a play for the Harrington account. It was for information, that’s it! So I could win!”
Certainty stole over me like an icy wind. “The butler. Gadfrey?”