The Accidental Marriage: Chapter 30

Instead of going home, I stay away for the next few days. I text Lareina to let her know, praying she shows a hint of unhappiness…a tinge of disapproval. Even Akiko, as supportive as she is of Dad’s career, sighs a little when he has to pull all-nighters.

–Lareina: Thanks for letting me know! Hope you have a productive evening!

I stare at the text, then read it again, slowly. Then glare at the two sunny exclamation marks.

I breathe in and out slowly to settle myself and read it again, with more focus and attention than I gave to my constitutional law final.

No matter what interpretation I force on the words, she doesn’t sound upset. I’d even say she sounds happy.

Fuck.

I said I wanted respectful indifference, not disrespectful apathy. If Lareina were the kind of wife I told her I wanted back in Vegas, she would’ve asked why I was working so late, offered to stop by the office so we could grab dinner together.

She almost sounds like a woman who’s happy to have her husband working late so she can hang out with another man. Like Ethan Beckman. The only reason I’m not barging into our home without notice is that the fucker’s busy dealing with a nasty countersuit involving two Hollywood celebs with more fame and money than brains or common sense. They’re exactly the kind of clients you would wish on your worst enemy.

But I’d take them on if Lareina would be even half as jealous as I was when she mentioned Soledad.

Fucking Soledad. I’m going to make sure she serves jail time for what she did in Vegas. I don’t care what strings her dad tries to pull. I not only know how to cut them, but pull my own to make her miserable. If she flails enough during the process to take Harvey down with her—well, that’s doubtful, but one can always hope—so much the better.

I glance at the desktop clock. Is Lareina working in her studio again? I bought multiple canvases, one of them ridiculously large. Although I was a bit shocked at how enormous it was, I was also secretly glad. It’ll take her a while to paint all three, beyond the next few months. Maybe a year or longer. At least, Google seems to think so.

I come out of the office to stretch my legs and grab some coffee. As I make a turn to reach the break room, I almost bump into—

“Ack!” The coffee in Kenna’s hand begins to tip forward, but she suddenly twists her wrist. The dark brew spills on her pale beige blouse. I start to reach for her, but she staggers back a step or two and looks down at the huge stain, her eyebrows pinched and mouth open.

I feel bad for her, since she obviously tipped the hot drink on herself to prevent it from spilling on me. I keep a spare suit and shirt in the office just in case, but I doubt she does the same.

“Are you okay?” I ask. “Let me get you some paper towels.”

“No. No!” She pulls back as though I’m a leper. “I’m fine. Really.”

What’s that about? Earlier she was telling me about some great drip coffee place, and now she’s acting like being near me will give her cancer. Her gaze flicks to something behind me, then her complexion turns chalky.

I turn and see… Josh?

“I gotta go.” Before I can say anything, Kenna spins in a half-circle and trots off.

“Did you do something to her?” I ask my brother.

Josh smiles sweetly. “Why, good afternoon to you too, Ares. Yes, thank you, I’m having a great day.”

My suspicion radar is pinging hard. “Cut the sarcasm and answer the question.”

“I haven’t done anything. Just saw her outside the lobby with some thuggish guy. A debt collector.”

I frown at the visual he’s painted. “A loan shark?”

Josh shrugs, but it feels like an affirmation. Wordlessly, we walk toward the break room.

“She’s lucky it wasn’t Aunt Jeremiah who caught her,” he remarks.

She would’ve fired Kenna on the spot. My aunt believes perception matters more than reality and doesn’t tolerate anything that could damage the firm’s reputation.

“But that doesn’t explain why she was fleeing like that.” I give him a look. “Unless she owes you money.”

“She doesn’t, and even if she did, I’m a nice guy. But maybe she’s scared you might tell The Fogeys. After all, you’re inflexible and humorless.”

I snort. The two adjectives are what almost everyone at the firm uses to describe me when they don’t think I can hear.

“I had a word with her about that, too,” Josh adds.

“That isn’t like you.” My brother doesn’t give a shit about most people’s problems…unless they’re paying clients. Or family or close friends. His unusual behavior piques my curiosity, but I stomp on the feeling. If he wants to explain himself, he will. If he doesn’t, nothing can make him. If I push too hard, he’ll spin some convincing bullshit story. “Besides, I wouldn’t have ratted her out to management.”

He makes a noncommittal noise. “I wanted to step in before you did something you shouldn’t.” He pours us two mugs of black coffee and pushes one to me. I take it with murmured thanks. “I saw the scar on her back.”

“So?” I feign nonchalance, but what is he getting at?

Josh takes a sip of his coffee. “I know the girl you’re looking for is scarred. On her back, to be specific.”

“Where did you hear that?”

“It’s been over twenty years. You’ve been careful, but nothing stays hidden for that long, especially when you searched for her so desperately.”

