Pinching the bridge of my nose, I knew I had no choice but to come clean. “Yes. And yes, I’ve been avoiding you.”
“What happened?” Suspicion layered the question.
Tucking my hand in my pocket, I stared at the fountain in the middle of the pond. “I asked her to marry me.”
“You what?” she erupted. I held the phone away from my ear as she spouted colorful words that emphasized her anger.
“She’s the one, Liv. I want to marry her.”
“You’ve gone mad. For eleven years we’ve been planning, Gabe. Eleven damn years and you’re going to blow it all on her?”
“I can let her in. I’ll tell her the truth, and we can still do this.”
Although every day closer to the wedding had buried me under more lies. Invitations that listed a false name, a planned trip to the courthouse in two weeks where I would present a driver’s license that wouldn’t match my birth certificate because my father had used his influence to get me an alternate ID when I’d moved. Making calls to his buddies to get me into the companies under my pseudonym. Sure, they had my correct information for their records and reporting, but in company systems I was a Hughes and not an Icinda. All of that was about to blow up on me, and I had yet to tell Tori the truth.
The silence on the other end of the phone was the reason, and I could picture the pinched expression on Liv’s face.
“We made a promise to each other, little brother. A promise that we would let nothing come between us taking him down. We’re so close and you pull this shit? You selfish ass.”
“Come on, Liv. When have I ever done something for myself? I spent years working for this. For us. Taking accelerated paths to get my business degree in three years, spending two years getting my MBA, more years of working for financial firms to earn Dad’s approval and get experience.”
“And you’re going to throw it all away for some bimbo?—”
“Shut up, Liv. You don’t even know her. She’s not a bimbo. She’s intelligent and sweet. She’s amazing, and you know it because I would never risk this for someone who wasn’t.”
Her sigh resonated through the phone. “I gave things up, too. Things I can never get back. We had a plan.”
I palmed the back of my neck, guilt hammering me. After a few moments of silence, she said, “At least tell me you’re not going through with it until after this is over. That you’re waiting.”
My grimace was severe. “Well, I was planning to, but she got excited, and it’s…” Shit, how was I going to tell her this. She was already pissed at me. “It’s in April.”
“This April? In two months?”
“Yes.”
“Damn it, Gabe. You really have lost your mind. Not only are you betraying me, but Dad will disinherit you. You know the conditions. The trust doesn’t kick in until you’re thirty-two and you can’t be married. That’s still over four years away.”
“I know, and I don’t care. I’ll give it all up for her. We have enough from the other businesses. If I unwind them?—”
“I’ll be out, too, Gabe.”
My step faltered. “What do you mean?”
She drew in a ragged breath. “The conditions of the trust are that you hit thirty-two.”
“But you’re almost there.”
“No, Gabe. It’s not contingent on me. It’s on you. My trust requires you to meet the requirements. The asshole only cares about you. He doesn’t care if his selfishness leaves me alone and miserable the rest of my life.”
“So if I break the terms of the trust, you get nothing?”
“Yes, and I’m out of a job. I’m sure that in his vindictiveness he’ll ensure I’m blocked from any other company.” And he would, because I may have stopped him from hitting Liv that day, but that didn’t mean he hadn’t punished her repeatedly since then in ways like this.
“Shit.”
“Yeah. You can’t marry her, Gabe. I know you love her, but you need to walk away. Break it off with her before he finds out. If he hasn’t already. You know his men still watch you, right? So, whatever you’re doing down there that isn’t behind closed doors and under your massive computer firewalls, he knows.”
My eyes flicked up as I canvassed the area. I’d gone lax in the months Tori had kept me distracted, no longer looking for evidence that his men were tracking me. Protection he had insisted on when I’d first left for college and in the years following, but they’d gotten good at hiding from me before Tori walked into my life. After that, they’d become another piece of my past that she muted.
