I wasn’t happy with Tina, with my life, with the direction it was headed. I wanted my position in the company and the family. But not at any cost.
My mother sighed again when I said nothing.
“If this is what happens when I send you out west,” she said, “maybe I’ll have to sell off that agency after all, and bring you back here. Maybe you’d be better off at head office.”
And that was when it really struck me. That my mother had always exuded a deep resentment of the west coast. Maybe I’d learned it from her. Absorbed some of that disdain myself.
And the number one reason I’d always hated the west coast? Same as hers, probably.
“Why do you hate it there?” I asked her. “Because he’s there?”
My mother gave a little huff of annoyance.
“Do you still love him?” I asked her. Because fuck, yes, that was why his betrayal still hurt me. I didn’t even want a relationship with my father. But I still cared about him.
My mother bore down on me with her gray eyes. “Love is complicated, son of mine. Maybe if you ever love someone as much as you love yourself, you’ll figure that out.”
But what she didn’t know was that I already knew. I already loved someone more than I loved myself.
I’d do anything for Devi.
Or Lex, come to think of it.
Even walk away from my family, my fortune.Anything.
I wondered, would my mother ever have been willing to do that?
Did it ever occur to my mother or my grandmother that while Laurinda had been disowned, there was a reason she never fought back, until now, and only in the most underhanded way? Never took on an honest fight that she knew she couldn’t win? Because she had a child to protect. A son she loved more than she loved herself.
Two sons, actually.
And maybe all the time Laurinda was scheming behind our backs to try to get my money, my position in the family, for herself and her son, what she probably wanted most of all was her family back.
Yeah. Love was fucking complicated.
I went straight from the meeting with my mother into a meeting with our head of security, Mr. Block, while my mother met privately with my grandmother.
After that, I attended another grueling meeting—with my mother and our legal team. I told them about the audio recording, and about Laurinda. And my mother told them we wouldn’t be pressing charges. We wanted their counsel, but my grandmother wanted this handled quietly. Which meant no law suit.
Then I walked into my grandmother’s office, on the top floor of Valhalla’s head office tower. Her assistant, who was older than my mother, had laid out tea and showed me in like I’d never been here before.
“Thank you, Gloria,” I said as she puttered around, pouring tea.
My grandmother remained seated behind her desk. She didn’t get up or saygood morning.
It wasn’t that there was no love in my family. It was just hard to see. And hard to feel. We didn’t sayI love you. We didn’t kiss and hug. And maybe Davenports always shook hands, but we didn’t do it with each other. I couldn’t remember the last time my grandmother had touched me.
She sat in her chair in front of the windows that looked out over the city, gazing at me like I was any other person crawling up to ask her for something.
My grandmother was seventy-six and could’ve retired years ago. She still came to work every day, sat at her desk and put in a full day’s work. A lot of people thought she was nothing but a figurehead for the company at this point, but those people would be wrong.
Helena Davenport didn’t run the company. But everything that happened at Valhalla went across her desk at some point. And while she didn’t have a hand in every part of it—no one person could—if she wanted something done, it got done.
Conversely, if shedidn’twant something done, it didn’t happen.
“Good morning, Grandmother,” I said, as soon as Gloria had left us alone and closed the door.
“Is it?” she said, and sipped her tea. I knew my mother had met with her before I did. I knew that she now knew everything Devi had told me, about Laurinda.
