“Such as?” I pressed, arching a brow when she didn’t seem likely to answer me.
“Obedience, Bianca,” she reminded me. “I abhor scandal and I will not abide by anyone, even one of my kin, dragging our name through the mud. Is that understood?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I agreed, but I picked at the succulent salmon, something churning in my belly that didn’t feel right.
“Now, other than the issue of guardianship, is there anything else I should know? Perhaps your parents left you an estate?” she asked with a beautiful smile. “If so, I could help you find the best investments for any money you might have inherited.”
“No, there was nothing,” I told her, thinking of Aida’s record player, the nearly empty bottle of Chanel Number 5 and an old, scratched Cartier watch Lane had given her back at Lion Court. “Nothing of value really.”
Of course, that wasn’t really true.
If Tiernan was right, Dad had actually left Brando and me an inheritance hidden away somewhere. It burned in me that Tiernan had the key, but my priority was getting Brandon back and not a key to some unknown, improbable treasure.
“Your father wasn’t a wealthy man?”
“What? Oh.” I shook my head and laughed a little. “No, he wasn’t.”
“What did he do for work?” she asked politely.
I shrugged. “He kind of cycled from job to job.”
In truth, Lane’s company had so many holdings and interests, it was impossible to list just one. At the end of his life, he’d been passionate about green energy. He was the one who took me on tours of the Texan countryside from oil rigs to wind farms, showing me how one destroyed and the other harnessed. It was a passion he’d sowed in me.
“Was he Italian?” Caroline asked as she placed her cutlery neatly on her place and lifted a hand. A second later, a servant scurried forward to whisk the dirty dish way and another stepped forward to refill her wine glass.
“I’m not sure what he was.”
“Hmm, well, that is a shame. It’s good to know where one comes from.”
“Where do you come from?” I asked, genuinely curious. “You married a Constantine, right? Who were you before that?”
My questions rang through the air between us like a discordant note. Caroline seemed oddly disturbed by my question if her stillness was anything to go off on.
Finally, her lips pursed and she took up drawing rings around the rim of her wineglass again. The haunting noise was the only sound in the massive formal dining room.
“No one, really,” she murmured so softly, I thought I might have imagined it. Then, with conviction, “I was a Roosevelt. A woman from a prestigious family. You should be grateful I found you, Bianca. I can afford you opportunities you never could have dreamt of.”
I didn’t tell her the only thing I dreamt of was a safe, happy home for Brandon and the surgery that might stop his epileptic seizures for good. Honestly, I didn’t think she would understand the simplicity of it.
“I’m so curious about the family,” I ventured with my heart in my throat. I was entering dangerous territory pressing about this, but I was curious enough to kill the cat. “How did you and Lane meet?”
A startled laugh burst from her lips before she clamped them shut and covered her perfectly painted mouth with her hand. “It’s a silly story, really.”
“I’d like to hear it.”
She looked over my shoulder at the past, a soft smile just curving the edge of her lips. “It was in college. I knew I’d have to marry well. That was the role of a society woman in those days. A degree was unnecessary, but I insisted. My parents allowed it only because they knew I would probably meet someone rich and well-connected at an Ivy League school.” She tapped her long-manicured nails against the wine glass, peering inside as if it was a crystal ball illuminated with scenes from the past. “It was an entirely new world. New ideas. New people.”
“People like Lane.” I hung on to every world, feeling momentary shame for supporting their love story when my own mother had loved Lane as much as she’d every loved anything. It felt disloyal, but I also couldn’t shake my lifelong infatuation with dad’s ‘real’ family, and my desperation to know more.
Her smile was anemic, a sad curve. “He was the golden boy on campus. Good looks. Good family. He made good grades without effort. He was the life of every party. I was swept away by his interest in me. Flattered by it.”
I couldn’t help the smile tugging at my lips, thinking of my dad—younger than I remembered him, but just as vibrant, just as strong. He’d had the kind of palpable magnetism that drew people to him in droves. “How did you meet him? Was it love at first sight?”
“Not exactly.” She spoke slowly, the words spilling like molasses to the table. I had the sense she didn’t usually share insight about her life and I wondered why. “He was a friend of a friend. They were best friends, actually. No one could imagine it now, but I was there. He and Bryant were inseparable.”
“Oh my God,” I said, as the rivalry between Dad and Bryant came into vivid focus. It made a twisted kind of sense that such a fierce hatred had once started as friendship.
“Love,” I said, shocked. I expected that they fought over power or money. The same things they fought over as middle-aged men. I had no idea what love had to do with it. Unless Caroline had gotten between them? It wouldn’t be the first time a woman had come between two friends.
She shrugged slightly, looking young and vulnerable for all of one second before she straightened her shoulders and pinned me with a cooling look. “We all make our choices, Bianca. I made mine. And Lane made his.”
Internally, I winced. It was such a strange sensation to know my mother had come between the pages of their story. That I was a product of Lane’s lies and Caroline’s unknown humiliation. If anything, it made me feel tender toward her, as if I owed her my love because my dad had taken his from her.
“Thank you for sharing that with me,” I told her, honestly, moved by her words.
“You never told me that, Mother.”
We both turned with startled gasps to view the man who had quietly entered the dining room, half obscured in the shadow of an old grandfather clock. I knew who it was when he stepped out into the light though.
There was no mistaking Winston Constantine.
He was in magazines and newspapers, the most famous of the family because he was the head of their company, Halcyon.
The thick blonde hair pushed back from a square forehead, the same cold blue eyes as his mother, a few shades lighter than Lane’s. Lighter than mine. In what was no doubt a bespoke suit that fit his tapered frame immaculately, a diamond bright watch on his wrist, Winston was every inch a Bishop’s Landing blue blood. He looked more like Caroline than Lane, but I could see our shared father in the shape of his eyes and mouth.
And here he was in the same room as me after all these years.
My breath left my body and my lungs closed up shop.
“Winston,” Caroline said calmly, though there was a slight flush in her cheeks that spoke of her embarrassment. I sensed she wasn’t usually a very sentimental woman. “What brings you around at dinner time without an invitation?”