The Best of Winter Renshaw - An 8 Book Collection - Winter Renshaw Page 0,280

talking about? You aren’t making any sense.”

She sips her cocktail, which is now mostly finished. “I don’t feel the need to get into specifics with you.”

“You can’t say something like that and expect me to let it go.”

“Of course I can, darling.” She sniffs. “Anyway, I just came by to tell you Errol was extremely hurt at the way you shunned him at Larissa’s memorial today. He had every intention of making amends and then you just … brushed him off in front of all those people. Hurtful and humiliating. And on such a painful day.”

I smirk, replaying that scene from the memorial in my mind’s eye: walking up to offer my mother a show of support, pretending I hadn’t noticed Errol standing there, hands in the pockets of his skinny suit pants as he rocked back and forth on the heels of his freshly-shined Ferragamo Oxfords.

This isn’t about Errol or the rift. This boils down to the fact that a few of her high society friends noticed the real-time cold war between the Schoenbach brothers, and she’s worried people are going to talk.

My mother toys with the oversized buttons on her wool jacket before tucking her satin clutch beneath her arm and eyeing the door.

My phone buzzes again, this time with a text from a friend waiting to meet me for drinks.

“Wait,” I say, thinking back to the bizarre call from the social worker. “Did Larissa have a daughter?”

Mother comes to a hard stop, hand clasping at her chest, though she keeps her back to me—a peculiar reaction for a woman who’s always been unflinching to the core.

“Answer the question.” I pace toward her, positioning myself in front of the door so she’s forced to look me in the eye.

She glances at the marble foyer floor, mouth tittering.

“Mother.” My voice is stern. I can be just as unrelenting as her, if not more so.

Her petite shoulders lift and fall as she flattens her scarlet lips. “I told you, Bennett. I’ve cleaned up a few of her messes over the years, and not once did I breathe a word of them to any of you. What’s the point of dredging any of it up now?”

“So it’s true.” I straighten my spine. “She has a kid.”

My mother rolls her eyes, sips the last of her vodka cranberry, and places the empty glass on a crystal coaster near the bar. She knows I’m not going to let this go.

“I had everything arranged.” Her tongue clucks as if she’s annoyed all over again. “I’d arranged for her to live in a nice condo in Minneapolis for the remainder of the pregnancy, and I’d found a lovely family who were going to adopt the baby—a Stanford-educated surgeon and his beautiful wife. Larissa was to have the baby, sign it over, and return to Chicago to finish her degree and it’d be like nothing had happened …” She swallows. “But then she changed her mind. She wanted to keep the baby. Said she couldn’t go through with it. Something about knowing how it felt to be discarded or some nonsense like that. Anyway, she came back to Chicago and she had that baby with her, and I did what I had to do.”

“What did you do, Mother?”

Her gray eyes flick on to mine. “I disowned her. Cut her off. Told her I was done helping her in every sense of the word. That it was time she learned to stand on her own feet. Next thing I know, she’s getting mixed up with the wrong crowd all over again, and well, you know what came of all of that.”

“That’s cold.” And I say that as one of the coldest bastards ever to breathe this Windy City air.

“Don’t judge me,” she spits, face scrunched. “I did what I had to do to protect this family. To protect the Schoenbach name. To keep our bloodline synonymous with quality and exclusivity.”

“We’re not a goddamned brand, Mother. We’re human fucking beings.”

The sting of her slap warms my left cheek, but I resist the urge to soothe the pain with my palm. It’ll pass.

“Watch your tone with me, Bennett.” She retracts her hand, nursing it against her heaving chest. I imagine the slap hurt her more than it hurt me. “And don’t you dare make me the villain in this.”

“I certainly wouldn’t call you the hero.”

Cinching her lapels between her fingers, she opens her mouth to say something and then stops herself, giving me a once over.

I step aside and