Chapter 27
27
BENNETT
T he second that I walk into the penthouse apartment that I have owned for over ten years in downtown Chicago, I let out a sigh of relief.
The meeting with the commissioner took a lot longer that I wanted it to and all I want to do is fucking distress and have a good drink. I was supposed to go back to the office after lunch, but because commissioner Nolan can talk forever, I have Ella cancel everything else that I had on my schedule for the day, and came here.
I would’ve gone to the house Manor, but Ella had sent a message about two hours ago about how she wanted to talk about something, so I decided that it was best for both of us to just spend the night here and be away from prying ears if needed.
Not that there are a whole lot of ears at the house now of days, what with Grayson, Sam and Charlie all now living at the dorms at Saint Christopher for the new school year, and Elliot out in Vancouver doing god knows what. The only ears would be Drake, but now he gets to have a night with just Henry, which he has been begging me for for a while. I guess Henry lets him see the old spy movies that I always say no to.
Which is fine. I’m all for having some alone time with Ella. In the last two weeks, it feels like we haven’t been alone even when we spend the majority of our time together.
Throwing my phone and money clip on the entry table, I walk further into the apartment, looking for my wife.
“Ella?” I call out after not finding her in the living area.
“In here!” She yells, and it sounds like she is coming from the kitchen.
As I walk down the long hallway, I take off my jacket and my shoes, not wanting to feel like a damn monkey in my own house.
Walking in to the kitchen, I find Ella sitting at the island with what looks like a cup of tea in her hands.
Tea before dinner? That’s new. She must have taken a few cues from the British man.
“Hey.” I approach her and when she turns to look at me, I lean down to place a kiss on her lips, something that I have done since we’ve gotten back from Costa Rica. Except this time, she pulls away from me before our lips even touch. Odd as fuck.
“Hi.” Ella lets out, her eyes not looking up at mine.
“Everything okay?” The question rolls off my tongue so easily since I’ve been asking it everyday for two weeks now. Something is gong on with her and she has yet to open up to me. I’m grasping at straws as to what it could be and it’s driving me insane.
As she opens her moth to give me a response, I expect the same answer that she has given me for the last two weeks to come out, but she takes me by surprise.
“No. There’s something that we need to talk about.”
Fucking finally.
“What’s going on?” I place my hands on the counter, ready for whatever she is about to say.
She looks down at my hands, curling her lips inward, debating what to say.
“Think that we could go to the living room?” She places her mug one the counter and when she looks up at me, I see a hint if fear in her eyes.
Is she afraid of telling me what is going on or afraid of how I will react.
I wave her toward the living and follow behind.
Once in the massive living space, Ella plays with her hands for a solid minute before waving me to sit on the couch while she remains standing.
I follow silent orders and take a seat facing her.
She doesn’t start talking as when I sit down though. She continues to play with her hands for another minute. To build up the courage, I guess.
After some more time passes, she finally opens her mouth and speaks.
“I’m going to tell you something, but you have to promise me that you aren’t going to react until I finish.”
My jaw ticks a bit. “I will try.”
She nods and takes a deep breath. “When I told you about my past, I didn’t tell you everything.”
I knew that, but that’s not what I say. “Okay. What didn’t you tell me?”
Another deep breath leaves her body and her shoulder slump a bit. “About Charlie and how she came to live with me.”
In Dante’s report, there was minimal information on Charlie. All that there was on her was a name, birthday and where she went to school.
Nothing more and I didn’t bother to look for more. I wasn’t interested in learning about Ella, I didn’t need to know why she was her sister sole care giver.
“I’m listening.” I say, nodding at her to continue.
She takes another minute before she opens the flood gates.
“I learned about Charlie when I was sixteen. For seven years of life, I didn’t know I had a little sister. If I had did, I would have tried my hardest to stay with my mom. But I didn’t find out about her until one of the group home leaders asked me if I wanted to go to the store and by a Christmas present for my sister and send it to her. Apparently there was a section in my file that talked about how my mother had another child and they thought that I had known about her, but nobody had mentioned it to me.”
A tear rolls down her face as her pain is ever so present in her voice. I want to go to her and wrap my arms around her, but if I do that, I don’t know if she will continue. So I stay seated.
“I asked the group leader is he could tell me things about her and he did. He didn’t know much, but he knew enough. Her name. Her age and that she lived in a small town in South Carolina but that was it. He didn’t know if she was still under my mom’s custody or if she was living with someone else. I spent so many days and nights thinking about her. If she looked like me. If she knew who I was or if she even knew she had a sister out there somewhere. I had so many questions but nobody to answer them. So I started looking into her.”
Curiosity gets the best of me. “Looked into her how?”
“You can find anything on Google if you have enough information. With the address and the last name, I was able to find who live at the address and look them up on social media.”
You can find anything on Google.
If only that were really true. You are only able to find what people what you to find. Otherwise the search for my brother would have ended years ago.
