Page 72 of Five Days

I just hoped the pursed lips and arrogant lift of his chin didn’t afflict me as it did the stooped man who could only be my grandfather.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded in the same accent as his…butler? Manservant? Did those titles even exist anymore?

“I’m looking for answers,” I replied somewhat coolly, refusing to cower down as I was sure plenty of people had done over the years of this man’s life.

Malcom Briggs took me in from head to toe, sneering even though he clung to the casing as though the wood could keep his frail form from toppling over. Regardless of his sunken, sallow appearance, the old man wore tailored clothing, a hint of expensive cologne attempting to cover the stench of death clinging to his skin. Even nearing his end, he carried an air of authority, like he expected to be heard and obeyed.

“You’re a few days too early to lay a claim to my fortune, lad. I haven’t yet submitted to the grave’s beckoning.”

I frowned, already disliking the only family member I’d ever seen in the flesh. “I’m not interested in any inheritance if that’s what you’re suggesting, Mr. Briggs. I simply wish to know what happened to my mother, Lauren.”

“She was an unruly teenager, who refused to be tamed into a lady.” He all but spat the words, making his feelings toward his daughter more than clear. “A complete disgrace to our name and a disappointment to both her mother and I.”

She’d been an only child, which meant I was the last of this old man’s line. Still, I wanted nothing to do with him, his impending demise, or what he left behind once buried six feet under.

Because he’d felt the same toward an innocent infant thirty-three years earlier.

But I kept my silence and listened to him spew his bitterness because I was that desperate for any information I could get.

“She was the town whore by sixteen and pregnant at seventeen, unable to identify which man impregnated her.” He gave me another slow perusal and found me lacking. Whether due to my mother’s sins against her father’s pride or for the way I looked in my casual clothes, I didn’t know. Didn’t care. “She removed the stain of her miserable existence from our name days after giving birth to a child no one stepped forward to claim.”

Eleven days to be exact, according to the newspapers at the time.

The truth of her death unmentioned in the write-ups I’d read didn’t surprise me, nor did it have any effect on my emotions. I’d never known the girl who’d given me life, and she’d chosen selfishness rather than attempting to raise me in a household where she would always be judged and despised.

“Thank you for your time,” I murmured, having heard enough to realize they’d seen me as nothing more than another stain to the Briggs’s bloodline.

In their eyes, I was as soiled as Lauren—same as the senator’s son.

Malcom Briggs didn’t have shit to say as I turned my back on him and walked away. The door shut firmly behind me, a sense of finality settling over me that I was more than okay with. Fuck him, his wife, and their money.

My mind settled on Landon.

I climbed into my car and clutched the steering wheel, thoughts of him flashing through my mind. While I’d seen firsthand how he’d been ignored by both of his parents, I had a better understanding of how they must have looked at him after the scandal that ruined his family’s name.

The emptiness I’d been attempting to understand in my chest flooded with a swell of emotions I couldn’t decipher. Regret? Empathy? Definite longing to hold him and soothe his hurt lay beneath it all along with the need for someone to do the same for me.

Callum.

But fear continued to reign supreme like a selfish bitch, refusing me freedom to accept the love and care both would gladly lavish on me in return.

A therapist would have a field day with my abandonment and trust issues, but I doubted healing from either could be had. Rather than thinking too hard on that truth, I hopped back on the highway toward Boston and called Sean.

“How’d it go?” he asked.

“Worse than I expected, but I can’t say I’m surprised,” I replied, my tone tired and resigned.

Sean and I had discussed possible outcomes, and since state records clearly showed my lineage, my grandparents could have sought me out if they’d wanted to.

“Suicide?”

I exhaled heavily. “Yeah. Just days after giving birth to me. Could have been postpartum, but considering how much Malcom’s bitterness still etched in his face and words all these years later, I expect Lauren couldn’t bear the thought of living beneath his roof. I know I wouldn’t have wanted to do so if I’d been in her shoes.”

“Fuck—man, I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. Can you imagine what my life would have been like had I been raised like she’d been? Seen as less than? He called her a fucking stain, for Christ’s sake! A disgrace. Disappointment. Whore.” I bit each word out, my anger rising in the knowledge Landon’s father had done the same to him. “She’d fallen well below his expectations, and I would have reaped the consequences of her supposed sins.”

“Well fuck him and his money.”

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