The cardboard boxes remained untouched and empty in the corner of my office. All I really needed to take was my laptop.
I rarely got attached to people, let alone possessions.
I had no pictures of my family and no bullshit funny mugs on my desk. Every award I’d received had been thrown in the trash the night it was given to me—I didn’t make the news to get a pat on the back; I made the news because I wanted to change lives, and perspective, and the world, and to prove I was deserving of all I had been given. The only thing I had gotten attached to on this floor would like to see me castrated by a butcher, so there was really no need to prolong my departure. I’d insisted on not having a goodbye party, explaining there was nothing happy about my exit. I wasn’t moving on to bigger, better things after a mutual understanding with the management. I was jumping out of a sinking ship, leaving my staff to drown.
It was like planning your own funeral.
I shut my laptop and shoved it into the trash with the heel of my Oxford, deciding I didn’t want to take anything with me from this place. Fuck it.
CSP, a competing channel, was building a news division in Los Angeles, and it seemed like a good idea to put a few thousand miles between me and Mathias. But that wasn’t why I’d quit my job.
I didn’t want to see Judith’s face every day, knowing I’d put the scowl there.
So I made way for her, because I would never fire her, and because really, she’d earned her place in my newsroom perhaps even more than I had.
There hadn’t been a huge breakdown to compliment my heartbreak. It was quiet, yet somehow a thousand times worse than I’d ever experienced. Every day when she left the office, she took something with her.
Another piece of my fucking heart.
Another song on her playlist I’d never be able to listen to without thinking of her.
I’d had my phone off all day—I wanted to do this without interruption—and I finally turned it back on and shoved it in my pocket. I grabbed my jacket, throwing one last look at the place that had once been my kingdom, the place I thought I’d have my fucking retirement party, and shook my head.
I turned around, closed the door, and bumped into something small and hot.
Judith.
She shoved a file to my chest, pointing at me.
“First things first, next time you take my father out of the house, you let me know by text or a phone call. Agreed?”
I blinked rapidly. Was I imagining things now? Because that kind of shit needed to be checked and medicated. I arched an eyebrow.
“You do realize Los Angeles is not around the block, right? I won’t be seeing much of him anytime soon.”
Still an asshole. But hell if she didn’t like it.
“There’s a special place in hell for you.” She shoved her delicate finger in my face.
Would it be too much if I bit the tip? Probably.
I smirked. “Not surprised. I have a rock star realtor. What are you doing here on a Sunday, Chucks?”
“Saving your ass.” She unplastered the file from my chest and walked over to her station in the newsroom.
I followed. Her ass looked fantastic, as always, but that wasn’t what made me smile until I’d almost cut my face in half.
She laid all the docs on her desk, yet wouldn’t let me peek into the file. I eyed her curiously, not sure what her deal was, but intrigued nonetheless. More than anything, I liked that she was talking to me again, and wasn’t planning on fucking it up.
“Prepare to have your mind blown,” she said.
“Is this an invitation for a hookup? Because I find it hard to believe anything but your cunt can evoke such—or any—emotion in me.”
I left the romantic stuff for the notes I’d written her. I still couldn’t bring myself to say any of it out loud, but I wanted to. Badly.
She shook her head and smiled, sliding Polaroid pictures my way. Of my father dining at a restaurant with the channel’s bigwigs.
I raised an eyebrow. “How did you get those?”
“James Townley.”
“And how did he get those?”
“He hired Dan, who works here, to run an investigation on Mathias.”
“So did I,” I shot back. “So?”
She shrugged. “Townley paid double.”
“That fucker Dan.” I sucked in a breath.
Jude put her hand on mine and squeezed. “Not at all. He’s brilliant. He took you both as clients because you had the same goal: bring Mathias down.”
I leaned my hip against her desk and browsed through the images. There were more in her file, but this wouldn’t cut it. “That’s all nice and dandy, but what the fuck am I looking at? My father having lunch with the investors without me? I can use it for nothing, other than maybe research for making voodoo dolls.”
Jude slid a bunch of documents from the file toward me. “Read the highlighted areas. There’s a lot of fluff, profanity, and chauvinism to weed through, but in the end, you’ll find the conversation quite interesting. Especially the revelations in this transcript of the original recording.”
“This is all recorded?” I picked up the papers, eyeing her.
