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“Hurting her like I did, scaring her.” He drinks the contents of his glass and sets it down. His jaw clenches. He’s steeling himself. I wait until he meets my eyes again. “I should never have hurt her, and I owe her an apology at the very least. I owe one to both of you.”
This is different. Not what I expected from Theron. Him actually taking responsibility. I stop myself at that because who the fuck am I to cast stones?
“What happened to you? The last few years?” I ask.
He pours himself another and drinks a long swallow. “I found myself some trouble like I tend to do,” he says dismissively.
“I paid a lot of money to some very bad men, Theron. That’s not going to cut it.”
He swallows the rest of his scotch and sets the glass down, then slips his hands into his pockets, and all of a sudden, he looks like he used to when we were kids. When we were friends.
“Learning I was a bastard… finding out like I did, it fucked with me. What the old man did was cruel.”
“I know. But you need to get over it. He’s dead and gone.”
He snorts. “Get over it. Easy for you to say.”
“No, Theron, it’s just fucking reality. You move on, or you’re stuck in the past.”
“I hated you, you know that?”
“Oh, I know. And if I ever forget, I have the scar you left to remind me.”
He drops his gaze, looking ashamed. The truth is, I have long understood why he did it. And I have long forgiven him.
“I blamed you for being born a Montgomery. Something you had no control over just as I had no control over my own parentage. After that night, when Mom showed me what Carlisle did to her and told me you stood by and allowed it, it was easy to hate you. Hell, without that, it would have been easy. You got everything I wanted. And I didn’t even want it all. Just a small slice. The piece I thought I deserved. I was owed. I didn’t feel bad blackmailing the old man. Threatening to tell everyone the dirty little secret that was me. But I guess I started hating myself a little too, you know?”
I watch him and realize this is the most honest he has ever been. The most real.
“The mob, well, that was accidental at first. I was partying. A lot. I met a woman who turned out to be the sister of one of the heads of the families in northern Italy. By then, I was pretty heavily into cocaine. And this woman had her own agenda. Stupid, I know, but as I said, I was high, and she turned my head.” He looks wistful. Sad.
“Where is she now?”
“Dead.” He’s quiet like he’s remembering. “We stole from him. It was her idea, and I helped her. And when shit hit the fan, she thought she could talk to him. They were blood. Turns out blood doesn’t mean what she thought.”
“Did you love her?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “I don’t know. I was high all the time. At first, I was just having fun. But then things got heavy. Serious. She hated him, and when she betrayed him, he had her killed. Only let me live so that I could pay him back with interest of course. He knew who I was by then. The family name. The money he thought I would inherit.”
“A hefty sum.”
“I shouldn’t have let her go to him.”
“You can’t change the past, Theron. But you can choose your future.”
He looks at me oddly as I hear my own words.
“How was Mercedes? After?”
“Pretty fucked up.”
He exhales, forehead wrinkling as he takes it in. “I want to apologize to her. I need to.”
“Yeah, well, she’s got other things on her plate at the moment.”
As if on cue, a familiar voice has us both turn toward the door. Heels click as two women hurry and argue at once—Meredith and someone I wouldn’t expect to find here. Solana.
Solana comes into view first. She stops in the doorway, eyes dark with rage.
