Page 14 of Bitter Confessions

“Don’t say his name.”

She ignored the edge in his voice. “None of them have given any indication they’re interested in me that way.”

“You must have overlooked their subtle, well-mannered passes since they’re such gentlemen.” When she stared at him as if he’d grown two heads, he asked, “Did they continue to contact you after the funeral?”

“Dad died,” she said slowly. “They were worried about me.”

His silence spoke volumes.

A little frantically, Jasmine ran through her interactions with her childhood playmates, trying to see them through a different lens. A year ago, Matthew bought an estate in Tuxedo Park after his wife died from breast cancer. Maximus had invited him to dinner. She’d thought it was odd, since her father wasn’t known for his hospitality, but assumed they were doing business together. Matthew continued to drop by periodically. She saw it as him being neighborly. But now that she pondered it, Thea just so happened to have a meal prepared and her father chose those days to visit the city…

As for Lincoln, he extended several invites after the charity event, but she turned him down. Being seen with him just once caused enough speculation and gossip to remind her why she avoided society.

And Julius... They’d never been particularly close, but after the funeral, he called every week, showing a level of empathy Jasmine never knew he possessed. She declined his offers to take her for a drive or for dinner to take her mind off her father. Come to think of it, he hadn’t phoned her since she reunited with Roth. Coincidence?

Unsettled, she looked up and found herself the focus of Roth’s intense scrutiny. “What?” she snapped defensively.

“Which one of them was supposed to replace me?”

She blinked. “Replace you?”

A muscle ticked under his eye. “Maximus said you had someone waiting in the wings—someone of your own class who made the grade. I assume you had a falling out, which is why the engagement was never announced.”

Her mouth sagged before she got a hold of herself. “When did Dad say that?”

“Four years ago, when he showed up here in the middle of the night and blackmailed me.”

“He came here?”

“The same day you came out of hiding and visited him at Tuxedo Park.”

She tried to process his words through a haze of static.

“You shouldn’t have involved him, princess.” Roth’s voice was gentle, but his eyes were seething.

Jasmine licked her suddenly dry lips. “You left me no choice.”

“I never thought I’d see the day you would run to the man I freed you from.”

She felt the blood leech from her face.

“Your father tortured and publicly humiliated you every chance he got. He banished you to the country and left you in boarding schools to keep you out of the spotlight because you didn’t fit the Hennessy image.”

“Stop.”

“He treated you like an outsider, a nuisance. He never mentioned you unless he was asked directly if he had another daughter?—”

“Shut up!”

“You finished your master’s degree to please him, and he sabotaged every chance you made to use it. Even after he disowned you, you tried to be a good daughter and see him in the hospital. But no matter how ill he was, he always remembered to ban you from his room. That’s the man you ran to and begged for help to be rid of me?”

She whirled away. He was still talking, still railing at her, but she couldn’t hear anything over the sound of her heartbeat. When he grabbed her shoulder and swung her around, she lost her slippery grip on her temper. Roth jerked back before her fist connected with his face and used her momentum to box her against the counter and crowded her from behind.

“I gave up everything for you, yet one fuckup and you demand a divorce?” he hissed into her hair. “You refuse to talk to me and run to the bastard who gave you nothing your whole life?”

“Don’t talk about my father!”

“How are you going to stop me?” he taunted as she did her best to get free, but she ended up bruising her legs against the lower cabinets instead. “I can say whatever I want about your precious father. After all, I knew him best. You and your sisters have no clue who he really was.”

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