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I shook my arm free, rubbing the spot where she had almost broken the skin. What the fuck? She was possessed. “How would you have the first idea what I need to get used to?” I asked.
“Because I am your mother, and I know what needs to be done. Look at you,” she scoffed, her lip curling in disgust before she strode over to the desk positioned at the far end of the room. “Sitting on top of the world, thinking you have all the answers. Everything is laid out so neatly. You buy the rights to a hot show, you bring on some new talent, then you sit back, feeling smug and superior because you have saved the day.”
Whirling around with her back to the desk, her eyes suddenly blazing, she hissed, “Do you know what you truly did? You doomed us, you impulsive, thoughtless brat.”
Well. This was new. She had never come out and used language like that before. It grazed my ego, for sure, but the wound didn’t go any deeper than that. “You’re going to have to try harder to hurt my feelings, Mom.”
“Who said I was trying to hurt your feelings? I was calling the situation as I see it because you are a brat who went ahead and made a major decision without consulting me first. You have no idea what you’ve done,” she concluded, trembling, vivid color creeping into her complexion the way it did when she was barely holding on by a thread.
“Then why don’t you try telling me?” I asked, throwing my hands into the air with a groan of frustration. “For fuck’s sake! Why does everything have to be layered in secrecy? What is the big deal about bringing a hit show to Las Vegas so we can produce it? This is what we’re supposed to be doing.”
Lifting her chin, she replied, “We didn’t have the money.”
The quiet simplicity of that statement brought me up short. “I know things have been tight…” I admitted. “But I ran the numbers. Carefully. The money was there, or I wouldn’t have spent it.”
“So you think. I could have set you straight if you had given me the chance to do it.” She sank into the chair in front of her, her hands clasped on her knees. “It’s smoke and mirrors, the current state of our books. The fact is, we don’t have nearly as much available as I wanted you to think.”
Dread bubbled in my gut, making my heart pound ominously hard. “You cooked the books?” I couldn’t believe it. Maybe saying the words out loud would make her laugh at the joke she had pulled on me.
There was no laughter as I approached one slow, dread-filled step at a time. “I didn’t want you to worry,” she told me, staring down at her hands. “That was why I did it. So you wouldn’t be worried about the future.”
“Thanks?” I replied, coming to a stop in front of her and leaning my ass against the desk, arms folded, waiting for her to come clean without being prodded. When one sickening heartbeat after another passed with no explanation, it was time to prod. “Exactly how much money are we talking about? And don’t lie to me. We’re way past that now.”
“He… took everything.” She hung her head lower before releasing a shuddering breath. “Everything. And I let him because I trusted him. He told me it was a sure thing.”
I could barely hear her, thanks to the ringing in my ears. It tended to pop up whenever I started to seriously imagine murdering someone. “Who told you? I need a name, Mom.”
“What does it matter?” Glancing up at me from under her lashes, she must have realized I wasn’t fucking around since in the next breath, she muttered, “Philip.”
Somehow, I knew it. The smarmy prick had always rubbed me the wrong way. There was something painfully fake about him, something she had never been able to see. Maybe she just didn’t want to admit a man twenty years her junior might want something other than her body. “I was wondering why I hadn’t heard about him in so long when you couldn’t stop talking about him the entire time you were dating,” I gritted out, envisioning tearing every golden strand from his head.
“He said he needed money for an investment opportunity.”
My stomach twisted and threatened to send every drop of the bourbon back up. I wanted to tell her to stop, not to say another word, but at the same time, I wanted to hear it. I needed to know. “Go on,” I murmured, clenching my fists, almost shaking with the rage I was afraid to release in front of her.
“Of course, everything fell through.” She leaned back in the chair, and for the first time in years, the real Diana Bennett sat before me—no pretense, no airs. Her cheeks sagged a little, and the lines bracketing her mouth were deeper than I remembered. “There really isn’t much more to tell. He left me high and dry, and I haven’t heard anything from him since.”
A few deep breaths did nothing to calm me down.
She let this happen.
But I should have seen it coming.
The way she mooned over him like he was God’s gift, the times she’d sworn he made her feel youthful and alive again. She would have done anything to hold onto that feeling. “How long ago was this?” I asked.
“A few months.”
“Months?” I barked. She flinched, but I didn’t care. It was time for me to start raising my voice a little. “You’ve known about this for months, and you never told me?”
Her chin quivered, hands twisting in something close to prayer. “I wanted to make it right somehow.”
“How?” I demanded with a deranged laugh. I was losing it, plain and simple—my world was crumbling around me. “Were you going to snap your fingers, and the money would simply materialize?”
“Please,” she begged, her voice breaking. “There’s nothing you could say to make me feel worse than I already do.”
“That’s not what this is about. You have the nerve to sit there and act like there’s something wrong with my business sense when you’re the one who blew this company’s money on a boyfriend’s so-called investment opportunity?” It was insane, the way she could swan around in her silk bathrobes and face masks, warning me not to waste her precious time when she had dinner plans. Still acting like the queen she thought she was when all of it was a lie.
“I know I made a mistake.” She lifted her chin, her eyes shining with unshed tears. I couldn’t bring myself to feel sorry for her, though I knew it was what she wanted. “That’s why you need to marry Isobel. Without her and the money she would bring in, we’re finished. Everything I fought and sacrificed for after your father died, the endless hours spent learning the business from scratch, going around on hands and knees begging his business partners and investors to stay with us, hunting down every last dime to keep us afloat, would be gone just like that.” She snapped her fingers for effect, not that she needed to.
