37. Chapter Thirty-Seven
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Ava
“You’re not coming with me,” I say to him again as I throw things in my purse from the apartment.
Nothing I’m putting in is important, but it gives me something to do with my hands while my brain is on fire.
My mother lied to me. Not just that—she deliberately deceived me.
Changed the entire course of my life, of Landon’s life, and she’s put me in an impossible situation. How do I explain any of this to Landon?
“She’s your mother, yes, but you don’t know her like I do.” Stephen leans against the door that’ll take me into the main foyer of the apartment and out the door. It’s passive blocking, and I don’t like it. Everyone just needs to get out of my way.
“I feel like I’m about to know her like that, don’t you?” I whirl to face him, hands on my hips.
“In a situation like this, you can’t show up at her house on impulse.”
“My childhood home. That’s where I’m going. She’s my mother.”
Stephen lets out a sigh of frustration and runs his hand through his hair. “Celia Tucker, backed into a corner, is not your mother. Not when you’re the one about to make her life difficult. She’ll never admit that what she did was wrong.”
“So, I just, what? Say nothing? Let this enormous betrayal go? She fucked everything up. Everything.”
“What outcome do you want?” He leaves the door to run his hands up and down my arms. “What realistic outcome do you want?”
“I want her to admit what she did. I want to hear her say it.”
“And then what?”
“Then we ruin her life like she ruined mine.”
“Are you sure about that?”
“Can we do it?”
Stephen grimaces, and he steps back from me to shove his hands into his pockets. “Possibly. But she’s very good at mutually assured destruction. Some of what she’s done—some of what I did for her—could get us both sent to jail if it sees the light of day.”
“I need her to pay for this, Stephen. And not the way my siblings have punished her. I’m not talking about kicking her out of the family. That’s not enough. I want her social status and her name stripped from any position of power on this island.”
“There are things we can do,” Stephen says with more certainty. “But we need a strong plan. Once she knows you know—”
“I’m not waiting. She can have the full force of my wrath.” I sling my bag onto my shoulder, and I storm toward the front door.
“Ava,” Stephen calls. “Come on. This is not wise.”
Fuck it. No one has ever accused me of being wise before.
If my mother thought she could fuck me over and get away with it, she hasn’t been paying attention to the firecracker she birthed.
Maybe my spark was dulled for a while, but it’s been reignited, and the incoming boom is about to rattle her life.
“Mother!” I call into the house, the butler from the front door stumbling behind me with a lot of nonsense about waiting to be admitted. “I grew up in this house,” I say to him over my shoulder. “You’re new here, but waiting for my mother to agree to see me is not something I do.
“Mother!” I screech.
“Ava,” she says from the top of the stairs, her tone mild. “I feel like we’ve gone back in time. Have you regressed to being a teenage brat? What’s all this about?” Her eyes widen. “Has Raul woken up?” She rushes down the stairs. “I told him he needed to take all those threats more seriously.”
When she comes forward to embrace me, I step back. “The only person who’s woken up is me.”
“Oh?” She raises her eyebrows, and her tone is wary.
“Is that a fact? Have you woken up to your reality? That you should be in Boston, supporting your injured husband, not shacked up with an ex-police officer? Have you woken up to the truth that someone as lowly and poor as Stephen Foster could never satisfy your lust for more?”
“Stephen might not have the money of Raul, but he’s a much better man.”
“Is he? Because I seem to recall that better man doing some very bad things for a paycheck.”
“I didn’t come here to fight about Stephen.” Which isn’t exactly the truth, but she’s thrown me off balance. “I know that Landon isn’t Raul’s son.”
“We’ve covered this, Ava. Years ago. Two DNA tests to satisfy your curiosity. Whatever fiction you’ve created in your head can’t overcome facts.”
“It’s not fiction, Mother. The palace medical clinic ran the test again. Landon is Stephen’s.”
She flushes, but I don’t think it’s with embarrassment. “You went behind my back to order another test?”
“You lied to my face!”
“I did what was needed, what you’d never have done. You were pregnant, and the most logical solution was a marriage that would benefit you and your son.”
“I have the Tucker Trust. It’s not like we were on the verge of homelessness or whatever else you invented to—”
“You were unmarried and pregnant. Not only that, but you were wallowing. A shell of yourself. And if I’d allowed you to stay in that state, you’d never have recovered. I fixed it. Turned things around for you.”