She nodded. “Yes.”
“I still won’t be able to use it in court.”
I was testing her, treading carefully over my own secret—a secret I didn’t want to make known yet so Judith wouldn’t feel pressured into anything. My heart beat so fast I thought it was going to burn a hole in my chest.
She waved her hand in the documents’ direction. “Just read it, Célian.”
I started skimming through the text, hitting the highlighted parts:
M.L: “…ridiculously easy. I knew he was there, so I pulled out the CCTV footage and found the girl—Judith something. I made sure the right arrangements had been made and sure enough, the Judith girl got called for a job interview at LBC, although there was a mix-up and she somehow ended up in another department. I rectified the situation right away, though.”
M.L: “…it was a long shot, but my son is not as calculating as I am. I figured it was worth a try. And it worked. He got attached so easily, and discarded his fiancée completely. Now, we need to decide what we’re doing with LBC…”
M.L: “…I’m pulling out the ads slowly, though we will need to think of ways to terminate the contract completely. My lawyers are working on finding a legal loophole.”
I set the papers down, sitting on the edge of her desk and lacing my fingers nonchalantly. So Mathias had planned it all along. My meeting Jude, my falling in love with her, giving up on the Davis family—every single thing. And I’d walked right into his trap. Well, almost.
I didn’t make the mistake of asking Jude if she’d known about it. Of course she hadn’t. Instead, I focused on how to deal with this shit.
“We’ve both been set up,” I said.
She put a hand on my shoulder, and I resisted the urge to pull her into me and bury my face in her hair. Judith had this touch that made shit go away. Bad shit. She must have known I thought it—maybe I even said it out loud—because she took a few steps back and swallowed. It was the kind of swallow that said that there was something more, and I wasn’t necessarily going to like it.
“I read the Post-it notes,” she said.
“I thought you did a long time ago.” It felt good, knowing she hadn’t. Knowing she hadn’t chosen to ignore me.
She shook her head. “It hurt too much.”
“And now?”
“It still does, but a little less. Also I’m more concerned with your well-being than my own right now. James wants to talk to you.”
I immediately wanted to say I wasn’t interested, but I knew better than to fuck it all up. She was talking to me, after all. I needed to play nice if I wanted a nice girlfriend.
Fuck. Yes. That’s what it was. I wanted Jude to be my girlfriend—not a fake one and not a temporary one.
“I’m pressed for time,” I said instead, wondering if it were still true, now that she and I were on speaking terms again. “But I guess I could squeeze him in tonight if you come with.”
“This is your family and personal business. I don’t think I belong.”
“I don’t think I give a fuck. Wait, this just in…” I pretended to listen to something on an invisible headphone. “I don’t give a fuck. Grab your shit, Chucks.”
“This doesn’t mean anything,” she said as I tugged on her hand.
Like hell it didn’t. She wanted to help me, and she’d come all the way to work on a Sunday afternoon to give me something she thought would be useful. It meant everything and more, and I was going to milk the hell out of it.
I made a stop in my office and took the laptop out of the trash can, putting it neatly back on the desk. Jude never asked what it had been doing there in the first place.
She knew.
I’d never been to James Townley’s place, and I’d been content to think I never would. He lived in another penthouse, in another New York ’scraper, and it was amazing how one of the most dazzling architectural cities in the world had managed to be home to so many identical, clinical, and impersonal penthouses.
James opened the door in a robe (douchebag), and said he was glad to see me. When he spotted Jude next to me, he made a face like I’d pissed in his drink.
“Deal with it,” I replied to his nonverbal annoyance, walking into his living room.
His twelve-year-old wife, who was 85% made of plastic, unglued herself from the couch, her heels click-clicking toward their hallway, and then I guessed their bedroom. James went to the kitchen to get us some drinks. I couldn’t figure out why his wife would wear heels at home. I elbowed Judith lightly as we sat down on the same sofa the busty morning show host had vacated a second ago.
“Do you wear shoes indoors?”
Jude’s eyes darted to me, and she frowned immediately. “I don’t even wear underwear and a bra at home. Dad’s lucky if my clothes cover my private parts. I’m a free spirit.”
“I fucking love you,” I blurted, and I nearly choked on the air inside my lungs.
Not that she didn’t know by now, but still.
She grinned. “I think I’m beginning to believe you.”
