Page 220 of Handsome Devil
Evening had fallen when I arrived in Toronto, and one of my security guys drove me home. We rolled into my driveway to find a car parked in front of the house. It was a Rolls-Royce that belonged to my mother. Her driver was sitting inside.
I got out and drew a deep breath as my bodyguard came around to meet me. Rolf had stayed behind in Vancouver for a few days, but there were always guys to cover me, even when I was just at home. Normally, Rolf lived in a guest suite attached to my garage, and his fill-in would sleep there tonight.
He walked me up to the house, but then I told him he could go. No one could really protect me from my mother, anyway.
When I walked into the house, alone, she was waiting for me in my office.
My mother didn’t own a key to my house—as far as I knew—but the security staff did. And since my mother owned my security staff, along with pretty much everything else in my life, she was very loose about things like personal boundaries.
I shed my jacket as I wandered into the room. A couple of lamps were on and there she sat, poised on the edge of the sofa, like a drop of blood. She wore a blood-red skirt suit and her goldCDbrooch, the one my grandfather gave her.Christiana Davenport.Her wrap lay draped over the arm of the sofa. Her shoes were still on.
She wasn’t planning to stay long.
I poured myself a scotch. “You know, one day, you’re going to have to start knocking like everyone else.”
“One day,” she said. “When you’re here with your wife?”
I looked at her. Did she already know?
Maybe.
“Give me the news,” she said, like she knew I had a bomb to drop. Whether she expected the news to be good or bad, she would’ve had that same look on her face.
Impenetrable.
There was no point dancing around it. Since the sex tape scandal, she’d had me closely watched, and I didn’t doubt she’d had someone keeping an eye on me for her in Vancouver, even after Corben was gone. Someone on my security staff, maybe.Herstaff.
Someone who knew Devi hadn’t slept at the penthouse last night.
My mother and I had already spoken about the accusation from our former employee, which was now all over the media. We had legal and PR already on it. So that wasn’t the news she was asking for.
“Devi and I are separating,” I told her. “She left.”
My mother said nothing for a long, cold minute. She broke eye contact with me only to look at her hand, once, and adjust her rings. Then she met my eyes again. Hers were a cool, claustrophobic gray, like an unforgiving sky in winter.
“If you lose her,” she informed me, “you stand to lose everything.”
“I know.”
This was the fear I’d lived with for weeks now. Ever since the sex tape scandal hit and my engagement to Tina fell apart. It had only grown more acute since marrying Devi: the fear that I would lose everything. And worse, that I deserved to lose everything.
That I was, in the eyes of my family, useless and undeserving, like my father.
That I’d never earned the Davenport name, the power and the fortune that came with it… or the woman I’d married.
I sat down in a chair facing the sofa. Facing my mother. And I made the confession I should’ve made the very first moment I’d had the chance. “I knew they were recording it. The sex tape.”
My mother held my gaze. She didn’t blink. That particular fact bomb demanded more of an explanation, and I knew it was time I gave her one. It wasn’t justmyname the scandal had dragged through the mud. It was ours.
“I pretended I didn’t know,” I confessed, “but I did. I didn’t release the tape. That part is true. But I knew they were filming it and I let it happen.”
“Why would you do that?”
I blew out a breath and looked into the fire that was burning in the fireplace, behind her. “I don’t know. I’ve asked myself that so many fucking times. I was drunk. Grandfather had just died, and the media was so quick to focus on my ascension in the family business. Everyone was. It was a difficult time all around. There was a lot of pressure. And I got scared.”
I glanced at my mother. Her eyebrow rose sharply. “Scared?”
“And drunk. I made some bad choices.”
