Chapter Eight
Jackson
The sound of my father's nose breaking is the most satisfying thing I've ever heard.
I've never considered myself a violent man. Just a man capable of violence. I think every man has a line drawn somewhere inside him, something he can spend his whole life believing he'll never cross until the right person puts a foot over it.
Mine, it turns out, was drawn through her.
Wesley's shirt is bunched in my fist while he throws his arms up, trying to block the blows I keep doling out. I barely feel my own knuckles splitting, barely register anything beyond his face and Rose's voice playing over and over in my head.
I was brutally raped by a man I looked up to.
I was a virgin when it happened.
It took five years before I could be with anyone after that.
"A fucking rapist!" I slam his back into the wall hard enough to rattle every framed piece of bullshit hanging on it. "How many?"
"Son, please—"
"How fucking many, Wesley?" I haul him up until we're eye to eye, until he can see exactly how little of his boy is left in me. "You don't get to call me son."
When I realized the man Rose was describing was my father, it took everything in me not to fall at her feet and beg forgiveness for a sin I didn't commit but somehow felt filthy carrying anyway.
The other half of me wanted to pick up the phone and find somebody who could make Wesley Finnegan disappear so completely there'd finally be a headstone for Rose to spit on.
But she needed me present that night.
So I stayed present.
She needed all of me, and I gave it to her. I held her while she talked, held her while she slept, and stared at the ceiling afterward doing the impossible fucking math of how a man looks his father in the face after learning something like that.
Once we left New York, the mask got harder to hold.
I felt Rose watching me on the flight, felt her clock every inch of distance opening up in me, and I hated letting her think for even a second that it had anything to do with us.
But the closer we got to Los Angeles, the more the rage burned everything else away, until the car door shut behind her at the Sullivan building and there was nothing left in my head except getting here.
Him. The wall. My fist.
"It was the drinking." He's sobbing now, blood running from his nose and over his mouth while he tries to talk through it. "I didn't know what I was doing half the time. If I could take it all back, I would. I swear, Marcus. That's not who I am anymore."
I stare at him.
Of all the things he could've said.
"The drinking?"
He opens his mouth.
"You don't get to hand this shit to a bottle." I shove him back against the wall. "You don't get to stand here and tell me you weren't yourself while you were destroying somebody else's fucking life."
"Marcus, I swear—"
"Fucking liar. All you do is lie."
My wrath climbs another degree because even now, even bleeding and cornered, he's performing. Looking for the version of the story where he's sick instead of cruel, where alcohol did it and remorse somehow wipes the ledger clean.
"Do you have any idea what your sins have cost me?
" My fist tightens in his shirt. "I'm being blackmailed to keep your ass out of prison.
I married that psychopath of a woman to keep your goddamn hands clean.
Three fucking years of my life shackled to her.
Three years cleaning up somebody else's disasters because I thought I owed you for raising me. "
I look at him, really look at him, and something underneath the anger finally dies.
"For what?"
I slam him into the wall one last time and let go.
Wesley crumples down it, landing in a heap with his hands over his face.
"I'm sorry." His shoulders shake. "I'll make it right."
"You're goddamn right you will."
I shake out my hand, pain finally starting to radiate through my knuckles and up my forearm. I'll feel it for a week.
"You're going to turn yourself in."
His head snaps up.
"Marcus—"
"You have twenty-four hours to get your shit in order.
Call an attorney. Make whatever arrangements you need to make.
I don't give a fuck." I point at him with the hand that isn't already swelling.
"But twenty-four hours from now, I'm coming back here, and if you haven't turned yourself in, I'm escorting you to the police station myself. "
He stares at me like he doesn't recognize me.
That's fine. I'm starting to realize I never recognized him either.
His eyes are pleading, and all I see is red. I want to crack his chest open and present his beating heart to Rose on a silver fucking platter. I have never hated anything the way I hate this man right now.
"Son, there has to be another way. I can't go to prison. I can't."
"Did you think this was a motherfucking negotiation, old man?
" I grab my jacket from where I threw it when I walked into his house.
"There's a man outside that door who will be your shadow for the next twenty-four hours.
Don't you fucking try to run. It's over.
If you aren't in this house when I come back tomorrow, I will hunt you down and kill you myself. "
I open the front door and look back at him, small and bleeding on the floor of a house my money has been paying for.
"And in case you're doing the math on whether I mean it, one of the women you raped grew up to be one hell of a fucking lawyer. She'll make sure I get away with it."
"Marcus, please!"
His sobs follow me through the door, and I feel absolutely nothing. Whatever part of me was supposed to hurt at the sound of my father crying died somewhere in New York, probably around the same time Rose told me she used to fantasize about dancing on his grave.
Sean is posted exactly where I told him to be.
He's one of the highest-ranking security officers we've got, and I hired him and his team personally for this, outside company channels and without a paper trail leading back to Sullivan.
He's built like a concrete wall with military posture, which is exactly what I wanted standing between Wesley and any sudden ideas about disappearing.
"He doesn't leave your team's sight. I'll be back tomorrow."
"Yes, sir."
He nods once, and I head for the car without another word because I've used up every one I had inside that house.
