Page 23 of Reckless Princess (Knight's Ridge Empire 8)

“If I knew… if I had any idea…”

“There wouldn’t have been anything you could have done. If anything, it probably would have made it worse.” I shrug, completely believing my words. Joanne was Jonas’s reprieve. He needed her. I can't imagine how intolerable life would have been if he didn’t have her lightness.

“I was the one who ensured that you got nothing when he died,” I confess. “I wanted you to suffer. I wanted Mum to have everything she deserved, even though he’d organised for you to have almost everything.”

“She does deserve it.”

I shake my head. “That may be true. But right now, she’s exactly where she belongs. She’s happy and with the man who stole her heart as a teenager. But you… I stripped everything from you.”

A sob rips from her throat. If only she knew just how true that statement was.

“Damien Cirillo, my boss, is organising the funds you were due to be transferred to your accounts. The house will be signed over to you, and you never need to worry about money again.”

“Toby no. I was never his wife, I don’t deserve—”

“You do. You both do. You’re the only people who are grieving someone you loved. It doesn’t matter how I saw him. How my mum suffered. You must have put up with enough of his shit over the years with his absence and his refusal to publicly accept your relationship, his own children.”

Finally, her first tear falls.

“I’m not here to discuss it, Joanne. Everything is already in motion. There will be no bailiffs or any more final demands. You’re free to try to rebuild your life.”

She nods, although the deep frown in her brow proves that she’s not really accepting my words easily.

“And what about Jodie?”

“I can get her job back for her, if she wants it. But I can’t do anything about the lies you’ve told her, or the ways I’ve hurt her in the past few weeks. I can only hope that one day, if I’m lucky, she’ll find a way to forgive me.”

“She left after I told her the truth,” Joanne blurts.

“Can you blame her?” I ask as she falls down onto the sofa.

“I never really thought about it before, but since Jodie told me about your mum, about what you went through, it makes me realise just how controlling he was. How under his spell he had me.”

“Don’t beat yourself up over things you can no longer change,” I tell her, wishing like hell I could take my own advice. “What’s done is done. He’s out of all our lives, and while I know you loved him, I can assure you that your future will be better this way.”

She sniffles, pulling a tissue from her pocket.

“Did Jodie tell you about Joe?”

She shakes her head but guesses correctly.“It was him, wasn’t it?”

“Joe was working for Jonas, yes. He wasn’t the one who pulled the trigger, though.”

The sob that erupts from her forces me to close the space between us, and in a move I didn’t see coming, I wrap my arm around her shoulders in comfort.

“I’m sorry for all your loss, I really am.”

She nods, accepting my words.

“Jodie will come around. She loves you. She just… she just needs time.”

“And what about you?” she asks, her sad eyes finding mine.

I shrug. “I’ll do everything in my power to get her to talk to me. But anything after that is on her. She has every right to never want to see me again.”

Her eyes narrow and she reaches for my hand, squeezing gently.

“It wasn’t all an act, was it?”

“No,” I confess. “At first it was. The night I met her, all of it was orchestrated. But I never could have expected the woman I was going to meet. She blew me away.”

Joanne smiles sadly at me.“She’s incredible.”

“Something we agree on,” I say quietly.

“She’ll come around,” she promises. “I saw the way her eyes lit up when she talked about you. Hell, when she even thought about you. If you really care about her, if she really did see parts of the real you, fall for the real you, then you just need to give her time.”

I sigh, not sure I’m able to believe her. Especially when she doesn’t know everything that happened.

“We’ll see.”