19. Holt
HOLT
Holt stared at him, genuinely dumbfounded for a long moment. Then his attention was caught by the image on the cellphone screen as Rad clicked play.
The video was of a large, stately house with a double front door. The door opened to reveal a face Holt had spent far too many years of his life looking at.
“Can I help you?” Lillian’s voice was cool as she assessed the young man on her doorstep. Her eyes flicked briefly past Rad to the person behind the camera. “If you two are selling anything, I’m sorry, we’re not buying. If you’re here to repossess anything, go find my no-good fraudulent husband.”
Holt’s brows shot up.
The rumors about Lillian’s plastic surgeon husband must be true then. He was apparently being sued by countless patients for botched surgeries and had reportedly lost nearly everything.
“No, we’re not here for that,” Ace’s voice came from behind the camera. Then his face came briefly into view as Rad turned the cellphone slightly. “Is this her?”
“Yes,” Rad confirmed with a small sigh. “This is my mother.”
“Mother,” Lillian’s voice trailed off as she actually looked at Rad’s face for the first time. Her eyes widened. “Conrad?” She breathed. “Oh, my word. You’re a grown man.”
“I’m almost thirty-six, Lillian,” Rad reminded her evenly. “And it’s Rad.”
“Ugh,” Lillian shuddered delicately. “That awful nickname your grandmother gave you. I hated it. Just because she saddled herself with the most dreadful name ever, she didn’t have the right to do the same thing to your wonderful name.”
“His full name is terrible,” Ace observed flatly from behind the camera. “Rad suits him much better.”
“Thanks, buddy,” Rad said, with a small laugh.
“And who are you?” Lillian’s tone sharpened as she squinted past Rad toward Ace. “You look familiar.”
“Ace McKenna,” Ace introduced himself.
“The McKennas from Sandpiper Shores?” Lillian spluttered. “McKenna Investments and Aviation?”
“The very same,” Ace confirmed. “Can we come in? We have some questions for you, and you have a lot of nosy neighbors.”
“Of course,” Lillian stepped back, opening the door wider. “Excuse the lack of furniture and decor. I’m refurbishing.”
She ushered them into the living room. “Can I get you some water?”
“No, thank you,” Ace and Rad replied in unison as they took a seat on the sofa.
Rad kept the camera trained on Lillian as she perched herself on an armchair opposite them.
“So, what questions do you have?” Lillian asked, crossing her legs elegantly. “If you want to know why I left, Conrad, well, I wasn’t the maternal kind. I really wasn’t meant to be a mother.”
Holt felt a small, sharp surge of something very like disgust rise in his throat. No apology. No acknowledgment that she’d walked out on a young child. Just a flat, offhand dismissal delivered as casually as she might have discussed the weather.
“I’m not here about your nonexistent maternal instincts,” Rad cut in coolly. “I’m here to ask you about my father’s first marriage.”
Lillian looked at him, stunned for several seconds.
“Why on earth would you want to know about that insignificant chapter of his life?” Lillian scoffed. “He was married to that little mouse for what, a few months? The woman was nothing more than some administrator, if I recall correctly.” She waved the whole thing away with a manicured hand.
Holt’s jaw tightened hard enough to ache.
He wanted to reach through the screen and pull Lillian out by the front of her blouse. The dismissive cruelty of the way she’d spoken about the woman he had loved more than anyone in his entire life made his blood thicken in a way that reminded him of the night June had been in danger in Miami.
“Actually,” Ace’s voice came from behind the camera, level but with an unmistakable edge underneath it.
“June Carter is an attorney. Not just any attorney. She’s run her father’s law firm since she graduated from Harvard Law School, top of her class.
Her firm is one of the most respected in Miami.
She has represented three senators, two governors, and more corporate clients than I can list without checking my phone.
” There was a slight pause. “So I’d appreciate it if you didn’t diminish her like that.
She wasn’t some housewife trying to hitch her wagon to the richest man she could find.
Your ex-husband was extraordinarily lucky to have been married to her. ”
Lillian gaped at the camera as the impact of Ace’s words took effect.
Satisfaction bloomed in Holt’s chest. He made a mental note to buy Ace something very expensive.
“Whatever,” Lillian replied, rolling her eyes and turning back to Rad, clearly choosing to ignore what she’d just been told.
