“That was before he used his cancer to pit my sons against each other. A mother’s wrath you do not want. And on that note, I’m going back to bed, but a word for the wise that I know you know, but might forget with Emily: everyone is not who or what they seem, and once someone is in your bed, they’re dangerously close to you. Watch your back with that woman.”
She ends the call.
I can’t stand squealers …
—Albert Anastasia
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
SHANE
I slide my phone into my pocket and wait for my mother’s warning about Emily to hit a nerve, my brother’s words replaying in my mind: I know who’s in my corner. I wonder if you do. He’d meant to make me question everyone around me but my distrust doesn’t go to Emily for one minute. My instincts are, and have always been, razor sharp, and I trust her. My mother is another story, and her hiring a mistress for my father proves her to be conniving in ways, as a young man, I wasn’t willing to see. Whatever the case, Emily deserves to know what she’s in the middle of now, not later.
Exiting the kitchen into the foyer, I note she is absent, and I head toward the stairs to find her sitting on the bottom step, her long, brown hair disheveled, as if she’s had her hands in it, a collection of mixed-sized paper bags around her. “What are you doing?” I ask, going down on a knee in front of her.
“I can’t go with you to see that apartment. Someone could see us who shouldn’t and I can’t get fired until I have another job. As it is, I was worried your father would be back here with that woman and see me last night. I wasn’t thinking this morning, but that could have happened if I left and came back too.”
“That’s why I suggested I drive you, rather than walk.”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“It didn’t feel like the right time, but I was about to talk about this when the doorbell interrupted us.”
“The truth is, I am hiding from some things in my life, trying to start fresh, and I can’t hide from this too. A weekend here, with you, is an escape, but it can’t be the reason I lose a job I need. And I can’t do this anymore. We can’t do this anymore.”
My hands settle on the bare skin of her knees just beneath my shirt. “You’re not going to get fired.”
“If your father finds out—”
“He’ll be amused,” I say.
“Amused?” she asks, her brow furrowing.
“He’s intentionally pitted me and Derek against each other and now he sits back and watches, all but holding a bucket of popcorn. Bottom line, if he finds out, he’ll think I’m using you to feed me information about his activities and my brother’s. In other words, a point on the scoreboard for me. That’s what Derek has already assumed.”
Her eyes go wide. “Your brother knows?”
“Yes. I knew he would the minute you came here last night. That’s what my mother called to tell me.”
“Oh my God. Your mother knows too.” She presses her hand to her belly. “I feel sick.”
I reach for her hand, and close mine around it. “This does not affect your job.”
“I cannot even comprehend the words coming out of your mouth.”
I laugh and she is not pleased.
“This is not funny,” she hisses. “This is beyond outrageous.”
“My family is fucked up, Emily.”
“Won’t Derek get me fired?”
“He’s planning to feed you fake information about his takeover plans to give to me.”
“And you know this because of your mother?”
“Exactly.”
“You’re right. Your family really is fucked up.”
“They are, but there’s a light at the end of this tunnel. Frankly, this helps us both.”
“I’m back to the part where I don’t understand the words coming out of your mouth. Because if this is true, I won’t be able to give you proper information.”
I blink, stunned at her reaction. “You aren’t going to question my motives?”
“Are you kidding me? The more I get to know your family, the more I’m amazed you ever gave me a chance to prove I wasn’t working for them.”
“The truth was in your eyes,” I say softly.
“And yours,” she says. In the moments that follow, it is as if trust takes shape in a delicate slice of glass too fragile at this point to be called unbreakable. The fact that this trust is more than I have