“Let the record show that I took another job just so you could keep yours at LBC,” I told her before my throat closed. “Being away from you would feel like living without limbs. And I very much enjoy my limbs.”
The look on her face was priceless. It was every fantastic Christmas gift a second after you unwrap it. I was about to dive down and go for the kiss, sealing this shit for good, when James sauntered back in with a tray and something alcoholic on it.
Fucker.
I couldn’t pretend I didn’t see him, so I straightened up on the couch and tried to think about sad things, like global warming and The Big Bang Theory, to take care of my inappropriately engorged cock. James dragged over a settee and sat directly in front of me, leaning forward. The silver tray with the drinks sat between us on the coffee table, but nobody touched it.
“Are you sure you’d like Junior to be here? What I’m about to tell you is very personal.”
“Stop calling her Junior, and yes, she can be here. My life is her life.”
They both stilled in their seats, but I didn’t miss a heartbeat. I had a flight out of JFK to LAX in five hours, and I wasn’t going to be on it. That made me feel eerily calm and happy. Judith was here. Everything was okay.
“Well…” James shook his head, running his hand through his hair.
He was so vain, I wondered if he shaved his balls completely or bleached them to match his fake hair color.
“There’s no right way of saying this. Let me tell you, for the record, that I’ve been wanting to tell you for a while now, but Iris always stopped me. Never Mathias, though, son. I’m not scared of him.”
“Stop calling me so—” I started, but he cut me off.
“But you are,” he said, clearing his throat and blinking rapidly. “You’re my son, Célian, and there’s nothing and no one that can change that. Thirty-three years ago, I walked into the bar across from LBC after a bad job interview…”
No.
No.
Just, no.
I couldn’t listen to this crap. I definitely couldn’t bear hearing how similar it was to my story with Judith so far. I shook my head without even meaning to, and I felt myself standing up, legs on autopilot. I hated my father, but I refused to believe I’d been a fool for thirty-two years. A small, hot hand—a little sweaty, but in a good way—tugged me back down.
“Please,” she whispered. “I know it’s hard.”
I found myself sitting again, even though every bone in my body screamed for me to do something different. This wasn’t for this asshole. It was for Judith.
“Continue,” I hissed.
James looked at me with eyes full of pity and regret, two feelings I despised—especially from a man I’d known as my employee for the past few years, no matter how much power he had in my newsroom.
“I wanted to become an actor,” he said. “It was actually an audition, rather than a job interview, and I failed. Three drinks later, your mother and I were in bed. I didn’t know she was a newlywed. But that’s not the only thing she chose to omit from the equation. I would learn weeks later that this had been the day she first found out your father was cheating on her, which was why she had no ring on. She thought she’d never put it back on.”
Fuck. My. Life.
The similarities were endless. Uncanny. And yet I couldn’t help but pray to God that the outcome of our relationships would be very different. Because as far as my knowledge went, my mother and James spoke to each other once a year during the annual network Christmas party, and nothing more. Jude’s hand reached for mine—not tentatively, no, this time she owned it—giving it a squeeze.
“You were married, too,” I spat. Phoenix was only three years younger than me.
James shook his head. “No. I met my ex-wife the following fall.”
Phoenix and I were half-brothers.
I wanted to throw up. My girlfriend rubbed my thigh now, trying to soothe me. James hurried to pour us all a drink—I think just to do something with his hands. The air wrapped around us in an awkward way, and maybe that’s what having a heart attack felt like.
“After the one-night stand, I told her about my audition. She said there was a vacancy at LBC. They needed someone for their morning show—to host a daily ten-minute slot with the news. Nothing primetime, but I knew it could pay the bills and—”
“Let me guess,” I cut him off. “You needed the money because one of your family members was sick.”
James’s face twisted in shock, his entire expression opening up, unlocking like a safe. “My mother needed surgery on her hip. How did you know?”
Judith and I exchanged looks. Atonement. I was hers, and she was mine.
She thought she could never love.
I thought I didn’t deserve love, and even if I did, I’d never find anyone half tolerable to spark this feeling in me.
“Just a wild guess.” I rubbed my hand over my face.
Judith bit on her lower lip, and my dick jerked to attention again. Really? Right now?
