Page 20

Chapter Twenty

S eth tied the bag and tossed it into the trashcan, glad for the distraction to get his emotions under control. He couldn’t believe he’d shared that much with Jetta, but the truth had popped out when she’d asked her innocent question. The urge to tell her the rest of the story welled up inside him. “The first one was supposedly an accident, if you can call keeping my mom drunk for weeks even while knowing about the pregnancy an accident. The second time she gave into the pressure from the father to have an abortion. The third time, she was nearly seven months along, but babies can’t withstand hard punches to the abdomen.”

“I’m so sorry.” Her eyes grew wet with tears. “How old were you?”

“Old enough to know what was going on and young enough to have no power to change things.” He huffed out a breath, as images of the blood and his mother’s screams overwhelmed him. “Until the last one.”

He wanted to take back his words, but now that he’d begun to tell the darkest of his secrets, one he had never shared with another living soul, he couldn’t stop. “His name was Hunter Thomas, and he ruled our little patch of earth as his own kingdom. He ran drugs, girls, you name it. If it was illegal, he took a cut. For some reason, Hunter took a fancy to my mom. Not sure why because drugs and booze had made her too skinny, I thought. But she was the most beautiful and exotic creature I’d ever seen, with her long, honey-colored hair and big brown eyes.”

Seth sank onto the chair as the story spilled out, his attention not on Jetta but on the pictures flipping through his mind. “At first, it seemed good to have Hunter around. He treated Mom better than her previous boyfriends and tolerated my presence too. But when Mom became pregnant, things started to change. The larger Mom’s belly grew, the more Hunter was absent, which made Mom sad. When Hunter did come around, they would fight something fierce, mostly with words, although he occasionally slapped her.”

He laced his fingers together to avoid punching something as the emotions from those days boiled his blood. “Mom was about seven months pregnant when they had their last fight. Hunter had left some drugs in the apartment, which Mom had found. Mom was furious because social services had been sniffing around for a couple of years and she was terrified someone would come by unexpectedly, find the drugs, and take me—and the baby when it was born—away from her.

“Hunter didn’t care. He laughed and said he was through with her and her brat, that he even doubted he was the baby’s father. That set Mom off, and she flew at him, slapping and hitting. He responded by punching her in the stomach over and over again.”

Memories of his mother’s screams, her vain attempts to get away from Hunter, seared into his mind. His anger at the man hurting his mom and baby sister burned hotter and hotter. “I grabbed the iron skillet Mom had left dirty on the stove and ran into the bedroom, where Hunter was kicking my mom, who lay on the floor trying to protect her baby with her arms.”

He could still feel the weight of that heavy pot in his hands. “I swung it with all my might at Hunter’s head.”

He focused on his hands, which trembled in his lap as the memory of the impact, blood splattering over him, played in his mind. His mother’s whimpers. The blood pooling underneath her intermingling with the blood flowing from Hunter’s head as he lay on the floor not moving.

“How old were you?” Jetta’s soft question drew him back to the present.

“Seven, nearly eight.” He cleared his throat and raised his head. The compassion and understanding in her blue eyes eased some of the guilt he still felt over taking another man’s life. “Mom lost the baby, a little girl she named Sadie. Before she passed out, Mom told me she would say she was the one who hit Hunter with the skillet, that she told me to bring it to her and that’s why I got blood spatter on me. It was the last thing she ever said to me.”

“Oh, Seth.”

“I never said anything different because I was afraid I would get my mom into even more trouble if I told the truth.” He breathed out a sigh, the burden of carrying that secret alone all these years easing from sharing. “The cops called social services.”

“Foster home?”

“Homes.” He gripped the back of his neck with a hand. “At first, I kept running away, trying to get back to my mom. She needed me. If I wasn’t there, she might not remember to eat.” Tears dotted his eyes, but he refused to let them fall, wanting to get the rest of the story out. “So I was moved farther and farther away until I stopped trying to find her. By then, I was so angry, many foster parents didn’t want to deal with it.”

“What happened to your mom?”

“One day, when I was around ten, a social worker came to tell me my mom had died. Drug overdose. I knew better. She’d given up on life because she didn’t have me.” Sorrow clogged his throat. She might not have been a perfect mom, but she had loved him and tried her best.

Clearing away the lump, he continued. “They couldn’t trace any relatives on my mom’s side—she never talked about any siblings or her parents—so I finally ended up in a group home run by a young couple. By then I was fifteen and had gained a lot of weight. It was my way of coping with all the stress and trauma. I went to counseling for a few months, but since I refused to talk about my mom or our life together, they stopped making me go.”

Those bleak years of fear, anger, and despair were behind him. Being a follower of Christ had accelerated the healing process. “When I attended George Mason University, I went back to therapy, which helped me a lot, but I never mentioned the murder.”

“You were a kid trying to protect your mom. It was self-defense.”

“The cops concluded it was self-defense for my mom back then too. She was never charged with any crime.” He paused. “I was messed up for a long time, and I still can’t stand to see any man treating a woman with disrespect.”

A slight smile turned up the corners of her mouth. “I know, it’s one of your best qualities. You make me feel safe and secure.”

Her words soothed the raw edges of his emotions, filling in a little bit more of the hole the trauma of Hunter’s death and his removal from his mother’s care had created all those years ago. It gave him hope that one day, the entire hole would be gone. He couldn’t believe he’d told Jetta his deepest, darkest secret without her recoiling from him. Maybe she was beginning to care for him like he cared for her.