“And did you find them on social media?” It’s a stupid question because of course she did. If she hadn’t. There is a possible chance that Charlie wouldn’t be living with us.
She gives me a soft nod. “I did.”
“Did anything come of it?”
“Not like I had hoped.”
“What did you hope for?”
Ella lets the tears run down her face, but she doesn’t make a move to wipe them away. Instead, she takes another deep breath, ad comes to sit on the couch next to me.
When she speaks next, she turns to face the floor to wall windows behinds us and stares out to the Chicago skyline.
“For whoever was taking care of my sister to be a good person. I had hoped the that once they found out about me, because I know for a fact my mom didn’t tell them, that they would take me in or at the very least, let me get to know my sister, even if it was from afar.”
“But that didn’t happen.”
My heart breaks foe awe when she turns and I see all the pain swimming in them.
“No. My social worker tried because she was nice and always went above and beyond for her kids, but Charlie’s family didn’t want anything to do with me. They had enough on their plate according to them, and couldn’t take on another kid, let alone a teenager. So I dropped it and for the next two years, I stalked her dad’s social media and his girlfriend’s in hopes that I would catch a glimpse of her. The second I turned eighteen though and aged out of the group home, I took the first opportunity that came my way and went to South Carolina.”
When I first saw her resume, I noticed that she had a community college rom South Carolina on there. I also noticed that while she was at said school for almost two year, she never finished and came back to Chicago.
“What happened once you got down there?”
“On my first day down there, I looked up the address that I had memorized when I was sixteen and went to it.”
Another tear falls down her cheek and this time I reach over and wipe it away.
She give me a small before she continues down the path of her memories.
“The house looked well manicured and in what looked like a nice neighbor. There were kids playing outside, people walking their dogs and for a few minutes, I was really happy that my sister had the life that every kid deserved.”
“But she didn’t, did she?”
Ella shakes her head. More teas rolling down her face.
“The exterior was picture perfect but the inside wasn’t. The door opened and I saw all the lies. As it turns out, Charlie and I had similar upbringings. The only difference was that I spent the majority of my time with bad people in foster homes, and she spent it with bad people in her childhood home. I found out that day that her father was a drunk with anger issues would get angry and took out his anger out on her or forgot that he had a kid all together. Because of that, Charlie was living with our maternal grandmother, who I had no idea had moved to South Carolina.
She pauses. Her eyes dance a long the skyline behind use as the sun sets. The colors of the sunset fill the room and surround both me and Ella. The glow of the sunset make her look etherial. Her eyes almost dance with all the colors swimming in them. She looks absolute beautiful, even with all the pain running through her.
“You would think the living with your grandmother would bee a saving grace, but that woman was file. Had been since I was a little girl from what I remembered. She would always get mad at something that my mom did and take it out on me. Verbally, physically. And she did the same thing to Charlie. Except, my sister had it worse and had to go through for a lot longer.
“The first time I saw Charlie she was so small. To a normal person, she would look like a normal kid, but to someone that had been surrounded by malnourished kids all their lives, I saw the signs. I wanted to help her so bad, but she didn’t know who I was and my grandmother had shut me out, and didn’t want anything to do with me. For almost a whole year I couldn’t do anything.”
“What did you do?”
It takes her a few seconds to answer.
“It took time but I found out that my grandmother was getting state benefits for Charlie. She applied to every single program at her disposal and took advantage of it. Lied on the paperwork, everything. She was living the high life, using the money for her own necessities, while her granddaughter was starving and didn’t have any clothes that fit. So I reported her to the state.”
“Where the fuck were her parents?” The question slips out from all the anger rolling through me.
In the time that Ella and I have been married, I’ve gotten to know Charlie with each passing day. The girl has the biggest heart and has become as much of a niece to me as Sam. Hearing that she went though so much shit growing up, pisses me off so damn much, I’m staring to see red and the only way to make it go away is to go to South Carolina and put someone in the ground.
“Her dad lived a few blocks over, but he didn’t want anything to do with raising her so he ponded her off to our mom and well my mom cared more about having a good time than raising a child, so my sister landed with our grandmother.”
“What happened after you reported her?” I ask, trying to get a control of my voice.
Ella lets out a sigh and her shoulders deflate. “They sent Charlie to live with her dad, which was just as bad as dear ole grandma.”
Tears start rolling down her face a lot more frequently as if she was transported back.
“For two years I kept eyes on Charlie, going as far at getting a job at her school to make sure that she was okay. But with every passing day, I could see that she wasn’t. I tried so hard to protect her and to save her but nothing was working. My sister deserved a lot more than the life she was living but neither her dad or grandma cared. They pushed me away, called me every name in the book, even threatened to kill me if I didn’t go ago away and leave them alone. So after spending so many days, watching the little girl that I didn’t really know but owned my heart become a ghost of who she was, and getting told no, I finally snapped.”
I don’t need to be touching Ella to know that her body just went cold.
“What did you do, Ella?”
A sob escapes her lips and when I reach over to pull her into my arms, she pushes me away.
