Page 31

Today Ezra has other shit to worry about.

•••

Despite working untilalmost midnight at the office, I still manage to drag myself out of bed at eight in the morning the following day to head to my parents’ house. I woke up to Alexander practically demanding that I do so, and if I know anything about Alexander Hart, it’s that absence definitely doesnotmake the heart grow fonder. Delaying the inevitable will only make it that much worse when I finally face it.

I tell Rita good morning as she waters my mother’s flowers in the foyer when I step inside the too-large house. It’s always been too big for us, I think idly, following the marble tiles through the front of the house.

“Oh, Ezra,” my mother calls from the kitchen. “I didn’t know you were coming today.”

I halt my steps toward my father’s office to duck back into the other room, finding my mother at the kitchen table with her journal. I bend to press a kiss to her hair, which is a dark wheat color similar to mine, only just starting to gray at her temples. “Morning, Mom.”

“Good morning, darling,” she says with a bright smile. Her eyes look clear. This must be a lucid day. “I’ve missed you. You didn’t come to dinner last week.”

“Sorry…work has been busy.”

She clucks her tongue. “You’re just like Eli and your father. Always working.”

I’m nothing like them.

“Well, someone has to keep the firm running,” I tease.

Her green eyes crinkle at the corners, and for a moment everything is normal. There’s no live-in nurse watering the flowers inthe other room, no bastardized version of a father down the hall in his office. It’s just my mother and me and her smile.

She reaches to pat my cheek. “Your hair is getting so long. You should let me cut it.”

“Now, Ms. Hart,” Rita interrupts, ruining the moment. “You know you can’t have scissors.”

The flash of pain is brief in my mother’s face, but I see it. I wish I didn’t, but I do.

“I’ll make an appointment for a trim soon,” I assure her. “I really have just been busy.”

Rita comes up beside us to settle her hand against Mom’s shoulder. “It’s time for your morning meds, Ms. Hart. Do you want orange juice or tea?”

“Juice is fine,” my mother answers softly, her eyes far away now.

I swallow against the lump in my throat, pressing another kiss to her hair. “Talk soon, Mom. Okay?”

She nods meekly. “Of course, dear.”

I have to take a moment back out in the hall, the urge to stomp down to Alexander’s office and cause him bodily harm ever present. But there are a dozen reasons why I can’t do that, and one of them is sitting in the other room.

I find him just where I expected to, perched in his giant wingback chair surveying documents on his desk as if he’s looking at lands to be conquered. For all I know, he might be. Alexander Hart views everything as something to be conquered.

“Sit down,” he says.

As far as greetings from him go, it could be worse.

I plop down into one of the chairs on the other side of his desk, lacing my fingers together in my lap just to have something to hold on to. I wait several minutes for him to finish whatever he’sdoing, knowing that interrupting will only spur him to make me wait longer. I can’t say how much time passes before he gives me his attention, but his cold blue eyes find mine with thatlookhe reserves only for me, as if I am a disappointment waiting to happen.

“So, yesterday didn’t go as planned,” he says dryly.

“Yeah, no shit.”

He narrows his eyes. “Watch your tone. It’s unfortunate that you didn’t predict Bianca knowing about the account.”

I actually balk. “I’m sorry? I was supposed to anticipate Lorenzo’s wife knowing about a secret account that I wasn’t even privy to? Is it your goal to have me try this case with one arm tied behind my back, or did it just conveniently slip your mind to tell me the man has been paying some woman for almost thirty years?”

“We didn’t think it was information Bianca could gain access to, therefore we didn’t deem it relevant to disclose.”