Chapter 18 The Conspiracy
Colt
I drive to my parent's estate when I know my father is at the office.
The house looks the same. White columns.
Manicured lawn. The kind of Southern grandeur that photographs beautifully and suffocates anyone who lives inside it long enough.
I grew up here. These walls know the sound of my footsteps.
The hallway knows the boy who tiptoed past his father's study at midnight, afraid to wake the man whose approval was the only currency that mattered.
That boy is dead. I killed him in a kitchen, holding his wife's coffee mug, reading an email that said personally compelling.
My mother is in the garden. Roses. Pruning shears. Linen. Vivienne Bennet on her knees in the soil she tends with more devotion than she's ever shown her son.
She looks up. Sees me. Her face assembles into the greeting mask between heartbeats.
"Colt. I wasn't expecting you."
"We need to talk."
She stands. Removes her gloves. One finger at a time. Vivienne has never rushed anything in her life, including this conversation.
"Tea?"
"No."
We sit on the wrought-iron bench by the fountain. The fountain is original to the house. 1847. The Bennets reference it at dinner parties to remind everyone how long they've been here.
"You knew about Cheyenne."
She doesn't pretend. The one thing I respect about my mother. She is many things. She isn't stupid.
"I knew your father had concerns about Summer."
"He hired a woman to seduce me. Paid her three hundred and forty thousand dollars to destroy my marriage. Facilitated my sexual assault." I watch her face. "Those aren't concerns."
The word assault. A micro-flinch around her eyes. She didn't know about the drugs. I believe that. But everything else.
"I didn't know about the medication." Her voice is tight. The mask working hard. "I would never have..."
"But you knew about Cheyenne."
Silence. The fountain. A mockingbird in the magnolia.
"I knew your father wanted someone more compatible in your life. Someone who understood the firm. The family. The expectations."
"Compatible. You mean controllable."
"I mean appropriate." The mask settles. Steel under silk. "Summer is a lovely girl. Intelligent. Spirited. But she was never going to be what this family..."
"Don't." One word. It stops her. "Don't sit here in your garden and tell me my wife wasn't good enough for a family that hired a stranger to seduce me.
Don't tell me the woman who writes bestselling novels and makes your son happier than he's ever been in his life wasn't appropriate for a family that watched her sit alone at every dinner for years and did nothing. "
Vivienne's hands are trembling. A tremor so slight I almost miss it. That is who she is to me now. Vivienne.
"You watched it happen. For over a year.
You watched Sonny put Cheyenne in my path and you watched me drift and you watched my wife stand alone at every event and sit at the end of every table and you never said a word.
You could have stopped it with one conversation. One phone call. One honest sentence."
"Colt..."
"Instead you served cream-colored compliments and told her she was 'brave' for wearing color to a party. You made her feel like a stain on your furniture. And the whole time, you knew what was being done to her. To us.
Vivienne's chin lifts. The aristocratic reflex.
"She's common, Colt." The mask slips. The real Vivienne underneath. "She's a waitress's daughter from a diner. She will never..."
"She's the best person I've ever known." I stand. Button my jacket. The Bennet in me, still buttoning jackets when the conversation is over. "And you treated her like she was beneath you. Every day. For five years."
"Where are you going?"
"Away from here."
"Colt. Please. We can discuss this. We can..."
"There's nothing to discuss."
I walk out through the garden gate. I don't look back at the house. Not at the magnolia. Not at the fountain. Not at the roses Vivienne tends with more care than she's ever given her son.
In the car, I call my lawyer.
"We're moving. Everything we discussed. The SEC filing and the criminal referral against Sonny and Cheyenne."
"And Bennet Ventures?"
"Priority one. The separation documents are ready. I want it legally independent before the investigation goes public. Clean break. My work, my capital, my name."
"Understood."
I hang up. Drive to Dom's. The bridge over the Cooper River is ahead of me and across it, the interstate, and beyond that, Chicago.
Between here and Summer.
I grip the steering wheel and I think about what Dom said.
Lead with accountability, not exoneration.
The drugging is a fact. The conspiracy is a fact.
But my relationship with Cheyenne, the late nights, the cancelled plans, the slow voluntary surrender of my attention to a woman who was using me.
That was my failure. Made with a working mind and free will.
When I walk into her apartment in Chicago, I have to present her with two things and not let the drugging overshadow how I treated her and replaced her for months. One does not excuse the other.
I was assaulted.
And I betrayed you.
The second doesn't get erased by the first.
My assault was what they did to me. The betrayal was what I did, what I chose. Each one is mine to carry. The order matters more than the words.
If I lead with what was done to me, I am asking her to mother me through it. She is my wife. The wife I failed before anyone laid a finger on me. I am not going to use the assault as a shield against the betrayal. This is the hardest thing I have ever had to do.
She deserves every piece of it. I'm done being the man who gives her less than she deserves.