Page 23

Nola n

K elly was already sitting across from my desk when I entered the office. Whatever he had found out had to be serious for him to be in my office so early. Kelly was the type of guy to ignore all protocol when he thought there was an emergency.

"I should tell my assistants not to let you into my office so early in the morning. It gives me heart attacks," I said as I marched to my chair, sat down and booted the computer.

Kelly grunted. "You said I should come to you first if I had urgent information."

"What have you found?"

"I looked into Burgess like you asked. "

"Yes. The suspense is killing me."

"He's a weirdo."

Kelly bent over the side of the chair to take out a file from his leather briefcase and threw it on my desk."While you were enjoying yourself at the yacht club on the weekend, I made that for you." He got up and grabbed his briefcase.

"What? Is that it?"

"It's a lot, believe me. I'd be here all day if I were to wait for you to read the entire dossier. I had a hard time pulling stuff about your wife, though."

I flipped open the file and already began regretting my decision to have Burgess investigated. There was so much information, it was as though I was holding printed out wikis on Kenneth, his business and his entire family. If I was to read it now, it would take me the better part of the morning, which meant postponing meetings. But I was too curious to delay it.

"What do you mean?"

"My men found conflicting information. It didn't make sense. One guy was positive your wife is in a rehab in the Alps as we speak."

"She was with me all weekend, so I think you can disregard whatever that guy told you." Unless she went to Switzerland and back in the time I was asleep, Aire and I were together most of the weekend. After the activity filled Saturday, we did little other than spend the Sunday in our respective rooms. Me in the study catching up on work and her in her studio painting. I wanted us to have a much more X-rated weekend than that, but she was determined to run away from the desire we had for each other. I didn't get it. It's not like what we felt was wrong. We were married. What more permission did she need?

"Thought as much," Kelly said, getting up from his seat and closing his leather briefcase. "Anyway, I'll be going now. Security here has been lax since I've been away."

I got to the file as soon as he left. Although the report was several pages long, I found it well organized into colored sections. The first being on the company W. Burgess, the second on the man himself, Kenneth, and the last section, his family. I knew the company like the back of my hand, but I perused through the section anyway to make sure I missed nothing. Then I went to the comprehensive dossier on Kenneth Burgess. He had an obsession with Hawthorne Inc, which I expected. His beef with my father was legendary. They had gone after the same companies, the same clients, the same suppliers, but in the end, my father's ruthlessness had made their competition uneven as Hawthorne grew over time.

That I knew, but what I didn't know was the woman my father stole from Kenneth. Not my mom, or any of my siblings' mothers, but another woman I didn't know of. Then there was the espionage my father had done to Kenneth's companies. He had sent spies, some of whom had done considerable damage to W. Burgess's bottom line. No wonder he hated my father's guts. But why was he so determined to join our families with a child? So the child could take over Hawthorne? If that were the case, Aelin seemed to no longer want to be part of it. She was not trying to get pregnant. The opposite, in fact. Something wasn't adding up. Either she was going against her grandfather's wishes or there was another, grander plan I wasn't seeing.

I would never find out that day because before I could get to the family part of the dossier, my office door flew open and my mother waltzed in, my poor assistant rushing after her. My assistant glanced at me with a sorry face. "I told her you were not to be disturbed."

"It's fine," I said and closed the file. Mother perched herself in the same chair Kelly occupied, only she sat on the corner, taking as little space as possible as though it was prickly. She looked skinnier than I last saw her. Her hands were frail and her cheekbones more pronounced than before. Her tight French bun only made her look that much skeletal. And if she was anyone else, I would be worried, but my mother was religious about her diet and took pride in looking thinner than a twig.

"Back so soon?" I tried to hide my annoyance. I was so sure she would be gone for at least three months, but she was back already. Either she missed New York or she got scammed.

She pouted. "Not a hello, or I miss you, mother, like a good son?"

"Hello mother," I said dryly.

