21
Ray
His mother?My brow creasing, I stared at Jack, not sure what to make of his response. “What do you mean? You are Vivienne’s son, so surely you’ll be a little like her.”
He shook his head and pushed to his feet as if unable to sit still, and paced to the window to stare outside. “Seven years ago, I finally found out the trust. My eyes will always remind Margo of my father’s duplicity.”
His eyes? “I don’t understand?”
“My birth mother is another. Alicia Wilde. The only woman my father ever loved.”
Dropping that bombshell, Jack moved and sat on the armchair facing me, head lowered.
My mouth dropped open in shock, then snapped shut. Jack continued, still staring at his locked hands. “I found proof of all that in a trunk thrown in the basement, where all my father’s things had been tossed and forgotten.”
“Then why did he marry your mother—I mean Vivienne—if he loved another?”
“Because no one says no to Margo Blackstone. If she can’t get your agreement, she’ll buy it. I guess I will never know the entire truth since he’s dead, and all I have are a few passages—some almost illegible—written in his work journal. He must have been furious or depressed when he wrote those…”
Jack dragged his fingers through his hair and leaned back in his chair. “Vivienne met my father at some fundraiser, and she fell in love with him. I’m sure Margo went out of her way to make their marriage happen when she realized what an asset it would be to have the heir of Griffin Holdings—with their multi-venture conglomerates—merged with Blackstone Inc. Soon after, Alicia broke up with him.”
“She, Alicia, wasn’t one of the elite?” I asked him.
Jack’s gaze flicked to mine. “No. Father met her when they were at university. Everyone thought it would fizzle out by the time they graduated. It didn’t. Pops told me my father was heartbroken when Alicia left him. I don’t think he cared what happened afterward, and he married Mother. My sister was born a year later. But he’d become withdrawn, worked long hours. Then, a couple of years later, he crossed paths with Alicia again. Whether he sought her out on purpose or bumped into her, Pops isn’t sure. But in a few of my father’s scribblings, he sounded happier…he found out Alicia was pregnant.”
With Jack.
I shifted on the bed and sat cross-legged. My gaze pinned on Jack’s tight face. “Do you remember her? Alicia?” I asked, softly.
He shook his head. “I know I lived with her for the first year of my life, but I don’t recall any of it. My father wanted out of the marriage, but the Blackstones don’t do divorces. And Margo wouldn’t hear of it. When she found out about me, she offered to pay Alicia off if she handed me to the family and stopped seeing my father. According to Mother, Alicia refused. The accident happened later the same day, and Alicia died.”
“What? How?” I whispered, shocked, wanting to go to Jack, but he looked like he needed space to talk. And I had a feeling he’d kept it all locked inside him like a festering wound.
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “A hit and run. The last entry in my father’s journal was mostly smudged ink. It was just after Alicia’s death. He believed she must have been distraught about Margo’s demands and didn’t see the speeding car. He was desolate over her passing. But soon after, he legally claimed me, and he also gave me Alicia’s last name as my second one. It must have pissed off Grandmother even more…” Bitter laughter escaped him, constricting my heart at his visible pain.
“Seven years ago,” he continued, “I found out that Pops had declared me his heir the moment he learned of my existence. I was one. Margo had resisted at first, then later, she had no choice but to make me her heir, too, since Marie wasn’t interested in being actively involved in the company…”
Lord. No wonder there was so much antagonism between Margo and Nigel.
“Despite Grandmother’s fury over my father’s affair, she managed to avertthatscandal,” Jack continued. “Since Vivienne couldn’t have more children, I was accepted into the family.” His tone hardened. “I might not carry the mighty Blackstone blood, but I was a Griffin, from a powerful lineage, and from old money—something Margo coveted—no matter who my mother was. Still, she had to see a daily reminder of my father’s sins. I have Alicia’s eyes.”
Hell. My fingers tightened on my robe, a chill sweeping through me at the conniving nature of his grandmother. I couldn’t even begin to understand a person like Margo Blackstone or how she could do something so heartless.
“It’s why she doesn’t like me with you,” I said softly. “I’m like Alicia, a nobody.”
His gaze snapped to mine. “She wouldn’t dare pull her shit with you. I won’t tolerate it.”
I knew that. I’d heard him tell her off, too. Despite his pain at that woman’s attempts to humiliate him, he’d still put me first.
He cared.
I felt it in the deepest part of me, evidenced by the way he’d treated me.
Thank God Jack didn’t have that horrible woman’s blood in his veins. But with powerful people and the games they played, we mere working class wouldn’t, hell, could never hope to compete and win.
“Some start to our weekend away,” he muttered, absently rubbing the scar on his lower abs. “I brought you here for our date, then I spilled my entire fucked-up life history on you.”
“I asked. And your birth mother wasn’t bad blood—”
