“It was Kyle, I’m assuming?” Wolf grimaced. “I get the sense he’d do anything to get what he wanted.”
“I believe so.” André’s hand tightened around his coffee cup. “But Kyle didn’t want me. He saw an opportunity to cause trouble, so he found me in a foolish, weak moment he knew I’d regret and sought to use it to hurt us.”
Seeing the confusion in his friends’ eyes, Chess explained, “Kyle made a pass at André right before he came home, and when André rejected him, this was a perfect opportunity to retaliate.”
While he appreciated Chess’s attempt at maintaining his privacy, after what Chess had gone through the previous evening, revealing his own teenage crush seemed minimal. “You guys heard an abbreviated version of my relationship with Kyle, and while I’m not about to get into further detail…well, for whatever reason, he thought he’d make an attempt to resurrect the past. Maybe he thought he’d secure a better position with Webster Properties if he went a step further than my mother asked. He knew I was in a relationship, so sending those pictures was deliberate.”
“If I had to hazard a guess, I’d say the person you kissed wasn’t so random and it wasn’t only a mere opportunity. Kyle seems the calculated type.” Wolf pushed away his plate. “In my opinion, he did it maliciously, to hurt you and destroy your relationship.”
“Well, he failed. If anything, it made us stronger. And I hurt for what Chess and his mother went through, but I’m in awe of how he pulled himself up and out of such a horrendous situation. Not many people have that kind of strength, especially at his age.”
“André, come on,” Chess implored him, cheeks red.
“I’m sorry, love, but I’m so damn proud of everything you’ve done with your life. If anyone thought your past was going to make me second-guess marrying you, they were sadly mistaken.”
“I hope your mother will be okay with everything now. I don’t want any resentment between us.”
Bianca and Henry came into the dining room, and she sat across from Chess, first stopping by his side to give him, then André, a kiss on the cheek.
Henry sat next to her and poured a coffee. “Morning, everyone. I think it will take her some time to come around, but because she loves her family, she will.”
Toying with his food, Chess shrugged. “I understand. But André and I aren’t married. I’m not family.”
André grabbed his hand. “Youarefamily. My family.”
Chess’s smile was sad. “Yet I can understand her protectiveness. She’s got her family name to think of, and a background like mine could hurt the exclusive image Webster Properties has to maintain.”
“That’s ridiculous.” Bianca rolled her eyes. “No one cares what the spouses or partners of the owners of the corporation do.”
“Not true,” Wolf interjected. “The actions of the members of the board of major corporations can negatively affect company stock prices.”
“But we’re privately held. No one knows who we are.”
André shook his head at his sister’s naïveté. “Bee, you’re an extremely wealthy young woman who’s at all the ‘hot’ spots. You don’t exactly shy away from the press, and you’ve been photographed everywhere, both you and Henry, sometimes in not such great light. Of course people know who you are.”
His mother entered the room. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell them for years, but neither of them would listen to me or your father. Image matters. Your behavior will be on display and scrutinized constantly.”
“But, Mother, as I was about to also say, it istheirbehavior. Not Chess’s from twenty years ago. And frankly, these days he’s a role model. He’s a respected professor and has published articles in well-known journals. What he went through as a child is more inspirational than something to look down upon.”
His mother sat at the opposite end of the table. “I agree.”
Chess’s wide eyes indicated his surprise. André smiled at him reassuringly, but he felt no warmth as he told his mother, “Glad to hear you didn’t have second thoughts after last night.”
Her eyes flashed. “I’m always thinking of my family. If Kyle had told me in the first place that what happened to Chess occurred when he was a child and under what circumstances he was forced to do what he did, I would never have revealed all that terrible information.”
He had to ask the next question, much as it pained him. “Mother, did you pay Kyle to discover what was in those records? I need you to tell me the truth.”
“No. Absolutely not. I’m horrified he went to those lengths.”
Wolf cleared his throat. “André, if you wouldn’t mind me saying something?”
He tipped his head. “Go on.”
Wolf clasped his hands in front of him. “Mrs. Webster, you have to understand, when you ask a devious, underhanded person to work for you, you must expect that the methods they use to find the information you’re asking for will be unsavory, to say the least. You’re putting your head in the sand if you think you can tell someone, ‘Find the dirt,’ and then, when they do and it turns out to be illegal, you simply wipe your hands and walk away.”
Twin red patches burned on his mother’s pale cheeks, but she kept her head high. Margery Webster never ran from a problem.
“I agree. And all I can do is ask Chess and André to forgive me. It was wrong, terribly wrong, and I’m ashamed of myself.”
