It's not my shoulder this time, but the recall of the past. “I gave up on him and forgot all about him. That’s why I have no idea where he is or what happened to him.”
“Brandon.” The word falls from her lips like a dying petal from flower.
“I hate myself for it.” I wince and inhale a breath. It hurts. Everything hurts. It hurts all over. “I—I …” The words, the truth of what I have done, that doesn’t come as easily.
“Don't talk, rest. We have all the time in the world to talk and you can tell me later, Brandon. I'm not going anywhere, but first you must rest and get better.”
She’s not going anywhere, and because it’s Kyra, I know she’s not lying. Her word means something.
I can rest now; now that she is here, but every time I close my eyes the doubt rises like a threatening cobra. I can’t help but remember Neville’s words, and the off the cuff remark he made about setting the factory on fire. That greedy son of a bitch didn't like what I said about not going ahead with my plans for Greenways. I wouldn’t put it past him to do something like that. I stopped him from tampering with Kyra's books. He hates her. I know what desperate men do for money and how greed corrupts. I was one of those men once.
He blames her for me giving up on this. Because he stands to lose a lot of money. Setting fire to the factory would be a way of hurting Kyra, her business, and ultimately me.
Son of a bitch.
Chapter Fifty-One
KYRA
“Philip Hawks saved me from one nightmare only to plunge me into another. I never looked for Kane after that.” Brandon recounts what his adoptive father said to him when he had dared to ask when they could go and get Kane.
My heart has broken into pieces listening to Brandon’s story. He tells me slowly, in little snippets, as if he can only deal with small fragments of it at a time. I don’t push him, but listen.
“I let my brother down.”
“You didn’t. None of it was your fault. Your father is a billionaire, but a cruel one.” I don’t want to judge, but I don’t understand why a rich man couldn’t adopt Brandon and his brother.
“He only wanted to replace the son he’d lost.”
Philip Hawks isn’t just cruel, he sounds almost psychotic. No wonder Brandon grew up the way he did, thinking that money was the answer to everything. I can’t find the right words to say.
“I was the older brother,” he says, “I’d always protected him, but then I was shown a better life, and I forgot all about him.”
Every time Brandon tells me something about his past, it’s like he’s taken a six inch needle and pierced it through my heart. My suffering is after the fact; he’s the one who lived it for real. “You didn’t choose to forget him, you did it because you had to survive. It wasn't your fault,” I remind him gently.
“But I never even looked for him once.” He scrubs his hands across his face in anguish. I take one of his hands and move it away, so that I can look into his eyes.
“Don’t do that. Don’t beat yourself up about this.”.
“I told myself Kane was doing just fine without me, and I convinced myself not to look for him because it would mess things up for him.”
“Maybe you were right.”
He lowers his head. “Looking him up would mean having to face who I was and what I had done.”
“Your father gave you an ultimatum when you were a scared little boy, he prevented you from doing anything about Kane, but there's nothing stopping you looking for him now, Brandon.” The name is new to my lips, but I’m getting used to it.
He looks pensive. “I guess there isn’t.”
We’re sitting at the large dining table at his place, with him looking through the newspapers while I check my work emails on my laptop.
The newspapers have blown up and we both find ourselves in unfamiliar situations. Brandon doesn't court publicity and I'm caught up in it for the wrong reasons. He’s in the papers for rescuing children from a fire, and because of who he is—the heir to the Hawks empire—there is so much interest in him. I’m his love interest, according to the press. But I don’t care about the press. I care about what Brandon tells me and every