However, I wasn’t ready to face him yet. I needed a bit more time to get re-acclimatized to being back in this city. So, until then, I’ll keep a low profile and go by the name on my German passport, Kathryn Wentzell.
I bend down to pick up the pool of black silk still lying discarded on the floor and place it in the closet. I ignore the garment bag with the other dress and select something more sensible.
An ivory cashmere sweater with high-waisted slacks of a slightly darker hue of ivory. Instead of the sexy, strappy stilettos from last night, I pick a more respectable pair of black heels.
My phone rings, and I go to the bedside table where it’s charging, smiling when I see the caller.
“Hello, Keifer,” I answer, deciding to take the call out on the balcony so I can look at the Golden Gate Bridge.
“Hello, stepmother.”
I grimace at him calling me that. I mean, I am, but still. The guy is a few years older than me. Same with his twin sister, Ursula.
“You know I hate that, Keif.”
He chuckles while I pull back the curtains, letting the sunlight spill into the room and slide open the balcony doors. The air is cool and brisk, but I breathe it in as I go to the high railing and stare at the Golden Gate Bridge, feeling nostalgia fall over me.
“And you know I love you, Leeva.”
In the world that the Wentzells run in, I’m known as Kathryn, but in private, they all call me by my real name.
It wasn’t always this friendly and loving with Luthor’s family. Many people viewed me as a gold digger when he brought me home to Berlin and announced he was marrying me. He was doing it to protect me, but we couldn’t publicly announce that. And I understood their thoughts—Luthor was a billionaire, and then I was suddenly in the picture with more than twenty-five years of an age gap separating us. His children, Keifer and Ursula, definitely thought I was a gold digger, but as we got to know each other and they saw I had no interest in their wealth and that I genuinely cared for their father, we grew close.
“How was the board meeting?” I ask, making Keifer groan.
“Like I wanted to drill out my own ears.”
I roll my eyes, laughing. “Always so dramatic.”
“I am not,” he huffs. “Urs was a nightmare…a literal nightmare.”
“Be nice to your sister.”
“Thisisme being nice to my sister. If I weren’t being nice, I’d say Ursula Wentzell is an ice queen who’d freeze us all and cackle madly while she takes over the world if she could.”
I bite back a smile. Keifer loves his sister, but Ursula could be a tad much. Which was why Luthor had made her the CEO of the family business.
“Anyway, enough about that. How’s ‘Merica?” he asks with some twangy, nasally accent.
“It’s fine.”
My answer is met with silence until he says, “Spill. What did you do?”
“Nothing,” I say a bit too quickly.
“Oh no, you don’t. Spill the beans.”
My cheeks heat. I’m most definitely not spilling the beans about my sexual adventures last night, and definitely not to Keifer.
I rest my elbows on the top of the railing, feeling the wind blow over my face and through my loose hair. “It’s just a bit much coming back here.”
“Your city of ghosts,” he says solemnly. “How are you doing?”
“I’d rather not talk about it.”
“You’re just camping out at the hotel, aren’t you?” He continues before I can protest, not that I can really protest because I’ve only left to go to Hedon, “Remember your promise to Luthor.”
Both he and Ursula often referred to their father that way. And I don’t need to be reminded about the deathbed promise I made.