* * *

Ryan placed the ball onto the tee, then lined up his club. He channeled all his anger into hitting the ball as hard and as far as he could. It sailed through the air and temporarily disappeared before bouncing onto the green on the sixteenth hole.

“Nice shot.” Luis Skyler, his former college roommate and corporate attorney for a pharmaceutical company, slapped him on the back. “You’ve been in attack mode all afternoon.” He shouldered his bag and waited while Ryan picked up his.

The two of them played a game whenever they could squeeze it into their busy schedules, and Ryan had been more than happy to ditch the office for a few hours when Luis called him around lunchtime with an offer of a 3 p.m. tee time. “Have I? Guess I’m carrying my work into my game.”

“You mean the possibility of Maxwell Technology’s hostile takeover of Topher Robotics.”

Ryan shouldn’t have been surprised Luis had heard the rumors. “That and other things.”

“The wearable AI.”

This time Ryan stopped walking and waited for his companion to do the same. He had worked much too hard to have knowledge of the secret artificial intelligence device leak out. The suspicion this hadn’t been a random invitation burst into his mind with the force of a cannonball. “What’s going on?”

His friend tried a jovial smile. “Two old college roommates playing a game of golf.”

Ryan saw through the lame attempt at levity. “Don’t mess with me.”

The smile dropped from Luis’s face, and he stepped closer. After glancing right and left, as if ensuring they were indeed the only two people on this particular bit of the golf course, he lowered his voice. “I’m in negotiations to work for Alternative Realities as vice president of their legal department. During the final interview with a handful of their board members, one mentioned you and I must have attended university at the same time, and he wondered if we’d known each other. I, of course, spilled the beans that we roomed together all four years. Afterward, this board member pulled me aside and asked if I knew how close you were to having this AI device ready for action.”

Ryan digested the information. “How did you respond to that?”

“That I had no idea, since you hadn’t mentioned it to me.” He shrugged. “Then someone else came up and that was that.”

“When was this?” Ryan allowed his frustration to give a snap to his words.

“Two days ago.” Luis held up a hand. “Before you ask, I haven’t said a word to anyone else.”

“What else have you heard?” Luis had earned a reputation in college for sniffing out the facts behind many a rumor and used that knowledge to his advantage. Although he never resorted to blackmail or was particularly malicious, his friend firmly believed knowledge was power.

Luis rested his bag on the ground. “That Maxwell Technology caught wind of it and that’s the real reason for their hostile takeover bid.”

The bottom dropped out of Ryan’s stomach as his greatest fears were confirmed. He’d strongly suspected Maxwell Technology knew about Project Z because of their continued hard press after the initial rebuff by the board. Could a board member or one of the shareholders have tipped off Maxwell Technology about the project?

“Thanks for letting me know.” Ryan didn’t elaborate, and his friend took the hint and changed the subject to the upcoming game between the Washington Commanders and the Dallas Cowboys as he hefted his bag and resumed walking toward the next hole.

Ryan followed, his mind spinning. Word had leaked out about his supposed secret project. Would that help or hurt his bid to keep the company in his hands? He would have to return to the office instead of heading home. Cynthia would understand his skipping their dinner engagement at the Gordon-Lightsmiths. He’d always detested Dalia and her insipid conversations revolving around her darling grandchildren or her dogs, so missing it would be a relief. His wife only cultivated the acquaintance because Michael Gordon-Lightsmith was chair of the board of her favorite charity, and she felt a few dinner parties a year was worth it to stay in his good graces.

Ryan finished the last couple of holes on autopilot, his mind busy with how to use the information that Project Z had become more common knowledge to his advantage. The board had narrowly voted against recommending acceptance of Maxwell Technology’s bid, but one member had called for a special shareholders meeting in one week’s time. Peter had railed at Ryan, calling him incompetent and worse for allowing such a meeting to be scheduled. This time, rather than ignoring his father’s rant like he usually did, Ryan had responded in kind, reminding Peter he had approved the bylaws when he had taken the company public, bylaws that allowed for that circumstance to happen.

His lips thinned as he relished the memory of his father’s face. The older man had gaped, as Ryan’s hit had found its mark. Then Peter rallied, insisting if Ryan were a better leader, no board member would have dared to call for such a meeting.

“Good game, Mr. Topher?” Ryan jerked, so caught up in his thoughts he hadn’t realized he and Luis had arrived back at the clubhouse. The head caddy, who took care of making sure his clubs were cleaned and stored in the Topher locker at the clubhouse, reached for his bag.

“Yes, Juan. Thank you.” He slipped the man a $20, then turned to Luis. “I’ve got to run—dinner date with the wife and some people I can’t stand.”

“See you at the Children’s National charity tournament in two weeks.”

Ryan nodded, then slipped out of the clubhouse. Instead of waiting for the valet to bring his car up, he grabbed the keys and walked to the parking lot. An idea formed in his mind about how he could use the rumors to his advantage. The sure knowledge one of his siblings had sold him out burned bright in his mind. He would find out who was behind the leaks, solidify his grip on the company, and make sure other potential problems wouldn’t surface to play into the hands of those plotting for his—and his company’s—downfall.