Page 26 of Best In Class (Savannah's Best #7)

Luna

I ’m floating.

For once, everything is working. The hospital project is ahead of schedule. Tommy has stopped being a sexist pain in my ass—well, mostly .

The team is clicking.

Savannah Lace is thriving.

And Dom… God , Dom.

He’s back in my life in the best possible way.

Not just the boy I used to love, but the man he’s become—steady, thoughtful, good.

That first date…the picnic! Oh, I’ll think about it on my deathbed. Not for the romance, but for the love. The ease of it. Like we’d finally found our way back to the same page.

I wake up smiling. Every day!

He hasn’t spent the night since our second date, but we’ve gotten to second and third base a few times. Once in his car .

We’re sexually frustrated! No question about it. But there’s a strange kind of freedom in it. As much as we want to give in, there’s something old-fashioned about this, like he’s courting me, and I’m courting him right back.

Dom texts me every morning, and even today—when I’d usually be in a piss-poor mood from dealing with my father—I’m smiling.

The sun is out.

I ate breakfast with Miss Abigail.

Dom said he loves me in a text message.

So, there’s a skip in my step when I walk into the Steele board meeting, a responsibility I take seriously, even though I wish I didn’t have it.

I show up to make it clear that I stand with my brother—and just as clearly, not with my father. Since the old weasel still has a seat on the board, I’m here to help steer the company’s strategy alongside Lev, and to make sure Daddy Dearest doesn’t screw it all up.

Our father almost ruined our legacy until Lev and I poured a significant portion of our trust funds into the business. The only saving grace is that Dad is now just a figurehead—he holds ten percent of the shares, and no real power.

The rest is split between Lev, me, and a handful of uncles and cousins.

But together, Lev and I own more than fifty percent of Steele Corporation. We control it.

“You’ve got to do something about this place, Lev. It’s…cold.” I look around the boardroom, which is all glass and co ncrete, part Nordic minimalism (which I like) and Soviet Union austere architecture (which I don’t).

“I’ve been told my sister is a hotshot architect, maybe she’d like to help out?” Lev suggests sarcastically.

I raise both my hands, palms out, shaking my head. “No way! I’m not mixing family and business.”

The room gets colder when my father enters. He nods at me, and I return the gesture.

Lev still talks to him, and more importantly, he still spends time with our mother. I don’t. She left me a long time ago, and I feel absolutely no responsibility or obligation to be there for her as she withers away in a haze of Xanax and Ambien, washed down with pinot grigio and regret.

Jennifer Steele is a ghost of the woman she never really tried to be.

Now, I have a whole lot of sympathy for addicts, but our mother isn’t your garden-variety drug abuser. Oh no—she’s wealthy, so she gets prescriptions, not interventions. She’s medicated in marble bathrooms and wears her dysfunction like a silk robe.

She wanders through life as Mrs. Steele of the Mayflower Steeles.

She laughs too loudly at parties—until someone gently, discreetly ushers her away. She flirts too hard with young men—until she’s hidden behind closed doors and whispered apologies.

She ignores her children. Always has.

One of my earliest memories of our mother is watching her get ready for a gala—dressed in gold sequins, spraying perfume into the air, and walking through it like it was a force field.

I remember standing in the doorway, barefoot and small, holding a crayon drawing I made of our house. She looked at me, blinked slowly, and said, “ Sweetheart, not now. Mama has to sparkle .”

Another time, I had a fever so high I couldn’t lift my head. Miss Abigail sat by my bed all night, placing cold cloths on my skin. Mama never even came to check.

That was how it was—being her daughter meant being dressed up for photographs, paraded for the Christmas card, and then sent off to be handled by someone else.

My father has mistresses. Yes, plural. That’s how he squandered some of the family money, the rest he blew up by being a pathetic CEO.

Mama spends her life pretending she doesn’t know about the blonde in the penthouse apartment in downtown Savannah, or the brunette in the cottage outside of Augusta, or the….

He cheats. She forgives. Actually, it’s worse than that. She behaves like it’s not happening.

