Izzy pinched the bridge of her nose. “He’s a close friend. Olivia always checks in with him when she’s here. There’s a very high chance she told him about you two, since you’re the only non-family here and she thinks the story is darling.”
“About that,” Heath hedged, pausing at the shake of Evan’s head.
“She already knows.”
He snapped his attention to her. “You do?”
Isabella’s smile was wicked. “I’ve always known, you horrible liars. I just didn’t have the evidence I needed until Evan confessed.”
Snapping back to Evan he frowned. “You confessed without me here?”
“She scares me.”
That was an excuse he couldn’t argue with.
Evan stood and started for the door. “I need to talk to Liv and confirm this. I amfuckedif this is true.”
“Why, though? I don’t understand why.”
Rounding on Isabella, Evan gripped the back of his neck until his biceps flexed, stress peeling off him in waves. “My mom’s will specified that if the biological father were to take custody, he should be financially responsible for me through college graduation. She’d also required he include me in his will.”
“Is that even legal?”
“Nope. You can’t dictate what a person does with their own shit. He agreed because it gave him complete control. He established a trust and promised I’d get a fourth of the company if, and only if, I met specific criteria.”
“What sort of criteria?”
“He expected me to live like a fucking monk. Any behavior that could or did reflect badly upon him was grounds for termination of the agreement. He’s been trying to dictate my every move since I was ten.”
Heath drew closer, not liking the feeling bubbling in his gut, or the angst on Evan’s face. “But you already told him to piss off.”
“Not exactly.”
The breath exited Heath’s lungs in a painfulwhoosh. “Not exactly?”
Evan wouldn’t look at him, which said all he needed to know. He’d lied. Maybe not directly, but by omission, and that might not matter in Evan’s world, but it mattered in his. A lot.
Isabella moved close enough to rest her hand on his shoulder. “Evan, you say he’s been trying, but to me, it sounds like he’s been successfully controlling you your entire life. Why areyou playing his game when you have more than enough clout without him?”
The veneer of calm left Evan’s expression in a shuddering breath. “My mother worked two jobs until the day she died, because that bastard blacklisted her. When he took me in, he spent every day reminding me I was a charity case and shouldn’t have even been born. He hadn’t even told his wife about me. She didn’t know I existed until the day I moved in.”
Isabella covered her gasp. “Oh, God.”
“Yeah. Suffice it to say, she and I aren’t close.”
Heath thought of all the times he’d called Evan a heartless playboy and accused him of using people. No wonder he’d finally snapped.
“The entire family acted like I’d shown up on their doorstep purposely intending to ruin their lives. They didn’t care that it was the last fucking place I wanted to be. The wife ignored me. My brothers fucked with me until I learned what weight training was.”
“What about your father?”
“The kindest thing he ever did was send me to boarding school. I avoided going home. Spent the holidays with friends. Kept my nose as clean as possible and went right to college afterward to stay out of the way. All I had to do was marry someone with more social clout than him and I’d be clear, but we all know how that worked out.”
“I still don’t understand how the will factors into this.”
Heath did. It was clear as day now that he’d listened to Evan’s list of grievances.
“You telling me you’ve never held a grudge?”