My hands drop and I wait for her to speak.
“I went over one night, and asked her dad if we could talk. Surprisingly he let me in. Charlie was in her room, so we were able to talk freely in the living room. I remember there being beer cans and liquor bottles everything, and there was this smell that had me gaging. I asked him what it would take. What did I need to do for him to let Charlie come live with me. As soon as the question left my mouth, he got angry and charged at me. He started hitting me and yelling, saying how I can’t take his kid away from him. Turned out, he was also getting money from the state and if he lost custody of Charlie, he would lose that too.”
That’s why in the search for information on Ella, both mine and Dante’s, there wasn’t any legal documents tying her to her sister.
“I remember laying on the grimy carpet as he kicked me in the ribs, and how I kept telling myself that I needed to come up with something to make him stop. So I screamed the biggest number I could think of. I told him I would pay him that if he would give me Charlie. He could still keep custody, take my money, but I get Charlie. He accepted. So I paid him everything in I had in bank account, which wasn’t much, grabbed Charlie and left.”
She promised him money.
What kind of lowlife accepts money for child?
My mind goes back to when I hired Ella. I got a lot of information on her, including her bank accounts, but out of all the thing that I checked, I didn’t check her back activity. Maybe if I did, I would have found out about this sooner and taken care of the problem.
“How much did you promise him?” I say, Looking my wife in the eye hoping that she would be truthful with me.
“You’ll get mad.” She whispers, her eyes red from all the crying
That’s my answer right there, but I need to hear her say the words.
“Baby, I won’t. Just tell me how much you promised him.”
With a trembling lower lip, she tells me. “One million.”
When she first throw out the number in out negotiations, it seemed odd that she would request so little money. She could ask for any amount and she asked for only a million. I just chalked it up to her possibly thinking that with one million she would set for life. But I guess I was wrong. She was actually requesting the amount to pay off her sister’s father.
“The money you requested for this marriage…”
Ella finishes my thought. “Was to pay Josiah.”
“When did you do it? When did you pay him off?”
“The morning you got voted in as CEO.”
I knew something was off with her that day. I should have pressed harder. I should stayed there until she told me what was wrong, but we didn’t have the relationship back then that we do now. Back then she was simply my assistant that I married to fulfill a clause. Now, she is more than that. Now she drives the nightmares away.
Anger rolls through me and not because she used the money I gave her to pay off Charlie’s dad but because she thought she couldn’t come to me with this sooner.
“And now that you’ve paid off what you owed him, he wants more money?”
That’s the only logical reason I could think of for Ella to open up to me about this now. The fucker probably found out who she is married to and decided to cash in.
“He was the one that was calling me the night of the hockey game and has been for the past to weeks. Today, I finally caved and answered. Get him more money or he comes and takes Charlie.”
I’m going to hunt down this fucker and kill him myself.
“How much?”
Ella cowers a bit before she answers. “Another million.”
I grind my teeth. This asshole, Josiah, will get the money, but I know people like him. Once they have their hands in something, they won’t stop until they get more. The fucker is going to take a the money and in a few weeks or months, blow in god knows what and is going to threaten Ella once again. It’s going to become a cycle for him. I have to stop it before it goes any further.
“Send me the bank information and I will take care of it.”
Ella bows her head, and see the tears running down her face hit her lap. I tuck a finger under her chin and bring her face up so that I can see into her beautiful tear filled eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
“I told you all of this because I wanted your help and now that you are giving it, it feels wrong. Like I’m using you. Using you money to benefit me.” A sob escapes her and this time when I bring her closer to me, she lets me.
As she sobs into my chest, I speak into her hair. “Did you forget?”
“What?”
“That you can ask for anything and I will give it to you. For the rest of this marriage, use me. Use my money. I don’t give a shit.”
She pushes me off her and stands from the couch. “You should give a shit. I could be filled with all the damn sob stories in the world just so that you would give me money.”
“You’re not.” I say from my place on the couch.
“How do you know that?”
“Because if you were, you would have not only asked for money when we were discussing this arrangement, and you would been asking for more money ever since. You asking for money now isn’t you using me. It’s you coming for help and giving it to you.”
“You shouldn’t. Josiah is just going to keep coming back and asking for money. That should be my burden to bare not yours.”
I stand up from the couch and go over to her. I leave no space between us as I take her face between my hands.
“For as long as you have my last name, any burden of yours in mine. I don’t give a shit what it is, I will take care of it.”
Her lower lips wobbles. “But you don’t need to.”
“But I want to. You and Charlie are family. You’re Lanes. And for as long as this marriage is intact, it will stay that way. Both of you will be taken care of. Nobody is going to separate you, I’ll make sure of it.”
“How?”
By burning the man alive and not leaving until his screams stopped.
“I don’t know yet, but I will handle it. I promise.”
She gives me a small smile, one that doesn’t have a whole lot of reach, before reaching up and placing a kiss on my lips.
“Thank you.”
“Always.