Page 200 of Devious Lies (Cruel Crown)
A smile curved up Virginia’s lips. She could’ve been pretty. Beautiful, even. Too bad she conducted herself with the moral compass of the wicked stepmothers in every Brothers Grimm fairy tale. “You’re bluffing, otherwise it wouldn't have taken four years for this conversation to transpire.”
The switch flipped. Her shoulders pulled back. So dumb for thinking I would ever relent. If she thought this was over, she’d never met persistence like mine before. Especially when it came to protecting people I cared about.
Virginia turned. I would have parted with the final threat, but when we both shifted our attention to the doorframe, we encountered my blue-gray storm.
Emery.
Virginia carried herself with an authority she’d never been granted. I would have admired her for it, except she’d raised me to be as cutthroat as herself. That, and I reeled from the revelations, struggling to take them all in.
I needed that moment where everything clicked. It didn’t come, and trying to make sense of their fight reminded me of trying to catch rain with my fingertips. Pointless.
Bottom line—I’d been lied to.
It stabbed me in a place I thought had scabbed over. The last big lie in my life spiraled out of control. I barely recovered from the Winthrop Scandal. How many more lies did I have to endure?
“Oh, Emery, honey.” That smile looked demented on Virginia’s face. “Let’s get this dinner started. Why don’t you go hug your father?”
My eyes burned with the effort it took not to glance at Nash. I scrunched my nose. “God, Virginia, don’t call him that.”
“Why not?” So smug, her face reminded me of Basil’s after she’d left our A.P. Spanish exam, having cheated.
“Virginia,” Nash warned.
His tone brought chills to my body, so much venom, it should have killed her on the spot. I stared at him, eyes slanted, trying to figure everything out.
And here was the crux of it all. I loved listening to Nash fight for me, but I was capable of fighting for myself. Especially when he kept secrets everyone but me seemed to know. Who lied to someone they cared about? If he could lie so easily to me, what else had he lied about?
“Why wouldn’t I call him your father?” She downed her champagne, leaving a blood-colored lipstick stain around the glass’s rim. “He is, after all, your biological father.”
She’d shocked me into silence, but it wasn’t her words or their cold delivery that pained me. It was the lack of surprise in Nash’s eyes.
He’d known, and he'd kept it from me.
The satisfied sneer Virginia flashed me before she left wouldn’t haunt me tonight.
Nash’s lies, on the other hand, crippled me.
They wouldn't haunt me tonight either. They'd haunt me forever.
“Explain,” I demanded, barely able to form the word through my hurt and fury.
“Balthazar Van Doren is your dad.”
I sidestepped him when he approached. “Yeah, I got that.” Dragging my toe across an imaginary line, I said, “This is my half of the room. That’s yours. Don’t cross it, and I won’t knee you in the balls. Now, continue. The truth, please.”
His jaw ticked. Actually, his everything ticked. “Sir Balty was your mom’s secret high school sweetheart. Her health teacher. She got pregnant and freaked out, because the affair started before she turned sixteen—the age of consent in North Carolina.
“Your dad visited her town over vacation, and she targeted him for his money. They slept together, she told him she was pregnant, and they had a shotgun wedding.” The words rushed out, like he thought I'd leave any second.
If I looked flighty, it was because I was. “How do you know all this?”
“Gideon told me.”
In the hall, two drunk socialites ambled past, stumbling over their heels and giggling with each other. As if my world hadn’t tilted on its axis. I’d never felt more aware of my insignificance.
The world moves on, Emery, and you will, too.
I shook my head, unable to fit these puzzle pieces together, even as he spoon-fed them to me. “Why would da—Gideon let Balthazar into our lives?”
