She nods. “So…I guess if I’m going to tempt your brother into losing his mind, I need to know about him.”
I nod. Down to business. I can respect that, even if I’d rather keep things between us personal. “Griff—Griffin, which he hates—is three years younger than me. He’s almost my doppelgänger. But of course I’m way more awesome.” I flash her a cheesy grin.
“I had no doubt.” She rolls her eyes. “What is he like?”
The fact that I’m not good at reading people does not help me with this question. “Um…”
“What does he like to do? What are his hobbies? What does he value? What are his goals?”
I frown. Three years is a long time, and I don’t know how much his interests might have changed. After he left, I tried to close my memories of him away into a little box and nail that sucker shut. The knowledge feels rusty.
“He likes to succeed as much as I do. He’s better at socializing, so he’ll put on a gregarious face and act like your best fucking friend. But under the facade, he’s a ruthless bastard, too. Like me, he’ll crush anyone in his way. He values hard work and everything that comes with it—money, success, beauty… If I had to guess, his number one goal is to beat me.”
“So how is he different than you?”
Good question. We had roughly the same upbringing, with a mother who didn’t know how to control two rambunctious boys, so she gave up trying, and the same asshole of a father, who didn’t mind doing whatever it took to squeeze the most out of us.
“Up until he walked out, I would have told you Griff was the most loyal bastard imaginable. The one time I saw him love, he went full throttle—hard and open. He didn’t care what anyone thought.” Well, except our dad.
“And that bothered you?”
I shrug as I finish the last of my dinner. “I didn’t think about it. I didn’t love. Too much of a weakness, so I overcame it. I don’t know if Griff ever did.”
Keeley looks totally horrified by my answer. “Who told you love was a weakness?”
“Dear old Dad. If you think I’m a raving son of a bitch, you ought to meet him.”
She frowns as if she would rather not. “So you think Griff loved Britta?”
“I would have sworn he did, but it didn’t matter in the end. I’m sure he thought that, as my assistant, Britta was in on the secret deal I was working at the time, the one he thought I took to undercut him. But she didn’t know about it, either. I gave her some tasks associated with the purchase, but I never told her the client’s name or the address of the residence. She was totally in the dark.”
“You’re right. He should have asked questions, but if your father only taught you disdain for love…”
“That might be an understatement. He told us both from the time we were kids to learn from his mistake and to marry only if a woman upped our stock. If she brought cash or a pedigree to the marriage, that was logical. But love did nothing except give a man an Achilles’ heel enemies could use against us.”
At her look of horror, I’m almost embarrassed by my upbringing. Most people would be jealous. Big house, gated community, the best schools, all the new toys and gadgets, trips, money, opportunities. I was full of first-world problems.
“It wasn’t that bad.”
“It doesn’t sound good,” she contradicts. “So his marriage to your mom isn’t…happy.”
I scoff, then snag a swig of wine. “No. Dad has had more mistresses than new ties over the years.”
“Do you resent him for it?”
Interesting question. “I don’t know. It just is. I don’t like him for it. I think…” I sigh, grappling for a way to explain my family. “I first found out about his extracurricular sex life when I was eight. I’d done really well on a math test he had warned me not to fail. After school, instead of going home, I convinced a friend’s mom we carpooled with that I had to go to my dad’s office. I pleaded some emergency. When I got there, I barged in and found his secretary on her knees in front of his massive office chair, her head bobbing in his lap. They jumped apart guiltily.” I close my eyes, still remembering how much that day shattered the boy I once was. “He wore a ring of her lipstick around his dick.”
Keeley holds her breath. “What did you do?”
“My friend’s mom dropped me off in front of my house, but I ran to the nearby park instead and hid. I didn’t make it home until almost midnight.”
She braces a hand over her heart, and I can almost feel her worry. “Your parents must have been worried sick.”
“I was too pissed to care. A neighbor finally found me.” I’d been hiding between two bushes, dry eyed and hungry and confused as hell. At that age, I wasn’t precisely sure what my father was doing with that other woman, but I knew it was wrong. “When I got home, my mother screamed out her anger that I worried her for nothing before she retreated to bed. Once we were alone, my father sat me down and told me not to be a righteous little pussy about what I’d seen that afternoon. Then he took a conference call with someone in China. We never spoke about it again.”
“Did you ever tell your mom what you saw?”
I shake my head. “You have to understand… I was a kid who wanted to please the father who never seemed to have time for me. I thought keeping his secret—and a lot of the others I learned about over the years—might make him care more. Besides, I think my mom knew and tattling would have been merely rubbing her face in all her misery.”
“Does Griff know what kind of man your father is?”
“Of course,” I assure her. “He figured it out a few years later when he discovered Dad banging his third-grade teacher.”
Keeley pushes her bowl away, shaken. “I can’t imagine… My father loved us with all his heart. The day he passed away, he squeezed my mother’s hand in his hospital bed, kissed my forehead, and promised her that his love for us was deathless, even if he wasn’t. He was a good man. Despite having remarried a few years ago, my mom still wears a locket with his picture around her neck. I miss him.”
Tears shimmer in her eyes. The memory is one she holds close to her heart. She’s proud to wear the emotion on her face.
I’m not the enemy, but if I was, she just exposed a big chink in her armor. Does she know that? Or does she trust me enough not to use her feelings against her?
I like that idea.
“And mine is a selfish, womanizing pig. Griff and I saw a thousand instances of that as teenagers. When we were little kids, he seemed to take delight in watching us twist and contort, trying to please him. But when we interned with him a few summers, we bonded over our dislike of the way he treated us. We swore we’d never be anything like him.”
Yet I fear he’s exactly who we’ve both become.
Our shared boyhood crap held us together until three years ago, when that goddamn deal with the freaking Middle Eastern prince splintered our pact into a thousand pieces. If I’m being really honest, I’ve been somewhat lost since.
“I’m getting the picture,” she murmured. “Did you try to talk to your brother after he left?”
“Sure. I thought someone had stolen money from our bank and broken into our office at first. I called him that morning he didn’t show up for work. He answered with ‘Fuck off, you backstabbing shitbag’ and hung up. So I went to his place. He lives in a guarded complex. He told the guard there to advise me that I was no longer welcome.”
That’s one memory I would rather forget, driving over to Griff’s building and trying to reason with security as the pounding rain soaked my freshly starched shirt thirty minutes before I was supposed to FaceTime this royal prick every square inch of the property he was signing for later that day. Security wouldn’t budge, and I drove away soaked and confused and fucking sad.
“That’s it?”
“What else did you want me to do? He wouldn’t see me. He wouldn’t see Britta, even when she sent a letter to his house to tell him that he would be a father in seven months. He just cut us cold.”
/> Keeley pauses, and I see the wheels in her head turning. “Then came his nasty e-mail with the pictures of him and Tiffanii naked?”
“Yeah, and there was nothing to say after that.”
She nods. It’s a lot to absorb, and it sounds as if she had a really awesome childhood with parents who loved her. No wonder she’s not really grasping all the baggage from mine.
“It’s safe to say that your dad’s behavior affected Griff, too?”