A wise investment, as it turned out. The house now belonged to his great-grandson, Gerald. Otherwise, mere 8 figure millionaires would never have been able to afford this much house in Manhattan proper.
Still, it never failed to amaze me that both Garrett and I had grown up in houses where galas were held on a regular basis.
When we’d first met at a mutual friend’s party we’d spent hours marveling at all the things we had in common. Whiskey bottle labels with our last name splashed across them, heir status to liquor fortunes, and extremely difficult, nit-picking, and withholding mothers.
So I usually went out of my way to get to these functions on time because I knew what it was like for Garrett to get judged by his mom.
But not tonight. Tonight I was still reeling from what the old Chinese lady’s grandson had revealed about my fiancé.
“What the heck, Garrett…?” I asked him before running down what had happened with the Cantonese-speaking grandma and her huge, intimidating son.
Garrett shook his head after I finished. “You helped the grandmother of one of The Silent Triad’s Dragons? What are the chances?”
“Dragon?” I repeated. “What does that mean?”
Garrett frowned, and he shifted uncomfortably. “He’s one of the three heads of The Silent Triad, an international Chinese mafia syndicate—basically a criminal who didn’t take it too well when I refused to help him wash his money. I’m just glad you’re okay.”
Now, it was my turn to frown. “He made it sound like you owed him money, not like you’d refused to help him out.”
“Yes, well, he’s a criminal. And I suppose he believed that I somehow owed him something after turning him down.”
That didn’t make any sense, and I opened my mouth with so many more questions.
But before I could ask them, Garrett took my hand. “We’ll talk more about this later. Right now, we must get inside and say hello to Mother.”
I let Garrett pull me along but made a mental note to circle back around on this later.
I didn’t judge criminals. The pre-40s version of the Glendavers had been a hillbilly mob family before the government declared their wares legal again, and they adopted airs. Also, the mafioso, Luca Ferraro, had given my clinic its largest donation ever in exchange for my performing home visits during his wife’s pregnancy.
And, not to stereotype, but I was pretty unsurprised that the menacing guy who’d let himself into my office ten years ago also ran a criminal organization.
But how crazy was it that my clean-cut fiancé knew Dawn’s criminal friend? They were so opposite. I couldn’t even imagine them talking.
I recalled how haywire everything inside of me had gone as soon as he showed up at the hospital. How he'd looked at me…and sent shivers down my spine.
How would it feel to lay underneath someone that big and heavy, to wrap my legs around his thick waist? Wait, what are you thinking, Olivia?
As Garrett led me through the doors of his parent’s Beaux-Arts style limestone townhome, my cheeks warmed—for reasons that had nothing to do with the heat blasting inside the mansion Metropolitan Architecture once called “an ode to the gilded age.”
Okay, maybe I should remind Garrett that it was my birthday and ask for some sexy time tonight. It had been a while since we managed more than a super tired quickie. And obviously, my body was out of sorts if I was fantasizing about another guy, just because he’d stared at me in a way that made my nervous system act up—wait a minute, is that Leighton.
All thoughts of the gang leader I’d inadvertently met at the hospital dropped away when I saw my willowy blonde stepsister talking with Garrett’s parents.
“What is Leighton doing here?”
I tried to stop short, but Garrett kept on walking, dragging me with him. He was determined to present me to his mother.
“She saw the reminder card on my desk,” he explained quickly. “And she asked if she could come, too.”
Again, I frowned. I’d done such a good job of mostly avoiding my much younger stepsister since she moved to New York two years ago to attend business school at Manhattan U. I’d forgotten she was interning with Garrett’s firm this semester even though I was the one who’d made the introduction at her request.
She wore a black evening gown, the same as me. But she was dainty and pretty in a way you’d expect for a member of high society. Whereas I always felt so out of place at these things, she appeared like she fit right in.
And looking at her now, I doubted few would suspect that she hadn’t been born with a silver spoon in her mouth but had it unexpectedly placed there when my dad decided to leave my mother for hers.
“Livvy!” she gushed as soon as I arrived. She beamed and pulled me in for air kisses as if we were the best of friends. “I’m so glad you’re finally here. We were all afraid that you wouldn’t make it.”
