since I’d found her shivering away outside the science lab, she’d opened up some. I couldn’t say we hung out enough for my liking, but it was better than it had been before.
Smiling at the message, I quickly deleted it, even as I gave Freddie another kiss, and told him, “Eat your banana.”
He grumbled, but unlike with Maria, who’d been harping on at him to eat it for the last twenty minutes to no avail, the second I asked, he complied.
My lips almost twitched at the kid’s good taste. Scrubbing a hand over his silky hair, I headed on out without another word to my wife.
Of course, she stormed after me.
When she reached for my arm and tugged at me, I frowned down at her. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I snarled, keeping my voice low as I looked back and made sure Freddie couldn’t see anything.
“I need to talk to you,” she snapped, “and seeing as you’re already one foot out of the damn door, I figured I’d better stop you.”
I scowled at her. “Don’t touch me again.”
Her mouth tightened. “What? You think I have some kind of disease or something?”
The slut probably did. But instead, I hissed, “You’re poison,” and shoved my face into hers until she backed up.
Her eyes flashed with outrage before she slammed down all expression. “Your brother called.”
I sniffed. “So?”
I had to wonder why the hell Cain was still in contact with Maria. If hers was one of the numbers he remembered, he had to be desperate. Shit, he’d almost gone to jail for statutory rape because of her—sometimes, I felt like I was the only one who remembered that.
My folks just swept over it, as well as what she’d done to Thea, like she was innocent simply because she’d pushed Freddie out into the world. Well, she wasn’t. He was the only good thing she’d ever done with her miserable life.
“So?” she demanded, busting into my thoughts. “He’s your brother. Don’t you care—”
“Don’t I care? What? That he trapped me with you? Yeah, I care about that.”
Her top lip curled in a snarl. “He wants to talk to you.”
“I’m sure he wants to shower without an audience and take a shit without the rest of his cell smelling it, unfortunately for him, we don’t always get what we want.”
I pulled away from her, from those nails that had dug into my forearm. Spiky and shiny. They were like claws. I thought about Thea’s hands. Her plain, unadorned hands. So small and soft, the nails low, without artifice.
Just like her.
Inside, I shuddered, hating that I was attached to this harpy until Cain was free.
I pulled away from her and headed toward the door where I saw a pile of letters waiting to be sorted through.
Surprise hit me when I saw some from colleges, but, more importantly, it surprised me to see one from my father’s law firm—Janus, McKendrick, and McKendrick.
Far as I knew, I had no business with them, but curiosity had me opening that one first, even over the Stanford letter.
I knew, for a fact, that was where Thea was going, and it was why I wanted to attend Stanford too. But lawyers didn’t often write to eighteen-year-old kids.
Not without good reason.
So that took precedence.
My heart in my throat, I tore open the envelope and scanned through the letter.
It took me three reads before my heart stopped pounding, and when I finally processed that I wasn’t in court for something I didn’t even know I’d done, I recognized that the letter was actually good news.
“What is it?”
Maria’s interference had me shooting her a scowl over my shoulder.
“Nothing.” Without another word, I strolled out of the house, carrying on reading the long ass crap that essentially meant my grandfather, though he’d been a hard ass, had rocked harder than I even knew.
I had a trust fund that I could access upon graduating high school.
When I saw the amount, two hundred and fifty thousand, glee filled me. There was a helluva lot I could do with that kind of cash, and I knew where I was going to start too.
Guessing I had my answer as to why Cain was trying to call me, I had to bet that he’d received the same goddamn letter. So, my first step was to ignore the hell out of his calls more than I already did. Next, I was going to purchase some property nearby. Something small. Something shitty, then, hopefully, I’d redecorate the place, build