James looked between the two of us. “I went in the next day and got the job. I couldn’t believe my luck. I found out not long after that your mother was married, and she acted like I didn’t even exist anymore, which in retrospect I don’t exactly fault her for. She was in a very vulnerable state…”
I wasn’t Mathias’s son.
All this time, I’d thought I was inherently an asshole because of him, but really, I was more of a sociopath prick, like Maman.
The similarities were uncanny, much to my dismay.
“When did you find out about me?” I cut off his fluff-talk.
I hadn’t come here to hear about his journey as a junior anchor at LBC.
James reached for his drink and gulped it in one go, shaking his head and slamming the glass against the silver tray. He wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his robe.
“Your mother came to me about ten weeks after. She knew it was mine because she and Mathias weren’t…” He shook his head. “He’d cheated on her. She hadn’t wanted to be with him.”
I appreciated him not talking explicitly about anyone fucking Maman. That was one mental image I was happy to keep out of my brain.
“I told her I’d love to be a part of your life. I want you to know that not having you was never an option for either of us. But at the same time, your mother had decided to give her relationship with Mathias another shot, and she knew they could never explain such an arrangement to the press…”
“So Mathias knows?” I nearly laughed, though there was nothing funny about my situation. I was sitting in front of my biological father, a man I’d known all my life and hated for a decade, as I’d worked side by side with him for most of my adult years. He’d always called me son, and I’d always berated him for it. He’d tried to get close to me, but I’d repeatedly shut him down. He’d tried to talk to me, but I’d kept sending him on his way.
James bowed his head. “He knows. We were frank with him from the beginning. He was livid, of course—tried to get me fired. But by then, I had gained some momentum, and LBC was still working its way up. They needed me, and I needed them. But yes, Mathias knew about you. That’s why he could never stomach your presence.”
I smiled bitterly, though there was something liberating in knowing it wasn’t personal. It wasn’t specifically something I’d done. I’d grown up thinking I was so rotten, I’d become rotten. This changed everything. Mostly it changed how I looked at myself in the mirror.
Judith snuggled beside me, rubbing my arm.
“Mathias’s approach to you has always been the center of my beef with him. Every Christmas, at our network party, I would beg your mother to tell you about me. And every single Christmas, the layer of security and fake-friends padding her and blocking my way grew thicker. I couldn’t tell you this of my own accord. But I watched you grow from afar, and every night when I tucked Phoenix into bed, I prayed that one day I’d be able to make up for it with you.”
I couldn’t really articulate a response to that. I got why James hadn’t been able to tell me he was my father. At the same time, I thought he was probably exaggerating the level of remorse he’d experienced. He was still newly married to a woman half his age and had dumped his previous wife because he’d wanted to go on a Celebrity Big Brother-like adventure. Still. James was self-absorbed and egotistical, but he wasn’t a goddamn bastard like Mathias.
I blinked at him, checking my watch. “Safe to say it’s too late for you to tuck me into bed. You realize I’m going straight to my mother with this, correct?”
My loyalty was to no one but Judith and myself at this point. And it didn’t escape me that I’d just put Jude’s name before my own.
James rubbed his face. “She can’t hurt me more than the hidden truth did.”
Tou-fucking-ché.
I jerked my chin toward him. “You hired Dan. Tell me everything about how this came to be.”
James didn’t spare one detail.
He said he’d had a feeling Mathias was beginning to shit on our quality in a bid to damage the network a second before he disappeared off the radar. He needed to tend to his health, and he seemed to know he didn’t have much longer on the president throne. Hoping to counteract this, James had had the same feeling I did—that Dan was motivated by money and could be a good free agent. James also confessed that with Phoenix back in town and my engagement crumbling, he wanted to make sure I was protected against Mathias.
“Precisely,” I said. “But all the shit Dan discovered still doesn’t cover my ass against Mathias. You gave me nothing but hearsay.”
James’s eyes darkened, and he suddenly looked much older than his days. “We can let others do the job for us. Just send it to the different networks,” he suggested. “Let the problem fix itself. He’ll have to step down.”
I appreciated it, him trying to help me out. But there was no need.
I shook my head. “LBC would take an even greater hit if we do that.”
“But we can’t just let Mathias get away with it.” Jude squeezed my hand. A sweet gesture from my greatest sin.
I turned toward her, a smirk maneuvering its way across my face. “We won’t.”
