Page 53 of Fierce Love (Tucker Billionaires)
Chapter Forty-Four
Nathaniel
I t’s taken me longer than I would have liked to end up outside my parents’ mansion. Even now, I’m in the car crawling up the long driveway, trying to wrap my head around everything my mother has done.
The anger is still there, bubbling, waiting to hit a full boil again, but it’s been doused with a shot of sadness. She watched me suffer for years. It was completely in her power to end that suffering, and she did nothing. What kind of person does that? What kind of mother ?
There’s a good chance I’ve lost the element of surprise by storming all over Tucker’s Town, intent on setting things right. But I can’t worry too much about that.
Instead, I need to focus on letting my anger loose. Sadness can gnaw at me later, but for now, anger is the only emotion I’ll feed.
After I park the car, I enter the house without waiting for one of the butlers my mother employs. They change so often that I have trouble keeping track of who is who anymore. Celia Tucker is hard to work for.
“Mother!” I yell, my voice reverberating around the mostly empty house.
“Sir,” the newest butler says from the top of the stairs. “I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Where’s my mother?”
“In the main living room, I believe,” he says, descending the stairs in a rush to follow behind me. “I need to announce you.”
“No need,” I say. “I’m her eldest son.”
“Oh, Nathaniel,” my mother says, setting down her tablet when I enter the huge open plan room. “What a pleasant surprise. Gerrard, it’s fine,” she says to the man behind me.
I slap a sheaf of papers down on the coffee table in front of her, and I drop a pen on top. “I need you to sign this.”
“What is it?” she asks, picking up the stack.
Her color isn’t good—a bit gray—and I try to ignore my instinct to care.
“A custody agreement. You’re turning over full custody of Kinsley Davis to Hollyn Davis, effective today. Caitlin and I are taking it to the judge as soon as it’s signed.” The handy part about having a cousin who’s a well-respected lawyer is how quickly some things can be done.
She drops the pen without scrawling her signature. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Why would I have custody of Kinsley Davis?” Her tone is shocked, but I’m not letting her play me this time.
“I know what you did. I know it all,” I say.
“You tricked Hollyn. I read all the legal documents, the contracts, the nondisclosure agreements. Verna kept every piece. I even know about the deal you struck with Mickie when she found out you’d framed her and Verna.
The NDA you had Verna sign, so she couldn’t tell me or Hollyn the truth.
I’d ask what you were thinking, but I know. You were only thinking of yourself.”
“I’m not signing anything.” My mother sniffs. “If Hollyn Davis can’t separate fact from fiction, that’s not my fault.”
“If you sign this, maybe there’s a chance someday, a long, long, long time from now, that you and I might be on speaking terms. If you don’t, I’ll never see or speak to you again.”
“You don’t mean that. I’m your mother.”
“What’s that old saying? You can’t pick your relatives.”
She tosses the pen away from the pages and gives me a defiant glare.
In my thirty-one years, I’ve only ever gone against her when it involved Hollyn.
Today is no different. If she wants a war, she’ll get it.
“Sign it, or I will get Hollyn custody of Kinsley by dragging your name through the courts. I’ll make our feud so public, so scandalous, that you’ll feel like you’ll never recover.
Every borderline-illegal thing you’ve ever done will be brought to light.
You’ll be a social pariah. The Tucker name will be treated like a disease. ”
“Nathaniel!”
“Those are my terms.”
She picks up the pen, finds the highlighted lines, and she flicks her name or initials across the spaces.
“Happy?” she asks, standing up to pass me the papers.
“Not even a little bit,” I say, turning on my heel, prepared to leave.
“I did what I thought was best. They’ve had a good life—much better than they would have had otherwise.”
I spin around, and rage is a living, breathing thing inside me. “What about me , Mother? Hiring private investigators that you must have gotten to, chasing my tail, desperate to find her. The years I’ve spent believing she left me by choice .”
“Don’t kid yourself. She did have a choice, and she chose my money and influence over your love. That’s the kind of woman you want to be with? I saved you from another conniving Davis, who probably would have led you into legal peril.”
“If this is your version of being a savior, your version of love, I don’t want it. I don’t want any part of it.”
“Did she tell you I made her sign anything? Because I didn’t. She came to me .”
“After you backed her into a corner,” I roar.
“She was eighteen. Probably scared out of her mind that the one adult in her life who she could rely on might be going to jail. And you knew—you knew because you set it up—that Hollyn would fold under that kind of pressure. Do not take the moral high ground with me. All these years, I’ve ignored the things people have said or implied about you because in my heart, I never thought you’d hurt any of us.
Certainly not deliberately. And with such blatant cruelty. ”
“You were seventeen, and you thought you were going to get married? Please.” My mother throws up her hands. “Recipe for divorce, and those are expensive. You think I was going to let the Davis family get hold of our money?”
“But you did,” I say, staring her down. “You did exactly that when you paid off Mickie Davis so she wouldn’t tell me of your betrayal.
The worst part is that even if Hollyn and I had gotten divorced, she’d never have taken a penny from me.
Not even if I’d begged her to. You don’t know her.
You never bothered to know her. And from now on, you won’t know me either. ”
“Nathaniel,” she says, following me down the hall as I stride toward the front entrance. “Nathaniel! I’m sick. You can’t abandon your sick mother.”
“For all I know, that’s also a lie,” I say over my shoulder.
Then I hear a loud crash and thump behind me, and I close my eyes before I turn around. On the floor, my mother is face down. The butler comes racing out of the adjacent room, and he’s at her side before I’m able to convince my feet to move.
“I’ll call emergency services,” I say, “but I’m not staying.”
It takes everything in me to turn back to the door, to open it, and to step though.
Once I’m outside, I pull out my phone, and I dial for an ambulance, rattling off the details of the Tucker estate.
When the dispatcher asks me to stay on the line, I tell her that my mother isn’t my problem anymore, and I hang up the phone.
After I texted the sibling chat that Mom was on her way to the hospital, I drove to my apartment.
Slowly, I’ve been moving my things into the house I’ve been sharing with Hollyn and Kinsley.
Part of me has been afraid to hope too hard that Hollyn and I can make things work.
But it finally feels like all of the secrets and lies are rising to the surface.
In my apartment, I sit on the leather couch, and I drag my phone out of my pocket. I’ve been clinging on for far too long to a lie, and it’s time I let it go.
Dialing my voicemail number, I listen to the message Hollyn left me the night her life blew up.
And for the first time in years, I let myself hear the anguish and the steely resolve.
I’d heard those things that night, too, but when I couldn’t solve it, I’d let the voicemail become a symbol of my rage, my frustration at how she left me. A single voicemail. How dare she.
But I don’t want to cling on to any of that anymore, and I hit the delete button, then, knowing the instructions I gave to the phone company, I navigate into my deleted items on the web, and I delete it from there too.
I’m only dealing in truths now.
I rise from my seat, and I go into the principal bedroom to sort through one of my dresser drawers I often use for junk—odds and ends that don’t quite have a home but that I can’t bear to part with.
At the very back, I find the small box that fits in the palm of my hand.
I haven’t let myself think of this thing in years. Truthfully, I’m not sure why I kept it.
When I flick open the lid, I can’t help a little laugh.
The tiny diamond is pitiful compared to what I can afford now, but this fucking thing meant the world to me that night, in the weeks leading up to that night.
For months, and behind my mother’s back, I’d tucked away every dollar I hadn’t spent on looking after Hollyn and Verna.
I’d bought this ring with intention and certainty and so much hope for the future.
And for the first time since then, I feel exactly the same way.