I had given her, now dull, dangled from the necklace. I was shocked to see it, my heart bursting at the thought of what it meant. She had cared all this time. The same way I had cared for her.
“You still wear it?”
“I never took it off. It was the one thing I had that was still real. Well, that and this.” She pulled out a set of keys, held together with a strip of leather I recognized. I took them from her and touched the leather, thinking of her expression when I’d snapped the cuff onto my wrist, swearing never to take it off. Another promise I failed to keep because of that bastard.
“Why did you come back?” I asked.
She looked sad. “My mom grew up here. She missed it.” She swallowed, her gaze on her hands. “Uncle Pete died. Then she got sick, Linc. She wanted to come back. We had seen the news that your father died, and it had been so long, we figured most people would have forgotten us. The girls were busy and happy, getting ready for university, and I wasn’t attached to anything or anyone out east, so I brought her back.” Her voice became thick. “She died last year.”
“Sunny,” I murmured and dragged her back into my arms. She came easily, fitting against me. “I am so sorry,” I said, kissing her crown, my eyes damp. “Your mom was always good to me.”
“She liked you. Even after everything, she always insisted there was more to the story than we knew.”
“I’m glad she thought enough of me to think that.”
“What happened, Linc? Why did you come back?”
“My father brought me back after I turned nineteen. He thought I was broken, that I would toe the line. He didn’t expect me to have done my homework and to beat him at his own game.”
She frowned, confused.
“It was all about money, Sunny. The money my mother left me. My father always led me to believe there was just a little money waiting for me when I turned nineteen. Nothing of significance. But I had seen the paperwork. He had left it out once in error. There were millions, and the way it was invested, it kept growing. He planned on me signing it over to him, and then he’d get rid of me. Some job somewhere where I’d be none the wiser and he wouldn’t care what I did, or who I did it with. He could keep an eye on me but be rid of me at the same time. He really thought I was that stupid and that broken. But I knew about the money, and the years I spent in that place taught me a few things. I found out ways to get around the stipulations that kept me locked down, with the help of a few friends. As soon as I was back, I contacted my mother’s lawyer, and we were ready. I met with my father just to watch the expression on his face when he realized I knew.”
I stood and paced. “I walked away from him and started my own company. Just like him, I kept myself hidden, but I did the opposite of what he had done all those years.”
“What do you mean?”
I perched on the edge of the desk. “I started buying up properties here in town and gifting them to people he’d been screwing for so long. I used every resource I had and killed every deal he tried to make. News of his double-crossing started to spread. Word leaked out—I made sure of it. I bought every run-down home there was in this town and rebuilt them, employing the people he put out of work. I made rents in the new places lower, and people flocked to them. His places were empty. I picked them up for a song and did it again. I used every dirty trick he had ever utilized to take away the two things that ever mattered to him. Power and money. Without power, the money dwindled until he was struggling and starting to lose everything he had. He died before it happened. I took over the estate and tripled the wealth.”
“The park,” she stated, already knowing the answer.
“Yes, that was for you.”
Her eyes glimmered, and we shared a smile.
“Did he know?” she asked quietly. “That it was you?”
“Yeah, he did. The rest of the world, no. But him? Yes.” I studied her. “In some ways, I’m like him, Sunny. I