Or envied me.
“You have no idea,” he repeated. “Your sister has always seen us as trophies—billionaire trophies—except the billionaire part didn’t work out so well for her. We all wanted to break up with her after that video of her throwing coffee on the waitress went viral, but Rhodes didn’t even get the sentence out before she blurted that she was pregnant.”
I sunk down to the floor. I could already tell I wouldn’t like this story.
“We couldn’t leave our baby alone with that woman,” Alex stated, blunt as a truck, “so we agreed to the wedding and commitment ceremonies. All donevery quickly, because Sue claimed she didn’t want a big belly in the wedding photos.
“But while we were on our honeymoon, we caught her drinking.” His fists balled even then. “We confronted her, and she confessed that she wasn’t pregnant. She never was. She only said that because she wasafraid to lose usandwhat we had was too special to end. But because we were still fucking pissed, she turned it around on us and said we were the jerks who only wanted to marry her for the baby. We were assholes. We lied about loving her. We only wanted to use her for her uterus. On and fucking on she went—blaming it all on us.
“She even went so far as to say it didn’t matter that she lied. If we wanted to break up with her, we should’ve just done it. It wasn’t like there was a real shotgun forcing us down the aisle. We made our own choices.” He scoffed. “Can you believe we actually walked away thinking we were the jerks?”
“Yes.” I didn’t know I spoke until his face changed, flickering with surprise. “Sue... Sue was...” I swallowed hard. “Sue was always very good at making a person feel worthless for her mistakes.”
“Was?”
I realized too late what I said... but I wasn’t going to lie—not anymore. “Was,” I said, voice flat. “She’s dead.”
Alex nodded slow. “How?”
“In the car accident.” I couldn’t believe we were doing this—talking normally like I wasn’t holding the proof and the evidence of my mother’s murderer in my hands. “She tracked me down to bring me home to see Omma before it was too late. I hit a deer, crashed the car, and she died. I came here thinking I could just hide out with my mother, send her off peacefully, and then start over in a new life.
“I didn’t know she was married to the three of you,” I stressed. “I didn’t know Lily existed.”
“Hmm. Well, I guess that’s something. At least you didn’t come here intending to deceive us. But it doesn’t change the fact that you did it anyway.”
Hera, help me, his expression didn’t give a hint of his thoughts away.
“Yeah, I don’t think I’m going to accept criticism from you, murderer.”
Alex laughed out loud. “Damn, you’re feisty. It’s very sexy.”
I blushed like a dumbass.
“And I wish I could say I’m not a murderer but...” His gaze flicked to the thumb drive. “There’s still so much more to this story.” He clapped, making me jump. “So, let’s get back to it. We left off at the point in the story where we found out just how far your sister would go to get what she wants. Naturally, legally, she was only married to one of us, but Rhodes is our boy. Micah and I couldn’t abandon him to her swirling vortex of evil manipulations. Especially because the next time she told us she was pregnant, it was real.
“Looking back, I think she thought we were holding out on her,” he said. “Sue was living her dream life in New York—spending our money like water—but all the big, major, insane purchases she wanted, like a nine-figure condo in Manhattan and a private jet, we said no to.
“I truly believe she thought a baby would give her more leverage,” Alex confessed. “If not in the marriage, then certainly in the divorce.”
I bit hard on my lip, holding back my thoughts on the matter, because they wouldn’t have been words of disagreement.
“With Lily on the way, she got even more pushy, and insistent, and threatening about us needing to givethe babythe life she deserved, and if we kept refusing to give herfull accessto the family finances, she’d leave and get full custody of Lily,” he said. “After that, we were forced to tell her that we’d been living on the dwindling profits left over from when we owned GloryBoi, because Rhodes gave all of his buyout money away, Micah put his share in an account controlled by his parents, and I never got paid a cent—”
“What?”
“—and Sue hated us from that day on.”
“Whoa, hold on,” I cried, shooting up. “What do you mean you never got paid a cent? You didn’t receive your share of the buyout?”
Alex shook his head, tipping his chin to the ceiling. “Rhodes told us that he shared this part with you, so you already know those bastards came after us when we refused to sell GloryBoi. They dug around in our pasts. With Micah and Rhodes, there was nothing to find. The same couldn’t be said for me.”
“What do you mean? What did they find?”
Alex chuckled, shaking his head. “They found out—and you’re really going to get a kick out of this one—that I’m not Alexander Montgomery.”
A high-pitched, buzzing noise sounded in my ear, drowning the alarm bells going wild in my head. “Excuse me?” I sidestepped toward the exit leaving the great hall. “What did you say?”
Alex? tracked my movement like a hunter. “I said I’m not Alexander Montgomery.” He tipped his head. “Or at least, I wasn’t born Alexander Montgomery. My real name is Fritz Calloway.”
