I’d often wondered that myself, but I’d always come back to the theory that if you weren’t looking for something, why would you see it? And with Noah out of the picture, it was easy to forget the little things unless you had them memorized. Unless they were what kept you alive and dreaming.
“I don’t know. But Ryan probably suspected something because he was there the day I came to see Harry.”
Noah’s back went ramrod straight, and that anger from earlier returned until it was all that was in his eyes.
“Ryan was there?”
“Well, not there. But he saw me when I went to visit Har—”
“I’ve got to go.”
Stunned by his abrupt change in mood, I frowned. “Okay. Will you—”
“I’ll be back.” He paused and then seemed to temper himself when he realized I’d moved away from him. “Is that okay? If I come back? I’d like to talk to Jake about, well, all of this. Try to explain my side of things…”
“I think that’d be good.”
“Okay. I need to go and talk to my family. Find out who knew what and when, and why I’m the last to fucking know.”
I could understand that, and I didn’t envy Ryan in that moment.
“I’m not sure how long I’ll be. But I’ll call when I’m on my way. You and I are taking the rest of the day—hell, maybe the rest of the week off, paid. It’s the least Harry and that place can do for us. We have a lot to catch up on.”
35
Noah
“CALL A FAMILY meeting,” I barked at Ryan through the phone as I pulled out of Laurel’s drive and gunned my car up the road.
“Noah?”
“Yeah. Get everyone together—now.”
“It’s barely seven. Bree will be getting ready for school.”
“I don’t give a shit if she’s about to go to the fucking moon. Have someone drive her home from that prison she’s been sent to. It’s one town over. That’s fifteen minutes max.”
“Okay, okay. I can do that. You want to tell me what’s going on?”
“Yeah. I looked fucking closer.”
I ended the call before Ryan could respond then threw my phone down on the seat beside me.
I was livid. Absolutely fucking livid. How could Harry have done this? To me. To Laurel. To Jake? How could he have denied his own grandchild a place in his life? In my life? How could he have denied him a place in our family?
I’d known my father was a bastard, but this was a whole other level of fucked up.
I tightened my fingers around the steering wheel until I thought I would break it, thinking about the pain and heartache in Laurel’s eyes.
I’d tried to keep it together back there, but now the anger washed over me in waves. I couldn’t even begin to imagine the nightmare of a situation Harry had put Laurel in. Not to mention the devastating decision she’d had to make as a young woman barely out of high school dealing with a terminally ill parent. How dare he let her carry the shame of his disgusting scheme for all these years?
My fury ran hot as I sped through town, going straight to the place where this sick and twisted scheme had been hatched—the winery. I needed to know who knew about this. I needed to know who had kept this from me, because it sure as hell seemed a little too convenient to think that no one else in the Chamberlin family knew what dear old Dad was up to.
I ground my molars as I pulled onto the road that led to the property, and as the rows of vines came into view, I suddenly felt nauseated.
Somewhere between meeting Jake and finding out the truth, my grief on missing out on his life had been temporarily squashed, because the reasons I’d been denied were so unimaginably vile. The shock had turned to pain, the pain had turned to sorrow, and before I could even let that all sink in, an intense rage had taken over.
As I pulled up to the gates, I stared at the emblem above and thought how satisfying it would be to drive my car right through it.
Fucking Harry. He’d been messing with my life since the day I came into it, but this time he’d gone too fucking far.
I shoved open the gates and climbed back behind the wheel, and when I slammed my foot on the gas, a cloud of dust was left in my wake. I flew up the driveway and came to a screeching halt by the entrance. The squeal of my brakes made several employees race around the front to make sure everything was okay.
When they spotted me—and the scowl no doubt etched on my face—they quickly scampered away. I was sick of being polite, sick of watching my Ps and Qs, and I didn’t give a flying fuck who knew it.
I stormed inside and past the front desk, then headed straight for my office. I needed a moment to think. A moment to collect my thoughts and put them in some kind of order before I was face to face with the rest of my family.
I took a seat behind my desk and thumped my thumb on it at a frantic pace.
Had Mom known about this? I’d kept telling myself the entire time Laurel and I had talked that there was no way. No way she would push aside a grandson, even for Harry. But how could she not?
How could she have not put two and two together, especially when face to face with Jake every day? It was clear that Ryan had some inkling, but Mom? Maybe she was just in denial. Denial that she’d married and loved a total fucking monster.
A knock on my door jolted me out of my thoughts. I looked up and spotted Ryan standing just inside the door.
“Hey.”
Not in the mood for small talk, I said,
