“Uhm, I think I’ll forgive you for that, too.” He liked cuddling her. He could absolutely get used to this. “If you go into your villain era, then be ready to have a boyfriend who helps you. Let’s keep it to the cool villainy though. Maybe we can assassinate a couple of tyrants and free some people.”
The smile on her face did things to his cock that she could probably feel. But she sobered and let her head drift to his shoulder. “Tell me what really happened.”
Guilt gnawed at him. “Manny… Our relationship is complex. We knew each other from a young age. He was so much smarter than everyone else. He was also slightly younger because his father pushed him so hard academically. I didn’t like how the other kids treated him, so I became his only friend. I liked him back then. He was kind and ridiculously smart. His father hated me. Said I was a waste of time, but Manny actually stood up to him when it came to me. And then his father was killed and he went to live with his grandfather. When we met again it was high school, and he was broken somehow. He’d gotten very dark.”
“From the profiles our team has been given, it’s highly likely there was a lot of abuse in his grandfather’s home, and the fact that his mother abandoned him probably led to his misogyny.”
“He truly loathes his mother. Loathed. She was killed during a robbery in Paris. I’ve often wondered if he arranged that,” Ben explained. “But I didn’t see that back then. I saw an old friend who could use some help. We got close again. Unlike his father, his grandfather did approve of our friendship. To the point that he constantly criticized Manny for not being more like me. I became the golden child of a family I didn’t belong to. To a brother who wasn’t mine. But hewas excellent at hiding his darkness. He wrapped himself in this calm, peaceful doctor persona. Even in high school. He would cause trouble and then step in to fix it, and everyone looked up to him. Everyone except his grandfather.”
“Who died conveniently after Manny graduated. I was surprised he refused an autopsy.”
Ben had thought this through long ago. “Why would he? Anyone who held stock in the company was gone, and surprise, all of that stock found its way back to Manny. So no, he didn’t care why his grandfather died. He might have done it himself.”
“What happened with Deanna? You got together with her before college, right?”
“We started dating during our sophomore year of high school, and I was comfortable with her. She was smart and funny, and she and Manny got along. She wanted to be a doctor, so they had several classes together. I wasn’t surprised when she announced she was going to the same college that Manny had gotten into.”
“How did you feel about that?”
There was nothing to do but tell her the truth. “I was happy about it. Happy that she was getting what she wanted. Happy that she would have a friend there.”
“And you were also relieved.”
Well, no one said she wasn’t smart. “I was. I was never in love with her, and she’d started talking about us getting married. She wanted me to come with her, but I had a baseball scholarship. I wanted to see the world, to party and have fun. I tried to break up with her but she was so fragile. Her mother had recently died from cancer. There was never a good time to break things off, so we tried long distance.”
“She wasn’t your responsibility. You were a kid.”
“So was she, and we made some adult choices, so yeah, I felt she was my responsibility.”
She shifted. “So you took her virginity and felt responsible for her even though she made the same choice and didn’t think about what you would need when it came to college. She thought you would follow her because she was smarter than you. Because she needed it more than you did.”
That summed things up nicely. “She was smarter than me. It was pointed out on more than one occasion that she had more to give to theworld than I did.”
“Ohhh, let me guess. That was Huisman.”
“It was. He encouraged me to follow them. On more than one occasion he discussed the fact that I was never going to play pro baseball, so why didn’t I take some business classes and learn how to run parts of the foundation for him. He and Deanna would be the brilliant doctors, and I would handle the business.”
“You would be the staff,” she corrected.
“I didn’t view it that way at the time, but now I wonder. I wouldn’t give up my place, and I remember Manny staring at me and saying so be it. I didn’t know what he meant at the time. I liked being away from home, being on my own. Deanna and I talked a couple of times a week, and things seemed to be going well. I kept up with Manny, too. He came up to see me and we would have a good time. And then I got the call.”
“Was it during your freshman year?”
He shook his head. “It was the start of junior year.”
“You stayed with her for two years?”
“I did, although we didn’t spend much time together. A couple of weekends here and there, a month during the summers, but the last time she’d avoided going home. She spent the summer at Manny’s. I thought they were hooking up, and honestly, I was okay with it. Her father had passed by that point. Suicide, although now I wonder.”
“So she had some tragedy happen every time you were pulling away? It sounds like a Huisman thing to do. Play on your empathy.” She frowned his way. “You’re surprised I believe you? Babe, I’ve seen what the man can do. It doesn’t surprise me at all. I wonder why he didn’t go after your parents, though.”
“He saved that for later.” Ben didn’t like to think about his parents. “It was after Deanna died and I declared war that he tried to hurt my parents. You should know they blame me. They were forced into hiding, but not before my father told me I wasn’t his son anymore. I don’t know why I told you that. I was talking about Deanna.”
“I’m willing to listen if you want to tell about them,” Maggie offered in a soft tone.
He shook his head. “No. Not now. Where was I?”
“She called you?” Maggie prompted.
