“Not small, certainly.” Lydia allowed him to open the back door for her and stepped out into the sunlight. “I’m profoundly grateful that Samara escaped without any damage done. She’s invaluable.”
“I know.” Though he doubted they meant it in the same way. Beckett suspected that Samara’s deep-seated belief that she would be sacrificed as a pawn was at least partially Lydia’s fault. He might only know his aunt in the business sense, but she had a take-no-prisoners attitude that seemed to apply to her own people as easily as to the enemy.
Lydia stopped and inhaled deeply. “I haven’t been in these gardens in a very long time.”
He surveyed the area, trying to see it the way she did. Morningstar owned more of the lot than just what the building sat on. In addition to the gardens he put in at Thistledown Villa, Beckett’s grandfather had created a second paradise here. It was all local plants, rather than the imported ones in the greenhouse, but it didn’t make it less beautiful. He’d taken solace on one of the two benches situated in the area the same way he’d utilized the gardens in his childhood home. There was something about knowing that love sowed this space that gave him a sense of being anchored. Of peace. “My grandfather must have loved my grandmother very much.”
“Hardly.” Lydia laughed softly. “My father was a horrible snob. He put in these gardens to shield his precious eyes from having to look at the rabble of Houston. Mother wasn’t much better. She always preferred her fantasy gardens to the mess of real life.”
Beckett crossed his arms over his chest. “You have a high opinion of your parents.” He didn’t want to believe it, but what did it matter why the gardens had gone in? It matters. Damn it, it really matters.
She raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Can you blame me?”
“No.” He could blame her for everything after the split, but he understood why she’d felt she had to leave. Beckett had cut his teeth on the games and manipulations that went hand in hand with being a King, and even he couldn’t believe that his grandfather had passed over Lydia for Nathaniel. His father was a good businessman to be sure, but nothing short of genius would have enabled Lydia to be so successful so quickly as she had with a brand-new company. If she’d been the CEO of Morningstar, who knew what she would have accomplished?
Lydia moved to the nearest bench but didn’t sit. It was hard to read her expression with her sunglasses in place, but her mouth took on a brittle edge. “You’re so much like your father, it’s downright uncanny. Born with a silver spoon in your mouth and so incredibly sure of your place in the world that you’re willing to steamroll over anyone who gets in your way—though he never managed to fake compassion the same way you do.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Every King is born with a silver spoon in their mouth.” He could argue that he’d never steamrolled over someone less powerful than he was, but there was no point. Lydia obviously had the narrative she wanted when it came to him. Why should a little thing like the truth matter?
She tilted her head back and seemed to look at the cloud passing over the sun. “He left Houston once upon a time. Did he ever tell you that? He loved the money but not the responsibility that came with it, and when he turned eighteen, he told our father he wanted nothing to do with being a King and jetted off to Europe.”
As Beckett was growing up, his father hadn’t talked much about his time before he was CEO of Kingdom Corp. Beckett tried to picture the man who had constantly touted family first leaving with no intention of coming back. “Don’t you have a daughter in Europe right now? The model? Jetting off after graduation is something of a rite of passage.” Beckett had never done it—he’d gone straight into college after high school. There was no need to backpack through Europe to find himself, because he knew exactly what path his life would take, whether he wanted it or not. And after college, he’d traveled more than half the time to further Morningstar’s interests.
And to salvage what little relationship I had left with my father. Hard to fight when we weren’t even in the same country.
“Eliza knows what she’s about. When the family requires her presence, she’ll return.” Lydia trailed a finger along the back of the bench. “Nathaniel intended to stay until his money ran out—and we both know that wasn’t going to happen.”
Beckett made a noncommittal noise because he wanted to see what her angle was for this moment of sharing. She seemed to take that as an invitation to continue. “Do you know who our father sent to retrieve Nathaniel when it became clear he wouldn’t come back on his own?”
“You.” It was an educated guess. For all intents and purposes, Lydia should have been the one his grandfather chose as heir. She was the oldest, and she was more than capable of handling the job. If he’d trusted her with the job of retrieving Nathaniel, he should have trusted her with the rest of it.
“Me,” she confirmed. “I pulled my brother out of a high-class whorehouse, sobered him up, and brought him home. And do you know what my father did to reward me?” Tap, tap, tap went her finger against the metal bench. “The next week, he named Nathaniel as the next CEO.”
“I’m sorry.” He’d known she was passed over but not the story behind the events leading up to it. As much as he sympathized with the girl she used to be, that changed nothing about the current situation. They stood on opposite sides of
