Cruel Legacy (Cruel 3)

What else could be lurking under the seemingly perfect exterior?

I knew what this meant. I knew the implications of this. Even if nothing else was wrong. Even if Warren was in tip-top shape, doing everything by the book. This would hurt. This could shake the foundation of the company. A lengthy investigation could halt business growth. Investors could back out. Stocks would drop. They’d lose millions over this article. If the investigation found something else, they could lose the company.

Katherine’s father had lost his in the same way. One investigation had shown the years of securities fraud that proved that Van Pelt was rotten to the core. We’d all known. We’d been there in high school when it all came crumbling down.

I picked up the phone without a thought and dialed Lewis’s number. I might hate him for all he’d done, but…I was still compelled to contact him.

I was more surprised that he answered.

“Kensington,” Lewis said crisply.

“I just heard.”

“Here to gloat?” he asked in a soft voice. Not deadly like I’d expect, but beaten down. Like he’d lost some part of him that had always been there. An overconfidence.

“No. I called to check on you.”

Lewis scoffed in disbelief. “I’m fine,” he bit out. “Stuck at my parents’. It’s a media shitstorm. They’ve parked their vulture asses outside my place and theirs, just waiting for the carnage.”

“So…is it true?”

“You going to sell my answer to the highest bidder?”

“As if I need the money,” I joked.

He laughed slightly at my comment. “Yeah, I suppose we’re still too fucked up with our own secrets for you to pull that shit.”

He wasn’t wrong. We’d always been bound in a tangled web of history and lies and secrets.

Muffled voices cracked through on his end.

“I have to go,” Lewis said. There was a pause, as if he wasn’t sure what to say. “I appreciate your call.”

And he meant it. I could hear it.

The line clicked off, and I stared down at it. What a fucked up world I lived in. How the hell could I sympathize with him about this and also want to slaughter him for the last year of bullshit?

I shut it out and texted Lark.

I read that article and just got off the phone with Lewis. He’s stuck at home with a media circus. Pretty fucked up.

You two actually spoke?! Who knew the world needed to end to accomplish this?

Ha. Ha.

Yeah, well, it’s been a rough couple of months. Anyway, the rest of the crew is meeting at Rowe’s after work. Come over and see the little people.

All right. But if it devolves again, then I’m out of there.

Lark responded with a GIF of Alice in Wonderland curtsying.

I checked the time. “Fuck,” I groaned. I was running behind for my lecture. I thrust my phone back in my pocket, grabbed my notes, and darted out of the room. It was a reprieve to have a full hour not to have to think about how I was going to break it to Natalie that I was seeing the crew again.

I decided to just send a text as I was walking into Rowe’s apartment. She wouldn’t like it either way, and I could hardly blame her for that. But I’d explained what the crew meant to me. How I could hate them and care for them in my own fucked up way. That they were family. More my family than the one I’d grown up with.

One of our own had been taken down. It felt wrong not to be together for that. Like we’d been together when Katherine’s father was put away. Or when her brother, David, had disappeared. Or when my father had died. Or for Lark’s ex-boyfriend’s bullshit.

The elevator dinged open to reveal the stark white interior of Rowe’s place. I had a sense of unease. The last time I’d been here, we’d had a fucking intervention. I’d gotten into it with both Lewis and Katherine. Lark, ever the peacemaker, had wanted us to all still be friends. We were connected. I felt that even now as I stepped inside to find Rowe seated at his computer and Lark staring out the window to Central Park and Katherine sipping a martini. Lark and Rowe looked the same. It was Katherine who looked a mess. It wasn’t her clothes or the makeup or the perfect dark hair. But something in her eyes. Something in her poise. Something lost. What the hell was going on with her? And should I even care?

There was an empty spot next to her on the couch where Lewis typically sat. It felt like a hole in the room.

“Penn,” Katherine said, looking me up and down, examining my dark blue suit coat, gray slacks, and bow tie. “How professorially of you.”

I dropped my leather messenger bag onto the white chair and undid the tie at my neck, letting the material hang loose. “It’s a uniform. As much as your…” I gestured to her designer dress and heels.