“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.”
Then I became homeless.
I’d terminated my lease effective Sunday, the day I was supposed to fly out to Los Angeles. Only it was technically Monday morning now, and I was nowhere near the west coast. That meant I had to spend the night somewhere, and fortunately that place was Judith’s Brooklyn apartment.
To my cock’s disappointment, I slept on the couch. But it was still better than sleeping in a million-star hotel or at the Laurent Towers, which I couldn’t even look at after I’d learned what I had about Mathias not being my father.
I wasn’t the one who’d cheated on him.
Yet I was the one who’d taken most of his wrath.
In the morning, Judith made her father a shake from what looked like sewer water, puke, and misery, and slid a bowl of cereal my way. It wasn’t even a brand. It was poured right out of a six-pound industrial box with a Costco logo.