Suddenly, I realize Greg hasn’t sent a report about Queen, and I haven’t been thinking about her over the last few weeks. Sudden guilt pierces my heart like broken glass. Am I forgetting her? Abandoning her like The Fogeys would like me to?

At the same time, the voice that sounds awfully like Grandmother says, It’s time to let go. Sometimes things are simply not meant to be. Pursue a happiness that’s close to you rather than one far away. Queen wouldn’t want you to spend so much energy and effort searching for her if the cost is living a good life. She didn’t rescue you for that.

Queen was too young to think that far ahead—but she might be disappointed now if she knew the amount of time and money I’ve spent on looking for her over the last twenty-two years. I learned a long time ago that there are certain things I can’t do anything about. However, it’s bittersweet to consider the possibility that she and I may never cross paths again.

“If you never find her again…” Josh sighs. “I don’t know exactly why you’re looking for her. You can’t possibly think you’re going to fall in love with her and marry her, or something far-fetched like that. But if you’re hoping to pay her back, just pay it forward instead. If she’s the kind of woman worth searching for over twenty years, she would love that.”

I nod slowly. “Yes. She would.” The realization comes with pain and disappointment. It isn’t easy to let go of something I’ve been obsessing over for so long.

He clasps my shoulder. “Anyway, I gotta go wrap up some motions. You coming to poker tonight?”

“Of course. Wouldn’t miss it.”

Contrary to what I told my wife this afternoon, I don’t have to work past seven thirty today. Actually, tonight is the monthly poker night with my brothers, with Bryce hosting it at his place. Although we see one another regularly, it’s mostly at work, and all of us are usually too busy to spend more than a minute or two saying hello.

Besides, it’s a tradition we’ve kept since the kidnapping because the therapist said we needed a way to cope with our emotions—me dealing with the trauma of the near-death experience, and the twins struggling with the guilt that they left me behind when they fled with my help. I told them after my return that I was glad they weren’t stuck in the cabin with me. I was older and bigger, and it was my job to keep my baby brothers safe. But they still couldn’t let go.

The therapist suggested a game night, saying spending time together without talking about the kidnapping or its aftermath might be useful. Just once a week, and we weren’t allowed to dwell on the past event anymore. Behave how we would’ve without the kidnapping—without guilt or pain or loathing or self-recrimination.

We tried a few different board games, but eventually settled on poker. We were all about equally good at it, the game could go on as long as we wanted to play, and we liked to test our luck.

But deciding on a game wasn’t the hard part. It was learning to let go, which took years. Then we gradually started to talk about things that most boys would—cars, sports, anime, manga and girls. Well, the last was never on my list, but it was on my brothers’. We even continued our poker nights at Harvard once the twins started college, then later in law school.

I head to Bryce’s place after taking care of a couple of emails from anxious clients. He lives not too far away in a mansion that’s more of a fortress than a home. Stone walls and turrets and windows that are probably bulletproof. His garden is full of succulents. He says he likes his landscape low maintenance and pretty.

On the round table in the dining room, the various cheeses, sliced roast beef, pork and crackers that Bryce had catered sit on a lazy Susan. There’s also a humidor full of Padrón Cigars 1926 Serie Maduro, two bottles of Pétrus 2020 and a Hanyu 2000, which goes to show just how much Bryce loves us; the distillery shut down in 2004, and there isn’t any more lying around to buy even if you have the cash. But he’s never letting us touch his Hanyu Ichiro Malt card series. His love only extends so far.

“You look like shit,” Bryce observes lightly as he checks his hand.

“He always looks like shit.” Josh puffs on his cigar while glaring at the cards he’s been dealt. I’d assume that he got a shitty hand if it were anybody else, but not Josh. He’ll bluff and lie like a heartless dog to win.

“Don’t like what I have.” I look at mine again. A pair of fours. If one of the community cards is a four, I’ll have three of a kind. Not bad.

If only I had a bit of the luck that I have with poker with my wife—

The acid I’ve become familiar with after marrying Lareina burns in my gut. I seethed with jealousy at seeing her being so chummy with Ethan Beckman, and she couldn’t have been calmer when she talked about Soledad. Not a ripple of interest when she casually mentioned my ex’s “pregnancy,” which is a damn lie. Barnyard animals will stage The Nutcracker before Soledad gets pregnant with my baby.

“By the way, what were you so smug about this afternoon?” Josh says to Bryce.

“Me? Smug?”

“You looked like a cat after a successful hunt,” Josh says.

“There was some kind of commotion,” I say, trying not to dwell on my situation with Lareina. The whole office buzzed about it, whispers rising from every desk.

“Well.” A corner of Bryce’s mouth lifts. “An uninvited guest interrupted my day, and my assistant did her best to keep her out, but…” He shrugs, then deals the community cards.

The four of clubs. Great. I toss another chip onto the pile. Each chip is worth a hundred to make the math easy. Bryce and Josh toss in a couple to call.