She stared at me and then sighed when she realized it was all she was going to get out of me. "The trip was great. Thanks for asking."

"It doesn't look like it. You don't have your usual holiday tan."

"That's because I spent the entire time imprisoned indoors!" She cried.

"Is that so?" My mother had a flair for the dramatics. I wondered what 'imprisoned' meant. My money was on her being unable to leave a five-star hotel for a couple of hours because of a weather warning.

"Yes! And I couldn't even call you because our phones were confiscated!"

"Wow. That sounds really bad." I said, my gaze trailing back to the file.

"I am serious! Craig stole everything from us! Everything! Then he locked up in the island's only hotel!"

That caught my attention, but she was talking in such a rush that I couldn't understand what she was saying. "What exactly happened? "

"Craig, that bastard, embezzled all our funds, took our phones, got on a boat in the early ours of the morning and ran away." Her Greek accent was thicker now, and the distress in her voice was unmistakable.

"Mom. Mom. Slow down and tell me everything."'

She took a deep breath and began. Her boyfriend, Craig, had not been a real boyfriend, but a scam artist who had convinced not only mother, but mother's several rich friends to invest in a crypto mining scheme. They had gone to an off-shore island for a holiday conference on how crypto mining works. But after they had put their money into Craig's company, Craig disappeared before the mining could start.

I wanted to tell her that no one physically 'mines' cryptocurrency, but she would not take the correction kindly. Craig had also convinced the geriatrics that he would keep their credit cards for safekeeping. Then Craig disappeared with all their money and cards. He must have stolen their phones at some point in the night, because their phones were gone in the morning. That's when they knew they were scammed.

"How many of you went?"

"Me and my friends. Just us four. Five if you include the thief. " She dragged out the word thief, giving it harsh emphasis.

"Why didn't you call me? "

She sighed in exasperation. "Didn't you hear the part where I said he took our phones ?"

"You don't have my number memorized?"

She reddened. "Well, you change your number all the time. How am I supposed to keep up?"

The last time I changed my number, I was in college. "But that's not 'imprisoned', is it? You were just stranded."

"The hotel would not let us leave until we paid!" She took out a tissue from her suit jacket and blew her nose. "I was treated like a criminal for a full twenty-four hours!"

"So, how did you get back?"

"Sally called her daughter, and she hired a plane to bring us back. I want that man to pay for putting me through such hell. And now no one is talking to me because they think I was behind it all. I mean me! A Hawthorne! The audacity! If anything, I'm the bigger victim. I invested the most money and Craig pretended to be my boyfriend."

Technically, her other friend Trudy was the one worse off since it sounded from mother's story that Trudy had invested half of her retirement savings. "And what's more, Sally gave me notice. She doesn't want me to stay at the Park Avenue apartment any more. I'm homeless! She gave some pretext of a mold infestation, but I know it's all bollocks."

That sucks. "What about father's place? "

Mother folded her Kleenex and thrust it back into her pocket. She sniffed. "You sold it, remember?" Her tone was accusatory. She had tried all she could to hold on to the place, but in the end it had to go.

I called Kelly and asked if the sale of the apartment had gone through yet. He said yes. I ended the call and turned back to my mother, looking as contrite as I could. "I'm sorry. But you know I didn't do it. It was part of the trust. If you should blame anyone..." her frosty glare stopped me dead.

"Your mother's homeless. Aren't you going to do anything about it?"

"You can go to my place at Martha's Vineyard."

"Another state! You know my life is here. My friends!"

Her friends who didn't want to talk to her because she had aided them in getting scammed. "Fine. I'll book you a hotel stay."

"I can abide the food."

I wondered if she was actually Levi's mother and not Ivy, Raine, and mine. They both were picky even when it came to the best of the best that money could provide.

"You can always eat out." I was trying to look for a way to avoid what I was sure was an oncoming train.

"I can't. I am too distressed to live alone." She sniffed again. "Can I stay with you instead?"