Chapter 37 #3
Marietta frowned. “I imagine that’s why she sounded so melancholy when I talked to her this morning. She always tries to hide when she’s sad, but a gram-gram rarely misses much.”
He clenched his jaw, not liking it at all that Lydia was sad.
“I imagine you feel incredibly betrayed,” he said, focusing on James again because thinking of Lydia struggling to blink back her tears was a memory that still bothered him.
“I can only apologize and hope that you won’t let this come between you and your niece. You guys mean everything to her.”
“Lydia means just as much to us,” was all that James said.
Ty tugged at his tie again, ready to be free of the damn thing. “Have you said anything to Will and Mac?”
James shook his head. “I’ll talk to Cindy, but it sounds like my son and his wife have plenty of problems to deal with currently. We’ll broach the subject at some other point.”
“And Lydia? Do you plan to talk to her?” Because he needed to know that all of this would be okay for her.
“We’ll figure things out as a family. Our love for Lydia certainly hasn’t changed.”
“It never could,” Marietta told him.
Ty nodded. “If she hadn’t helped me the way that she did, I wouldn’t have been able to help Will the way that I did.”
James nodded. “I understand that, Ty.”
He nodded again. “It’s still early days, but I heard from my friend at the DEA yesterday. It sounds like Russo and Giordano are leaning toward taking plea deals since they’re looking at so much time.”
James nodded again. “I’ve heard that, too.”
“If the prosecutors can lock them into an agreement, a lot of the publicity surrounding their arrests will die down quickly, certainly before an announcement for a presidential run, if that were to be on someone’s agenda.”
James raised his brow as he held Ty’s stare.
“Richard’s donation to Monroe House and Will being a contact in his cell phone are bound to cause me a few headaches, but I’m hoping that being able to say that the situation has already been looked into and cleared by the FBI and the DOJ will counteract a decent amount of any bad press. ”
Ty nodded again. “Let’s hope so.”
James surprised him when he held out his hand. “Thank you, Ty, for protecting my son. For protecting my family.”
He returned his handshake. “It was no problem. Thank you for welcoming me into your home. I’m sorry for the deception. I really wish that things could’ve been different.” Something that he meant on so many levels.
James nodded. “You’re good at your job—as an agent and as a personal trainer. That’s something that I can’t fault you for.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“We’ll get out of your hair,” James said as he headed down the hall.
Ty nodded, walking Marietta back to the door, hating that this was likely the last time that he would talk to any of the Monroes.
Marietta patted his hand again. “You know, you owe me a training session, Tyler. This Sunday at nine a.m. would work out well.”
He winced. “Unfortunately, I’m not really doing that anymore. The guy’s information that I sent you—Trent. He’s excellent.”
Marietta shook her head. “I don’t want to work with Trent. I’ve already made some progress, and it wasn’t Trent who helped me do that. I’ll send you my address in a text. I’ll expect to see you on Sunday. At nine a.m., Tyler.”
He nodded, officially stuck. Because it was a stupid man who said no to Marietta Monroe. “Yes, ma’am.”
“I’ll see you soon, dear.”
He nodded as he opened the door for them, sending them on their way.
“Fuck,” he whispered as he closed it behind them, pressing his forehead to the wood. “This isn’t good,” he said, pulling his phone from his pocket, wanting to give Lydia a heads-up.
He swallowed as he hesitated with his call, even as he craved to hear her voice, but he read her last message again—Lydia making it perfectly clear that she wanted nothing more to do with him.
“Fuck,” he repeated as he took a deep breath, trying to analyze the situation and his own motivations. Was warning Lydia a genuinely altruistic act, or was he grasping for an excuse to reach out to her?
Because James hadn’t been particularly happy, but he also hadn’t been mad.
Marietta had seemed pretty okay with everything, too.
They loved Lydia, and ultimately, she’d helped him protect her family.
James and Marietta understood that. Marietta still wanted him to train her, so things certainly weren’t too bad.
And James had mentioned that he had no plans to bring up the situation while things were a mess between Will and Mac.
He wanted nothing more than to talk to Lydia, but he also couldn’t stand the idea of causing her any more pain.
Because the reality was that nothing about their situation had changed.
He was still an FBI agent in Washington, DC, and she still had her goals and dreams in Oliver Heights.
They still lived entirely different lives.
Sighing, he read her message one more time, then put his phone away, hoping that Lydia and her family would be okay.