“You ruined—”
“Ruined? Please. If I hadn’t stepped in, what would you have done? Waited for Stephen? And if he’d never been injured, would he have ever returned? Have you asked him that?” She glares at me, and my chest aches with how right her interpretation is.
Stephen wouldn’t have come back, at least not now, maybe not ever, if he hadn’t been injured.
“You would have ruined your life for someone who clearly didn’t care about you. Left the island without a word. Made it impossible to be tracked or traced. Is that a man who wants to be a father? A partner to you? Don’t be a fool.”
“If he’d known, he’d have come back. If I’d known, I would have done anything to get him back.”
“And lost so much of yourself in the process. I did you a favor.”
“If I’d been miserable, it would have been a misery of my own making. At least Landon and I would have known the truth. We wouldn’t have been living a lie.”
“If you’d known Stephen was the father, you’d have waited for him to come back, squandered your dreams, your chance for a good, profitable, high-class life. By marrying Raul, you got everything you could have wanted. A blank check to fund Reckless, a father figure for Landon, a partner for you.”
“You cannot play god with your children’s lives. Have you learned nothing from Gage and Nathaniel? Have you learned nothing from losing my brothers and sisters? You’re exiled from the rest of the family.”
“They’ll come back. They’ll need something from me, and they’ll be back. That’s how I got you, Ava. They were too busy living their lives, and you were all alone. You needed someone, and they weren’t there. So I helped you. I made things better. I did what a mother is supposed to do.”
I close my eyes and take a deep breath. It’s discombobulating that half of what she says is the truth and the other half a distortion of something like the truth. “I never asked for this kind of help.”
“Of course not. But I knew best. I knew what you needed, even if you didn’t. There’s still time to set this right. You don’t have to give up everything in return for nothing. Raul will wake up, and we can make him forgive you. We can.”
“No! God, Mother. No. I don’t want the life you created for me.
I don’t want that reality. I accepted it because I didn’t…
I’d forgotten I had a choice. But I remember now that I get to choose.
I get to make my own destiny, and I never would have agreed to be with Raul if I’d known the truth.
You kept that choice from me, and I can’t forgive you. I’ll never forgive you.”
And I’m not sure how I’ll forgive myself either.
My priorities were in the wrong place, or at least I told everyone they were in a place that maybe they weren’t.
Not really. Not truly. I valued the wrong things—or thought I needed to value the wrong things.
That the only way to earn the respect of my family and my mother’s precious society was through a marriage that smothered pieces of me I wasn’t sure would ever thrive again.
“Even if Raul wakes up, our marriage is over. I’m not staying in this cage you created and allowed him to tend. With all the facts, I would have chosen a different brand of misery.”
And that’s the truth. No matter how much I thought I wanted a company and a wealthy partner to create all these elaborate business plans with, the minute I found out I was pregnant and assumed Stephen was the father, I wanted to give all of that up.
I would have abandoned all those plans without regret.
That old adage that sometimes you don’t realize what you have until it’s gone was one hundred percent true for me. As soon as Stephen was out of reach, what I’d lost was clear, and I realized that I hadn’t just betrayed him, but I’d denied my own heart.
And for what?
“You think you’re going to live happily ever after with Stephen Foster?” My mother lets out a caustic laugh. “You’re not going to embarrass me or Raul more than you already have. Do you know the things Stephen used to do for me?”
“It doesn’t matter to me.”
“It’ll matter in a court of law.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“If Raul wakes up, you will go back to him.”
“Why do you care? Why does it matter?” I cry. “Just let me be happy.”
“Raul is an asset to this family, and I won’t have him embarrassed.”
“You don’t want him to know he’s not Landon’s father.
Well, guess what, Mom. That’s my ticket out of my marriage.
He’s not the type of man to be okay with raising another man’s child.
” But Stephen had been. He’d have taken me and Landon, even if Landon wasn’t biologically his, because he was mine, and that would have been enough.
She shakes her head and stares at me, but I can’t read what’s going on behind her eyes. “There will be no divorce between you and Raul. And if you pursue that avenue, I’ll be forced to go down a road I’d rather not travel too.”
“Stephen can ruin you just as easily as you can ruin him.”
“Maybe. But where does that leave you?”
Still trapped. Or without Stephen.
“Mom,” I plead, tears coming to my eyes.
“Enjoy the time you’ve got with Stephen. This little interlude from your real life. You’ve made it clear you don’t want me to help you, so I’ll just help myself.”
Then she leaves me in the hallway and goes back up the stairs.
Turns out all my boom has fizzled out.