She took a breath that hurt. It just hurt. It was effort and weight and guilt and shame.
“I’m the oldest, then there’s my brother and our little sister. Marcus does his own thing these days. Went to America. Ellie catches up with him online sometimes, but I haven’t heard from him in more than a year.”
“Your sister upset you earlier. Why?”
She sighed, hurt all over again. “She saw the press release. Niko expected me to keep my pregnancy a secret so I only told Mum and that was just a few weeks before he was born. I didn’t tell her who the father was, either. I just wanted her to know that I was expecting.”
Her mother’s reaction had been mostly about her job and Scarlett’s ability to send money. There’s a lawyer who thinks he can arrange an early release for your father.
“Ellie was upset I didn’t tell her, too. That I didn’t trust her.”
“Do you?”
She hated to say it aloud. “No.”
“Where are they? London?”
“Near Leeds.”
“And your father?”
Here she had to take another bracing breath.
“Dad’s in prison. Drunk-driving accident. Thankfully only property damage, no one was hurt or killed, but he was a repeat offender and assaulted a police officer when he was arrested. He has another year.” Her stomach turned to knots every time she thought about what would happen when he was released, so she tried not to.
“Is this why you don’t want to marry? You think I can’t handle a bit of bad press? That’s why I have PR teams, Scarlett. His behavior isn’t yours. People who judge you by association aren’t the kind of people who matter.”
She couldn’t help her disparaging snort at that.
“It’s not your association with my father that I judge. It’s your loyalty to him.”
It still stung. “You’ll judge me even more harshly when I tell you why I was so loyal.” She chewed the corner of her thumbnail, a bad habit she had kicked in adolescence. “It all ties to why I refused to stay that day and why I let Niko dictate when I would tell you about Locke.”
He withdrew, physically, by leaning back into his chair.
That hurt, too. The way he had been reaching out with unconditional compassion had been nice. Now he was back to being absent of it.
“I presume he threatened to fire you, and you were afraid of being unable to support your family.”
“Not exactly. It was complicated. I really did feel a duty to go back to him. He was very sick and couldn’t run things without me. It was a job I’d devoted years to achieving. I didn’t want to throw it away. Also, Kiara and I were the only family he had left. I’m not saying that to make you pity him or feel guilty for not being there. He made his choices and lived the consequences, but he was the grandfather of our children. Kiara and I felt it was the least we could do to nurse him through his final days. I won’t apologize for that.”
“Your heart was in the right place?” he asked with disdain. “I’ll accept you had more sentiment than sense, and I still think he deserved to die alone.”
She rolled her lips inward, aware it was futile to try to change his mind. Her mouth felt unsteady as she continued. She was coming to the part where she judged herself.
Her mother had been hurt by her silence, by her refusal to come home for a visit, then by learning she’d hidden her pregnancy. Scarlett felt horrible about all of it, but she had also embraced using Niko’s wishes as a much-needed excuse to distance herself from her family.
Abusive relationships were very complex, she knew that, but her mother had had three years without her husband—enough time to attend the counseling Scarlett had arranged for her, to gain financial independence and form a healthy circle of friends. Yet she still talked about how soon her husband would be home.
Scarlett couldn’t bear watching that slow-motion collision, couldn’t withstand another fruitless argument. Mostly when she talked to her mother, she wanted to bawl her eyes out with frustration and helplessness, so she stood apart from it as much as she could.
Which soaked her in guilt. She felt in the wrong all the time, especially now that Locke was here and she didn’t have Niko and Kiara as a distraction. She kept wondering what sort of mother her son actually had. A good one? She doubted that. Her view of herself was dark and contemptuous. Not healthy, but she didn’t know how to improve it when she felt so guilty.
“Scarlett?” Javiero prompted.
“When I began working for Niko, I promised him I wouldn’t turn my back on him. That my loyalty wouldn’t falter.”
“A pledge of fealty? How quaintly feudal. Or is the word futile? Because he never rewarded vows. My mother can attest to that.”
“The reward came first. He did something for my family.”
“It’s starting to sound like a transaction, not a favor. He never did anything out of kindness.”
“That’s true.” She frowned at her ragged nails. Niko had always ensured he benefitted as much or more from anything he did. “What he did for me—us—was quite big. My, um, father sold him our family home. Stonewood. It’s an old farmhouse on a modest property, but it has a lovely view. It had been in my mother’s family for generations. She didn’t want to give it up, but it had fallen into disrepair and we couldn’t afford to fix it.” They’d barely been eating, mostly because her father drank all his income. “For Niko it was a place to park his money. He didn’t even see it. His agent handled the transaction then came after us when he realized how bad the condition really was.”
“Sounds like an incompetent agent.”
“My father can be very persuasive.” Manipulative. She found herself playing with the pendant Javiero had given her, fingering the key, which felt smooth and lovely on one side, like a