“Who managed to get past Amélie?” I can’t think of anybody who would barrel into his office like that, especially with his assistant in the way. Amélie might look like a delicate flower, but she can be a battle-ax when she needs to be.

“Fiona Oberman.”

I raise my eyebrows. “Fiona? Doesn’t she know you hate her?”

“Yeah, but when I was young and dumb, I made a promise to do her one favor. She finally came to collect.”

“Wow. But still… She couldn’t find anybody else to turn to for help?” Josh says.

“What did she want? Not representation, right?” I ask. “She would never trust you that much.”

Everyone knows the level of distrust and animosity between the two. Not sure why, because Bryce was interested in her when they first met. So what if she was involved with some loser frat boy and distanced herself from Bryce for a while? My brother isn’t the type to dislike a woman for dating whom she wants.

“She wants to borrow money.”

I almost choke on my whiskey.

“Did you tell her that if she can’t pay you back, you’ll want a pound of her flesh?” Josh asks.

“Of course, especially when she begged so prettily.” I sense a sliver of annoyance and frustration underneath Bryce’s derisive tone.

Another card dealt. The king of hearts.

Not a flicker of an eyelash from my brothers. I raise just for the hell of it. They call.

“Did she take your offer?” Josh asks.

Something passes behind Bryce’s eyes. “Too much fucking pride. Funny, considering her family’s on the verge of bankruptcy.”

Lying asshole. The sardonic smile on his mouth betrays him. He didn’t offer her shit, just enjoyed taunting her. Nobody’s said she got on her knees, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he pushed it that far.

I stuff my mouth with cheese. As the sharp flavor spreads on my tongue, I wonder if Lareina is having dinner. Somebody needs to make sure she can eat. Now that I think about it, it’s irritating that the fucker—Beckman—didn’t notice she wanted to eat the noodles. He should’ve tasted them before she had to serve some on his plate.

Bastard. This is why I’ll always hate him.

You’ve hated him since long before you met your wife, an inner voice points out.

Fine, I’ll hate him more.

“She’ll come around, though.” Bryce sighs nonchalantly. “What other choice does she have?”

“A sugar daddy?” Josh says. “SoCal is full of ’em. She doesn’t even have to limit herself to single men. Mistressing is a lucrative business.”

Bryce snorts. “Don’t be ridiculous. She’s too old for that.”

“She’s barely thirty.” I look at my brother like he’s intellectually challenged.

Josh adds, “And she keeps in shape. She looks like she’s twenty-two. A lot of guys would tap it.”

“That’s disgusting,” Bryce sneers. Another card dealt—the queen of diamonds. No help.

“Not my fault she’s a babe,” Josh says.

I throw in more chips.

“You seem confident,” Josh says.

“I’m always confident.”

“You taking your wife to the art auction exhibition?” Bryce says, probably not wanting to have Josh continue talking about Fiona and her prospects as a trophy wife—or mistress.

“What exhibition?”

“The one for the art auction two weeks from now. Susan Winters’s paintings are going to be up for sale, and you might want to grab one or two for your wife,” Josh says.

“Why?” I ask. “Is she Lareina’s favorite?”

Bryce and Josh look at each other. “Ares, Susan Winters was Lareina’s mom. Haven’t you done a background check on her?”

“Well, yeah, but…” Greg sent it a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t read it. Curiosity compelled me to peek, but I refused. The report would tell me every fact there is to know about her—age, birthday, family relationships and educational background. But that feels forced. Couples should get to know each other by spending time together. When I saw the report attached to Greg’s email, I realized I wanted to learn about my wife organically. “Wait a minute. How come I didn’t know about the exhibition? Don’t the organizers want me there?”

“Akiko mentioned it, but you probably forgot as usual, since you hate going to events like that. The organizer probably didn’t bother to invite you either,” Bryce says.

“Assholes. Don’t they know who my wife is?”

“Most likely. They might’ve invited her.”

Bryce meant to soothe me, but it does the opposite. Why didn’t she say something about the auction? Does she not plan to go? Or worse yet, go with someone else? Like Ethan Beckman?

I jerkily puff my cigar. Just because she doesn’t act jealous over Soledad doesn’t mean I’m going to behave the same way.

Besides, didn’t we promise to be faithful? What she’s doing seems like Cheating Lite.

“She’d probably love to see her mother’s art, unless she hated her mother,” Josh says. “Not only that, if she’s into art, she’ll enjoy meeting one of the latest up-and-coming stars, who’ll be at the event. She’s selling her work there too. Parker Jacoby. Her paintings are already getting a lot of buzz right now.”

Art exhibitions aren’t my scene, but my wife seems to like art in general. She spends hours every day drawing.

“Fine. I’ll take her.” Maybe it’ll provide an opportunity for us to become closer.