Page 10 of Earned Husband

One of the fun consequences of our father being arrested and jailed for fraud was having all his assets seized—our trust funds along with the rest of it. As the only one of us who’d already been old enough to have hers transferred into her name by the time it’d happened, Jane had kept us afloat for years with her own money.

The lawyers had been working on having the rest of our trust funds released to us since we were all now old enough to have been entitled to them, but it was slow going. Jane’s hands tightened on the steering wheel, her expression instantly shifting into a mask of annoyance.

“There’s nothing new yet,” she said, sighing as she shook her head. “At this point, I think we need to accept that money is gone. I doubt we’re ever going to see a dime of it.”

“Unless the proceedings against Mallory Foundry are successful,” I said, even though I didn’t know how true that was anymore. “If Dad is let off the hook, they’ve got to return everything they seized.”

“Again, if it’s still there,” Jane said quietly. “It’s been years, Colin. I’m not hopeful.”

I slumped back in my seat, hating to hear any of this said out loud. Even if I knew she was right.

Our trust funds as well as Mom and Dad’s other assets had been tied up for years now, frozen and endlessly examined by investigators, cops, and anyone else with a professional interest in the case.

Every few months, there was an update, but it never amounted to anything. Especially since Mallory had gotten off scot-free at first.

Even after all these years, that name still had the power to fuck up my day. If it hadn’t been for that woman, our father never would’ve gotten caught up in any of the stuff he’d been accused of.

As far as Jane and I were concerned, he’d been jailed for being an idiot who’d let his pretty, young mistress ruin his life and his finances. The official story was that he’d committed fraud and a whole host of other white-collar offenses, but the truth was considerably messier.

I wasn’t so naïve as to believe that the man had been perfect. He was far from it, in fact. He’d detonated his marriage, publicly embarrassed his family, and made a series of spectacularly stupid decisions that still affected all of us even now, so many years later, but I doubted he’d committed criminal fraud on the scale he’d been accused of.

For all his many faults, he’d always been a sharp, careful businessman. Skirting taxes and entering into shady business deals wasn’t his character, but Mallory? She’d left the States immediately, and I truly believed she’d done it for a reason.

As his assistant, she’d had access to his devices and he’d trusted her enough to fuck her. Repeatedly. I had no doubt he’d shared more than just bodily fluids with the woman who’d wrecked our family.

“Her trial is coming up,” Jane said after a few minutes of both of us being lost in thought. “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen. I don’t have any idea how far this will go either.”

“Neither do I.”

Over the years, the uncertainty had become its own burden. We’d been left waiting for a definitive conclusion or some kind of explanation as to how she’d done it or whether we’d been walking around with false hope for so long. Our entire family was stuck in limbo, but at least she’d been arrested and there was an actual trial date now.

It had taken us five years after Dad’s incarceration to even get the wheels of justice turning on that front. Eventually, it’d only been after she’d come back to the States and confronted Alex that anyone had even taken our suspicions seriously.

I let out a slow, long breath and reached over to squeeze Jane’s arm. “We’re still in a much better place than we were five years ago. Even if we lose the trusts, we’ll be okay.”

Jane’s expression tightened. “You’re okay, but our brothers might not be. Isaac and Ryan are drowning in student loans. We might’ve been able to secure money for Holden and Wyatt, but they were still supposed to be protected by those funds. Now, they’re on their own and so are you.”

“Yeah.”

There wasn’t much else I could say. Holden and Wyatt, being younger, had been somewhat protected from the fallout. By the time Wyatt had to go off to college, Alex had already entered our lives and he’d insisted on taking some of the financial burden off Jane’s shoulders—as much as she would allow him to, anyway.

Scholarships, Alex, and the fact that Isaac and Ryan had been further along in their studies had saved our asses with Holden, but even though the other two had since graduated and were working for Thayer Steelworks now, they refused to let us pay off their loans.

Eventually, I sighed and turned back to the window. “We’ll figure it out.”

Jane hummed, but I wasn’t sure if she believed me. I wasn’t sure I believed myself either. For most of my adult life, this situation had followed me like a gray cloud I couldn’t outrun, every success overshadowed by the scandal.

There was constant effort involved to convince people that the Thayer name meant something more than the worst thing our father had ever done. We’d clawed our way back from thebrink, but there were some people in some circles that still didn’t trust us.

Our association with the Westwoods had helped, but the scars remained. If I was being completely honest with myself, that was one of the biggest reasons I still wasn’t married yet.

Somewhere deep down inside, it just felt like I needed to clean up the past before I could build a future. I would never admit that out loud, though. Because even if I met someone and even if I loved her, especially if I loved her, I would never be able to bring her into a family still being chased by the demons that refused to be buried in the past.

CHAPTER 6

DEJA

The yacht gleamed against the calm waters of Lake Michigan, its white exterior catching the last rays of golden light as the sun sank toward the horizon. Chicago’s skyline was stunning in the distance, the edges of its glass and steel buildings softened by the warm haze of sunset.