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So many terrible memories still lived here. They’d seeped into the walls and permeated the imported Italian carpets with their stench. He’d thought prison was the last place he ever wanted to see again.
He’d been wrong.
This was hell.
All the shouting matches with his father. The months his mother spent here, sick and weak, wasting away from a disease that rotted her from the inside out. The years he’d spent burying his pain with drugs and alcohol and partying. It was years ago, and it was all somehow still so fresh.
That’s when Tenley grabbed his hand and gave it a good, hard squeeze. He glanced down at her and the sympathy in her eyes almost brought him to his knees. Everything he’d been feeling must’ve been clear to her. Maybe she’d read it in the tension in his shoulders and jaw. He wasn’t sure how she’d known, but she had. And in that moment, her quiet support pushed the past into the background of his mind where it belonged.
“This place looks like a mausoleum,” Tenley whispered as they crossed through the grand foyer. “Only, you know…colder.”
Knox’s chuckle/snort combo echoed through the cavernous, marble-tiled space. “You’re not wrong. It wasn’t always like this.”
It was clear that Thadeus (and whatever trophy wife he had that year) had put their cold, ultra-modern, Jetsons-esque stamp on the place, and both his parents were probably rolling over in their graves at the desecration of what had been an immaculately designed space.
“Well, well, well. The prodigal son returns.”
Knox fought off a cringe at the sound of Thadeus’s voice. He was the only man Knox had ever met who could say something totally innocuous and make it sound obnoxious and condescending all at the same time.
He glanced up to find his stepbrother walking down the spiral staircase into the foyer in a suit that probably cost more than the ones Tenley had filched from the handsy bastard at the bar, smirking down at Knox like he was a particularly demanding Dicken’s child begging for more gruel.
“Thadeus,” he said in lieu of an actual, genuine greeting. Because honestly, what was he going to say? Nice to see you? It wasn’t. How have you been? He didn’t give a fuck. Just saying the asshole’s name gave him a migraine, so that’s all he could muster. Frankly, Stepbrother Dearest should count himself fortunate that Knox didn’t launch himself up those stairs and beat the ever-loving shit out of him.
When his dad decided to remarry, he’d told Knox that he’d soon have a brother. Like an idiot, Knox had been thrilled. In his head, they’d be the best of friends, even though Thadeus was a decade older. Like Bobby and Peter Brady or some shit. One meeting with his new stepbrother shattered those naïve hopes.
Thadeus was a bully who delighted in tormenting Knox. He stole his stuff, ruined his clothes, cut his hair while he was sleeping, beat the crap out of him and threatened to beat him worse if he told anyone. It was years of agony until Knox got big enough and strong enough to defend himself. After that, Thadeus just focused on making sure he looked like the golden child, and that everyone (especially his dad) recognized what a fuck up Knox was.
It was just his shit luck that Thadeus wore wealth well. He’d aged very little in the last few years. The only sign that any time had passed at all since they’d last seen each other were a few stray gray hairs in his thick, dark hair. His eyes were a little beady and his chin a little weak, but he wasn’t nearly as unattractive on the outside as he was on the inside.
Knox was glad he was at least three inches taller and fifty pounds of muscle heavier than Thadeus. He’d take whatever advantages he could.
But whatever anyone was going to say next was drowned out by Tenley’s enthusiastic, “Well, hello there, you must be Thad. I’ve heard all about you.”
Knox felt like an asshole for not introducing her immediately. “Thadeus, this is my fiancée, Tenley T—”
“Snow,” she interrupted smoothly. “Tenley Snow.”
Go with the flow, he thought. That’s what Tenley had told him right before they came in. He could do that. If she wanted to go by Snow instead of Taylor, he imagined she had a good reason.
Thadeus seemed equally confused. Whether it was her use of “Thad” (which, yay, Tenley!) or the sweet-as-molasses voice that vexed him was unclear. But his brows had practically drawn themselves up into question marks as he took the hand she thrust at him.
“Knox’s fiancée?” he asked, shifting his gaze to Knox. “How on earth did you manage to find a fiancée in prison?”
Tenley’s answering laugh could only be described as tinkling bells. Sharp tinkling bells, but tinkling bells, nonetheless. “Oh, Knox told me you had quite the sense of humor. I can just tell he was right. Of course, we didn’t meet in prison, silly. Knox and I met in college.”
Thadeus raised a challenging brow. “U of P?”
That was a trap. Knox opened his mouth to answer, but Tenley beat him to it. “Oh, there you go again with your jokes,” she said, narrowing her eyes on him just a little. “You know Knox went to Carnegie Mellon. His father’s alma mater.”
Son of a bitch suspected Tenley wasn’t really his fiancée, and a handful of words into their first conversation, Thadeus was trying to trip her up. And Tenley wasn’t having any of it.
In fact, how the fuck did she know he went to Carnegie Mellon, and that it was only his father’s seat on their board that got him in?
“We didn’t date back then, of course,” she added. “He was with his ex, Rebecca, at the time. But I never lost touch and waited. I always get what I want eventually.”
Shit. Was she psychic or something? First, she knew where he’d gone to college. Then, she’d somehow figured out he’d had a steady girlfriend named Rebecca during that time and couldn’t have been dating Tenley. But Thadeus would have no reason to doubt that they’d had a slow burn, friends-to-lovers kind of relationship.
Once again, he was impressed by her and terrified of her all at the same time.
