Bound As His Business-Deal Bride

His hands gripped the steering wheel hard. He parked the car, wrenched the door open and hurled himself out, slamming the door behind him. No, not his dad. Had both of his parents kept the secret, or was Gus ignorant? It was as if the people he’d loved his whole life, were now strangers to him.

He stood outside the front doors of his family home and looked up at the expansive portico above. When he’d been younger he’d seen this place as his heritage. All lies. His world was steeped in them so deeply he couldn’t see the truth for the darkness anymore. Couldn’t see any way out as everything he’d believed and known crumbled around him.

For so many years, he’d thought he’d known the enemy. Eve. Visions of her demanding better. Handing back the ring. Walking with her head held high out the door, that was a gaping wound he was sure would never heal. Yet again she’d left him. But she’d only been a bit player in this game, and he couldn’t process that pain right now. His enemies had turned out to be closer to home. The one place he’d believed he was safe from lies and it turned out even here truth was lacking.

What was left for him now? He’d been conducting this quest for revenge on behalf of a family that wasn’t even his. Every foundation he’d built his life on was an illusion. He didn’t even know who he was.

He grabbed his keys to the house and opened the front door. Maybe he should give them back, since it didn’t feel he had any rights here. This place had once been the happiest of homes. That had changed when Eve had left, the estate containing too many memories of her presence, so he rarely visited. Now he wondered whether there was reason to visit ever again.

His father would likely be in the den, so Gage made his way there, everything passing by in an amorphous blur. He was an imposter, with no place here. As he walked, he tamped down the sensation that grabbed his throat and squeezed till he reached the doorway. There the choking feeling increased till there was hardly enough air to fill his lungs. The man he’d once believed to be his father, a man he’d looked up to and admired as honest and good in a world full of fakes, glanced up, saw him. A smile broke out on his face as he stood.

‘Gage! What are you doing here? We weren’t expecting you.’ His father looked happy after his break away. A prelude to retirement and handing over the reins of a company Gage wasn’t sure he wanted any longer. Then the smile stuttered, died. Replaced by the tight mask of disapproval unvoiced. ‘Is Eve with you?’

The wound in his heart opened and bled a little more. While this place held too many memories, his parents had been the bedrock of his life. He’d always pitied Eve’s family and the conditional love she’d been shown. Now all he could do was stare.

He wasn’t this man’s child. If that dirty secret hadn’t been kept, he and Eve could have been together. All that had gone before came down to this. His family’s secrets and lies were the cause. His father, because he didn’t know what else to call him, frowned.

‘Son. What’s wrong? Are the Chevaliers causing trouble? Has Eve...?’

He could hear the unfinished sentence. Has Eve left you again? How could he say what was wrong when everything was now over? It was too much to articulate. Eve had gone. He didn’t know who the people who he’d once called his parents were anymore. His whole world had shifted and tilted, as if he’d woken up in an alternate dimension.

‘I’m not your son, am I?’

He didn’t know how he got the words out. They cut at his throat like ground glass. His father paled.

‘What do you mean?’ For a few moments Gage almost hoped that his father didn’t know. That at least one of his parents hadn’t been part of the duplicity. But the man who had always looked him straight in the eye now wouldn’t meet his gaze.

‘I’m. Not. Your. Son.’

Gus’s legs gave way and he fell back into the leather chair. He buried his face in his hands. After a few moments he looked up at Gage, eyes moist with tears.

‘How did you find out?’

Gage shut his own eyes for a moment as the words struck him with the force of a blow. Gus could not have hurt him more if he’d hit him. A punch would have been preferable.

‘Does it matter?’

The final conversation with Eve screamed loudly in his ears. Then her rejection. Nothing mattered, with his world collapsing around him.

‘No. It doesn’t. Because you have always been my son.’ The lines on Gus’s face were etched deeper now, like his father had aged twenty years in a matter of moments. Gone was the strong man, the head of their small family. This man was a ghost. ‘You were my son the day you were born.’

Gage shook his head, stabbed his finger at the air in front of him. ‘But you’re not my father.’

Gus flinched. Stood again. Walked out from behind the old oak desk that Gage had once been destined to inherit. ‘I took you fishing for bass. I taught you how to cast. We went to Little League together. I was with you every step as you pieced back together the heart a damned Chevalier shredded. I loved you then. I still love you, and you will always be my son.’

They sounded like fine words, but now it was all just a charade. His father glanced over his shoulder, a crease forming between his brows, pain written all over his face. Pain he’d last seen when Gus had bailed him out of a jail cell with a broken nose and terror in his heart. Pain Gage didn’t give a damn about right now.

Let them all suffer. Let it all burn.

‘Darling, it’s lovely to see you...’ His shoulders sagged. His mom. At least he knew one parent here was his. Gage didn’t turn to look at her. She’d hidden as much from him as the man in front of him had.

‘Betty, he knows.’

His mom stepped forward into his peripheral vision and grabbed the back of the chair in front of her.

‘Darling.’ Her voice was the barest of whispers. ‘Please understand...’

He didn’t want to hear. In this room the lies were the cause of all his hurts.