The anger holds until the door shuts behind me.
Then Rose crashes straight through it.
I know I have to tell her. Fuck, I know I do.
This isn't something I can bury and still expect us to have anything real.
It would sit between us forever, one more locked box in a relationship already built on too many of them.
Every time I told her I'm yours, there'd be something underneath it I was deliberately keeping from her, and Rose would feel it.
Maybe not know what it was, but feel it.
She reads me too fucking well, and she's already caught me pulling away once.
But how the hell do I say this?
Good news, baby, he isn't my biological father, so technically we're working with less shared DNA than you might think.
Jesus Christ.
Like that's supposed to help.
Like blood is the issue.
His name is on my birth certificate. He raised me. His money built my childhood. I spent years thinking I owed him something for choosing me, then spent three more years married to a woman I hated to keep him out of prison while Rose was carrying what he did to her all by herself.
And somehow I'm supposed to walk into her apartment tonight and explain that the monster whose grave she's been waiting to spit on is the man I've been protecting.
There's no version of that sentence that doesn't sound like betrayal.
Even though I didn't know.
Even though I couldn't have known.
Even though every rational part of me understands that his crimes are not mine, some uglier part keeps whispering that I still stood between him and consequences. I still bought him three years he never deserved.
I lean my head back against the seat and close my eyes.
There's no clean way through this.
I've run the conversation a hundred different ways already, and I'll probably run it a hundred more before I get to her.
In some versions she understands immediately.
In others she goes quiet, which is worse.
In the ones I can't stop seeing, she looks at me and sees him somewhere in my face even though we don't share a drop of blood.
That one makes me sick.
Because two days ago she finally stopped running from me.
Two days ago she told me she loved me.
And now I have to put Wesley Finnegan between us and hope to God he doesn't take one more thing from her. I know how this is going to go down. I keep hoping I'm wrong. But every version in my head ends in the same place.
This revelation is going to sign our death warrant.
***
By the time I reach the Sullivan building, I've wrapped my hand in gauze from the car's first-aid kit and put down two shots of whiskey, and neither has done a damn thing for me.
Dave's been unusually quiet the whole ride, which means he clocked the knuckles and the bar cart and decided I needed silence more than commentary.
Normally the man gives me shit about everything from my tie to my coffee order, one of the perks of seven years with the same driver.
Today he just drives, and I add it to the list of things I owe him.
I bypass everyone in the lobby without a greeting, which raises eyebrows before I even make it to the elevators. I'm the nice guy. The talkative one. The how was your weekend? CFO. Not today. Today I'm on a mission, and pleasantries didn't make the list.
I walk into Frank's office and find one of his intern protégés parked at the side table.
"Out. Now," I grit out.
The kid takes one look at me, gathers his laptop and gets the hell out without asking a single question, damn near pissing himself at being snarled at by the friendly CFO.
Good instincts. He'll go far.
"The fuck is your problem, Marc?"
"While I was in New York, I had my attorney draw up divorce papers and the documents relinquishing my position as Elyse's conservator. Everything will be delivered to her by end of business. I need them signed, and I need her out of my house."
"What are you on about?" Frank leans back, unbothered, reaching for the same gun he's held to my head for three years. "I'll have your father sent to prison like that."
He snaps his fingers.
I smirk.
I've been waiting three fucking years to hear him say it one more time.
"I'll be escorting him there myself."
I take my phone from my pocket, set it on his desk and press play.
His own voice fills the room.
What are you on about? I'll have your father sent to prison like that.
Frank's mouth opens. Closes. Opens again.
Nothing.
Speechless Frank is my new favorite Frank.
"Wesley turns himself in tomorrow. Which means the only thing left to explain is why you've known what he did for three years and sold your silence for a marriage.
" I pick the phone back up and slide it into my pocket.
"She signs and she's out of my house today, or this recording plays for the full board and the police department when they come asking why you concealed his many crimes. Understood?"
If he only knew the half of it.
"Her citizenship, Marc." And there it is. The crack in his voice. The real currency underneath three years of power plays. "She can't go back to Dubai. She can't."
"Here's the thing, Frank."
I lean both fists on his desk, and the gauze around my knuckles does plenty of talking before I say another word.
"Had you come to me like a man and told me the problem, I would've helped her.
You know I would've. That's the part that should keep you up at night.
You never needed the leverage." I shake my head.
"But you went straight to the power trip and the blackmail, and you spent three years of my life like it was your money to spend. "
I straighten.
"So I mean every word when I say her citizenship is not my fucking problem anymore. That's yours. You made it yours the day you picked extortion over a phone call. Get her out of my house and get those papers signed. Today, Frank."
I walk out before he can find his voice.
Three years of holes punched in my walls.
Of ducking things thrown at my head and explaining bruises to Dave with stories neither of us believed.
Of coming home to my grandmother's china shattered across the kitchen floor because I didn't make it back for dinner.
I sat through all of it with my mouth shut because Frank owned my silence the same way he owned hers, and somewhere along the way I convinced myself that a man taking it wasn't the same as a man being abused.
That's bullshit too.
Whatever happens to Elyse now, she does with her own two hands.
I'm done being the thing she was allowed to break.