“They were never meant to be married anyway. I knew the moment I met your father that the two of us were meant to be together. It’s a pity he’d married her in some little courtroom before I’d had the chance to get properly acquainted with him. ”
Ace sucked in an audible breath.
“They were married for four years before they got divorced, Lillian,” Ace pointed out. “And they’d been dating for years before that. It wasn’t some insignificant blip.”
Lillian glared at the camera for a moment, then ignored what Ace had said entirely and turned back to her son.
“Anyway. I was delighted to get my father to help Holt with his FBI application. Holt could’ve gotten in without my father’s help, of course, he was brilliant, but I needed some leverage over him if I was going to make my move and become Mrs. Holt Dillinger.
” A smug, satisfied smile lifted her lips.
“You know the Dillinger name is quite prestigious in Florida. And Florida was fast becoming the place to be.”
“You were plotting to break June and Holt up?” Ace asked, incredulous.
“Oh, it would’ve ended anyway,” Lillian waved him off. “There was no way that little mousy thing could’ve held on to a man like Holt. And I didn’t really have to do much, in the end.”
“What do you mean by that?” Ace pressed.
“Well, as it turns out, as soon as your father landed a position at Quantico, it stirred up trouble in their marriage,” Lillian explained, her voice warming with pleasure at the memory.
“What a hand of fate I was dealt. I’d been trying to figure out how to come between them before Holt left for Quantico.
But their marriage imploded before I even had to lift a finger.
” Her grin spread wider. “Then I just gave it a little more of a tear.”
“How?” Ace and Rad asked in unison.
“Well, the hotel Holt moved into after he walked out on, uh...” Lillian wiggled her fingers.
“June!” Ace and Rad supplied in unison, both of their voices hardening.
“Yes, her,” Lillian continued airily. “The hotel is owned by my father’s best friend.
So I booked into the room right next to Holt’s.
Of course I made sure it had a connecting door.
Then I simply ensured that any calls that came to his room were redirected to mine.
And if anyone came to see him in person, they were directed to my room instead. ”
“You did what?” Ace’s voice had dropped to something genuinely dangerous.
Holt couldn’t see Ace on the screen, but he knew by the tone of the man’s voice that Ace was feeling the same sick, coiling anger that was zipping through Holt’s chest as he watched.
Memories starting to stitch together the cold calculated timeline of the woman on screen destroying his life with June.
Like the phone call that had come into his hotel room at six in the morning.
The way Lillian had been glued to his side from that night in the hotel bar onward.
The way everything had simply happened to slot into place for her, as if Holt’s life had been quietly rearranged without his knowledge or consent.
All of it had been carefully, deliberately orchestrated by the woman smiling smugly from the armchair on his son’s cellphone screen.
Rad’s voice pulled Holt’s attention back.
“You deliberately came between them?” Rad asked.
“It wasn’t hard,” Lillian replied, as though this somehow justified her behavior.
“That silly woman was so gullible. I do understand how emotional she must have been at the time, though.” She gave a small, delicate shudder.
“Although it did rather play to my advantage, her heightened emotional state, what with her having been pregnant and all.”
Holt’s breath left him as if he’d been struck hard in the stomach.
A sharp, low hiss came from off screen, which Holt knew had to be Ace.
“You knew June was pregnant?” Ace accused.
“Oh, yes,” Lillian replied, fobbing it off with another wave of her hand. “I knew everything about her movements back then. I was looking for something I could use against her, obviously.”
“So even when you saw my father at the hotel bar on the night he’d just walked out on June, you already knew June was pregnant?” Rad’s voice had gone very quiet.
“Of course I did,” Lillian replied, as though this were obvious. “You don’t go to war without knowing everything there is to know about your enemy.”
“Did you tell my father?” Rad pressed.
“Do you think I’m stupid?” Lillian spluttered, genuinely insulted.
“Of course I didn’t tell him. The silly woman called him, wrote him letter after letter, and even showed up at his doorstep with a newborn baby to beg him to come back to her.
How pathetic was that?” She shook her head in disgust. “Luckily the house Holt was staying in at Quantico was one of my father’s properties, and the staff were all on his payroll.
I simply instructed them that if any woman showed up at the door looking for Holt, she was to be told that he was out with me. ”
“You knew June had come to see him,” Ace’s voice had gone tight. “You knew she’d flown to Virginia with a one-month-old baby and stood on that doorstep hoping to find my father to introduce him to his daughter.”