Page 103 of Velvet Vaughn

“Long enough.” Curtis didn’t flinch. There was no shame in it, only the same weary patience he’d carried through the whole confession. “She’s protected this family every bit as fiercely as I have. Don’t waste your grief on her, son. Save it for yourself.”

“Danica,” Leo forced out. “Was she yours too?”

“Danica knew next to nothing.” Curtis waved a dismissive hand. “She was useful until she overheard something she shouldn’t have, then opened her mouth and asked your girlfriend the wrong question. Brad took care of it before it became a problem.” He paused. “Brad knew everything and kept a very healthy percentage for keeping his silence. Millions of dollars over a dozen years buys extraordinary loyalty, Leo. Or it did, until it didn’t.”

“Tim.” Leo could barely say the name. “He wanted to take over, according to Brad.”

“Tim got greedy, and greedy men talk when they think it benefits them.” Curtis’s voice had gone bored now. “I really did have lunch with him the Thursday before, as I told you. That part was true. I liked Tim. It changed nothing.”

“Your heart attack.” Leo had to stop there, swallow, then force out the rest. “You collapsed in front of two hundred people. I thought I was going to lose you.”

“You weren’t supposed to be that frightened.” For the first time, irritation crossed Curtis’s face, though none of it seemed directed at Leo. “It was meant to look worse than it was and resolve on its own within the hour. A stress-induced arrhythmia. Nothing a cardiologist couldn’t dismiss at a follow-up visit.” He scowled. “Lydia handled the dosing herself. She measured wrong, or her nerves got the better of her, or hell, maybe she really did try to kill me. Instead of a convincing cardiac event, I got a genuine one.”

He shook his head, more annoyed than disturbed by the possibility Lydia had nearly killed him. “I spent two days in a hospital bed because my own wife can’t follow simple instructions.”

“That’s what you’re angry about?” Leo stared at him in disbelief. “Not that you nearly died, but that she did it wrong.”

“I wasn’t going to die, Leo. For goodness’ sake, I was monitored, medicated, and surrounded by the best cardiac unit in the city within eleven minutes of hitting the concrete. I made certain of that before I ever touched the glass.” Curtis’s smile was thin and humorless. “The point was never my heart. It was getting you into that corridor, worried and alone and thinking about me instead of watching your surroundings. Lydia’s error cost me two days of recovery I didn’t need. It didn’t cost me the plan.”

Leo stared at him, blood, disbelief, and grief warring in his chest until he couldn’t tell which one was winning. “You’ve made hundreds of millions of dollars destroying people’s lives.”

“I have.” There wasn’t even a flicker of remorse. “And it worked flawlessly for two decades. I’d hoped eventually that you might come to understand what I built and give it the future it deserves. I saw you running this someday, Leo. Not as a pawn. As a partner. Everything I’ve done, I always imagined handing it to you once you were ready to see the whole shape of it.”

“I would never have wanted that.”

“No.” Curtis’s voice held sorrow. “I understand that now. That’s the part that hurts most tonight, if you want the truth. Not having the operation exposed. Not Brad. You.”

The SUV rolled off the pavement onto a rutted drive sometime later, the ride roughening beneath them, trees giving way to open water glimpsed in flashes through the side windows. Sunlight scattered silver across a lake Leo didn’t recognize. They pulled up outside a squat, unassuming cabin set back from the shoreline. It could have passed for a weekend fishing cabin, chosen precisely because nobody would ever think to look for anything else here.

The men hauled him out, his legs barely holding him upright, and half dragged him across a stretch of damp grass and through a door that opened onto bare wood floors and the musty smell of a house that spent most of the year empty. They dropped him without ceremony, and Leo’s side hit the floor hard enough to send a fresh wave of pain and nausea rolling through him, his bound wrists trapped uselessly beneath his own weight.

“Curtis.” He forced his head up. “What are we doing here?”

Curtis stood in the doorway, silhouetted against the light coming off the water, and when he spoke, his voice had gentled again.

“I’m sorry, son.” He sounded as though he meant every word, which was somehow worse than if he hadn’t. “I truly am. But we have to wait for dark when there are no fishermen or boaters around.”

Leo’s stomach dropped through the floor. “Wait for what?”

Curtis shook his head at Leo with an expression that carried far too much sorrow. He then turned and shut the door behind him, leaving Leo alone on the cold floor with the terrible understanding of exactly what waited for him once the sun went down.