She’s the reason I never want to be vulnerable. Didn’t want to need anyone. Because being born to someone who doesn’t really see you teaches you how to disappear before you even understand what it means to be present.

Lev and I have each other. So that’s something.

When we were kids, we were each other’s safe harbor. Then when Miss Abigail came to the estate, we got her and Dom. We became a family .

Until Dom cheated on me.

I suck in a breath as memory smashes against the reality that is my mother.

I won’t be like her.

Let it go, Luna. He’s not that boy anymore. He’s the man who adores you. He makes you happy. Let him love you.

The meeting starts and there is the usual blah, blah blah .

Lev’s already annoyed, flipping through his report while nodding at our CFO.

I keep quiet, listen, and vote when needed.

“Thank God, we don’t have to do this for another three months,” I say to Lev after the interminably long meeting as I prowl around his office while he’s finishing up something on his computer.

I’m waiting for him so we can go have dinner together.

Maybe Dom can join!

Lev’s office door opens and we both visibly stifle a groan. There’s only one person who’ll walk into the CEO’s office without knocking.

“Well, look, it’s my kids.”

“Dad, what do you want?” Lev demands.

Our father ignores my brother’s question and sits on one of the plush leather client chairs. “Good meeting today.”

“Good because Lev’s made the company profitable, or good because you weren’t sober but didn’t face plant on the table?” I muse aloud.

Lev let’s out a long breath.

“How are you doin’, Luna?” Dad asks, a little too cheerfully .

“I’m fine, Dad.”

“Good. Good. I hear Savannah Lace is building Tommy Minton’s hospital.”

“Dad, I’m busy,” Lev cuts in before I can respond.

I get volatile when our father is around, and my brother plays peacemaker.

Well, he is older than me by eleven months .

“And, I also hear you’re seeing that boy again,” Dad continues.

I clench my fists. The man knows how to push every goddamn button I have. “You know, Dad,” I say, voice like ice, “you wear your racism so boldly, it’s almost…quaint. And pathetic.”

He waves a hand, as if I’m making something out of nothing. “You’re so sensitive. I call him boy…’cause he is a boy.”

“No,” I snap. “He’s a man. A man who’s accomplished more on his own than you ever did with your silver spoon and legacy name. And you know exactly what you mean when you say ‘ boy .’”

He tilts his head, feigning confusion. “I think you’re reading too much into it.”

“Am I?” I step forward now, voice low but sharp. “You only call black men ‘boy.’ Never Lev. Never your colleagues. Never anyone who looks like you. You don’t mean it as ‘youthful’. You mean it as ‘lesser.’”

He stiffens, jaw tightening, but I keep going.

“Let me spell it out so you get it through your scotch-laden stupor. In the South, you call a grown black man ‘boy’ to put him in his place. It’s a slur dressed in civility.

It’s the oldest kind of insult—a reminder of when people like you thought people like Dom should fetch your shoes and keep their eyes lowered. So don’t pretend it’s innocent.”

“Christ!” Dad flings his hands up in exasperation.

“Luna, why don’t you go? I’ll see you later,” Lev suggests. I can see he’s getting ready to explode just as I am. Hell, I’m almost there, he’s still got a good ten-fifteen minutes to go. Lev does a slow simmer.

“I helped clean up your mess, and this is the thanks I get?” Dad flings at me.

I raise both eyebrows. “My mess? What on earth are you talking about?”

“Dad,” Lev warns like he knows something I don’t.

My father is enjoying this now. “You remember when Dom suddenly left you high and dry? Ran off to New York and never looked back?”

Ice slides down my spine.

“He didn’t run.” He smiles, all teeth. “He made a choice.”

I narrow my eyes.

“Dad, you need the shut the hell up,” Lev orders.

“A choice I helped him make,” Dad speaks over Lev.

The room stills.

I get into my father’s face. I’m getting an idea as to what he means. I’m connecting the dots.

“You cheated on me.”

“What if I didn’t?”

“What did you do?” I ask my father .

