Page 13 of The Knight (Endgame 2)
“Uncle Landon, what’s going on?”
He mutters something about housecleaning. “Wasn’t expecting you.”
“I’ve been calling you.” Furtive trips to the phone booth on the corner, frantic messages into an answering machine that probably hasn’t been checked. “You said the house would be safe.”
He falls into his chair, looking weary and ten years older than he had at the auction, head in his hand. “I’m sorry, Helen. I know you loved the house.”
Alarm strums through me. “Helen was my mother.”
Cloudy eyes look through me. “I failed you, and I’ll never forgive myself for that.”
“What did you do, Uncle Landon? Why did I lose the house?”
Gabriel steps from the shadows. His palm hits the square foot of exposed desk, the sound startling. “Tell her, Moore. She needs to know. I’m sure she doesn’t want this public any more than you do.”
Uncle Landon focuses on me, regret darkening his eyes. “I got into trouble, my girl. The market crash. Bad investments. My clients, some of them are powerful. They would have come after me if I didn’t lessen the blow to their portfolios.”
Dread clenches my stomach. “Is that what happened to my trust? The market crash?”
He shakes his head, silent.
Gabriel picks up a piece of paper from the desk, scanning it briefly before tossing it to the ground like trash. “Fake paper trails. Moving money around like no one would ever notice. And he almost got away with it, because there are enough naive trusting fools in the world.”
I stand, shaking from within. “And I’m a fool?” I ask Uncle Landon softly.
He doesn’t meet my eyes. “You weren’t a fool, but you were trusting. Because your mother and your father trusted me. And you looked at me like family.”
“That wasn’t just my money you stole. It was theirs, what they had put aside for me.” The house my father built for my mother, her pride and joy. “That house.”
“I know,” he says, mournful. “I tried to save it. When you authorized payments for your father’s restitution, I slipped more money out. If you had married me when I asked, you never would have known. We could have sold the house.”
“And lived in a marriage built on lies?” And worse, a horrible substitution—because it’s really my mother he wants.
“What do you have now?” Uncle Landon demands, angry and desperate. “A million dollars! Women like you always end up on your feet, don’t you?”
“Women like me?”
“Like your mother,” he spits. “So beautiful. Everyone wanted her. But I was the only one who really knew her, who loved her. And she chose your father.”
Jealousy fills the air, sick and scented black. “How dare you. My father trusted you.”
“I know,” Uncle Landon says, his voice breaking. “I know.”
And to my horror and shock he breaks down into wrenching sobs.
“He was the fool,” Gabriel says softly.
My laugh sounds sharp, cutting me into pieces on the way out. “Don’t spare my feelings now. I know you think I’m stupid. Gullible. Blind to what’s in front of me.”
“Maybe. Or maybe you’re loyal and optimistic.”
“Either way,” I say bitterly. “The result is the same. I lost the house.”
“Did you?” Gabriel asks mildly.
“The auction,” Uncle Landon gasps. “You can bid on the house.”
Hope sinks its claws into my heart, painful and unwelcome. “I don’t have the money yet. It’s in escrow until the end of the month. And the auction is tomorrow.”
Uncle Landon rifles through the papers on his desk. “It’s still an asset, one with conditions. You can use it as a guarantee of payment as long as the bank confirms its release.” He freezes without looking up. “The guarantor would have to sign as well.”
The guarantor. That would be Gabriel Miller.
Now I know the real reason he came along. So that he could tell me no. So that he could break me just one more time. I look at him, my heart already breaking.
Except he doesn’t look at me with fake regret, with thinly veiled amusement. He doesn’t smirk and tell me that I look so beautiful when I’m shattered.
Instead he pulls out a pen, businesslike. “It will need to be notarized.”
I stare at him in disbelief. “Excuse me?”
“If you want the representative of the holding company to validate an offer, it will need to be notarized.” He looks completely calm, as if he didn’t just offer me hope.
“Wait,” Uncle Landon says. “You need to think about this. The money in that escrow account is all you have left. If you spend all of it, even most of it, on the house, you won’t have anything left. How will you pay for maintenance, taxes—”
“I’ll figure it out.”
Uncle Landon gives Gabriel a brooding glance. “That’s how you got into this mess. You can take the money and build a new life for yourself. Get an apartment. Go back to college.”
My heart squeezes with the desire to have those things back. To join Harper at the parties and late night study sessions. That world seems foreign now. Gabriel wasn’t so wrong when he said it was the only place where I felt safe. The only place I felt loved.