Dad pushes his chair away from me. It rolls smoothly.

Lev has his eyes downcast.

He knows!

“I told that boy I’d destroy him if he didn’t walk away from you. I’d yank his scholarship…I have contacts at Cornell. I’d kill his internship. I’d fire his mama. He comes from nothing. I reminded him what’s his place . He folded faster than a lawn chair.”

I can’t breathe.

Dad shrugs like we’re discussing the weather. “It was nothing personal. Just didn’t want my daughter throwing away her life for the help.”

I look at Lev and see devastation on his face.

I turn to my father. “You sorry miserable son of a bitch, you blackmailed him?”

“Mind your language.”

“You’re an asshole,” I sneer.

He chuckles. “Lev, son, you got anything to drink here?”

My brother looks like he might murder our father with a pen he’s holding, too tightly, in his hand. “Dad, you’re fuckin’ unbelievable.”

Dad gets up, unsteady. “So…no drink?”

Lev gives the smallest shake of his head.

“In that case, I’ll be taking my leave.”

I let him go. He’s not worth it. The minute he’s out, I pounce on Lev.

“You knew,” I accuse him, my voice raised.

“Yeah,” he says harshly. “And I told Dom to tell you a fuckin’ million times. But he’s so fucked up in love with you and so fuckin’ scared…damn it, Luna, he was twenty-one, scared shitless.”

“Did he cheat on me?” I bellow.

“No,” he yells back.

I freeze for a moment and then sit on the chair my father just vacated.

For ten years. Ten fucking years I’ve been holding my pain close to my chest and the prick never cheated on me, he just let me think he did? For what? His scholarship? Motherfucker! I’d have paid for his school if he wasn’t so damned proud.

Anger, frustration, and pain crash against each other.

He could’ve told me. I would’ve understood.

He didn’t tell me. He let me keep on believing a lie.

Even now, when he says he loves me, he lies to me.

Be fair, Luna. Every time he tried to talk about it, you shut it down.

I drop my face into my hands and am pulled into a hug. I rest my head against my brother’s shoulder.

“Don’t let that asshole win,” Lev grits out.

I raise my head and look him in the eye. “Which asshole? Dad or Dom?”

He gives me a sour look that could curdle milk. But I’m made of sterner stuff.

“He hurt me again and again. He could’ve just told me the truth.”

“Luna, he was a scared kid.”

“How long have you known? ”

Lev straightens, rests his hip against his desk. “Found out a few months after he came to Savannah.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” I’m incredulous.

My brother tilts his head. “You ready to tell me all of Stella’s secrets?”

“If they impact you, abso-fucking-lutely.”

Even as I say that, I know it’s a lie. I wouldn’t betray Stella’s trust.

I stand abruptly. The chair screeches back.

“I need to…go,” I whisper and then add, “Now, do right by me and don’t you dare say a word about this to your BFF.”

“Come on, Luna.”

I flip him a finger without looking at him and storm out of Steele Corporation.

By the time I get home, I’m a mess.

Good thing Miss Abigail isn’t home. She left early this morning to visit a friend in Augusta with whom she was staying the weekend.

I don’t remember the drive home. I drop my backpack in the hallway and call Stella. She picks up on the second ring.

“Hey, hon, what’s?—”

“He lied to me,” I choke out.

There’s silence on the other end. Then, softly, “Luna?”

I sink to the floor. The cool tile presses against me, grounding me even as everything else slips.

“He left me because my father threatened him,” I whisper. “Not because he stopped loving me. Not because he cheated. And he never told me. Never. Even now. After all this. After everything.”

“Oh, honey,” Stella says, voice thick with fury and heartbreak.

“I was happy, Stella. I was happy. I thought—God, I thought we were getting back to something real.”

I curl in on myself, the sob building before I can stop it.

“I can’t do this again. I can’t be the girl he left twice.”

Stella doesn’t tell me to breathe. She doesn’t say it’ll be okay. She simply says, “I’m on my way.”

“Stay on the phone. I don’t want to be alone.”

“Yes.”