Page 9 of Bitter Confessions

“He’s my brother!”

“Not by blood.”

“He’s my sister’s husband,” she said, her voice thick with disgust.

“That doesn’t matter to some people.”

“It matters to me!” she said adamantly.

“I realized that, but there was still a chance it wasn’t just brotherly affection he felt toward you.” The chill in Roth’s eyes warmed fractionally as she gawked at him, revolted. “But once I learned his secret, it all made sense.”

She stiffened. “What does his secret have to do with me?”

Slowly, he shook his head. “Let it go, princess.”

“No way in hell!”

“You won’t be getting it out of me, but you could always ask him yourself.”

“I have as much hope of getting Lyle to confess his sins as I do you,” she said bitterly. And she’d already asked him.

“If I hired someone to look into you, are you telling me they wouldn’t find something you’d pay to keep quiet?” She’d tossed that in Lyle’s face to stop him from hiring an investigator to dig into Roth’s affairs and struck a nerve. The long silence after her question and Lyle’s “What are you accusing me of?” wasn’t a denial. Far from it. At the time, she’d been too caught up in her drama with Roth to ponder it. Now, it was all Jasmine could think about.

She knew the one percent bent the rules when it suited them. She’d seen firsthand how ruthless her family could be in pursuit of a goal, but she never imagined they’d stoop to blackmail, drugs, and underworld dealings. Roth’s refusal to expose Lyle’s secret scared the hell out of her. What had Lyle done that was so horrible that even Roth shied away from discussing it?

Roth thought he was doing her a favor, leaving her image of her supportive brother-in-law intact, but she’d heard enough falsehoods to last a lifetime. No matter how painful, disturbing, or distasteful, Jasmine needed to know the truth. The cost of blissful ignorance was too high. It was better to face ugly reality than take refuge in a home with rotted pillars and hollow walls.

“All of us are capable of good and evil,” Roth said, bringing her troubled gaze back to him. “Even you, but I’ll tell you this—I’ve had firsthand experience with true evil. Lyle’s gray at best.”

Jasmine hated that she was comforted by that morsel of reassurance. He could be lying again, but she desperately wanted to believe Lyle was a good man. “If his secret isn’t that bad, why not tell me?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t bad, just that his reasons weren’t evil. I would have done the same, but I don’t see things the way others do. Society would condemn him.”

“I need to know.” Her voice was as rocky as her emotions.

“And rob you of the only role model you have left?”

Wasn’t that a sad truth? No one in her life was who she thought they were. Not Roth, her father, Thea, Kaia, Rami, or her sisters. She stood in the ruins of a life she now realized was a beautifully constructed sham. She’d taken countless blows since her dad’s death and managed to stay on her feet, but she knew instinctively that whatever Roth had on Lyle would destroy her.

“Why let Lyle’s past warp the good years you’ve had with him?”

“Do I know him or is the man I know a fabrication?” she said dully.

“Your faith is so easily rocked,” he taunted as he closed the distance between them. “Would you love him any less if you knew his secret?”

“How could I know, unless?—?”

“You either love him or you don’t,” he said curtly.

“I love him,” she said, slashing her hand through the air between them. “Of course I do.”

“Then why does it matter what he’s done?”

As she struggled to come up with a suitable response, he continued.

“What about Colette? She’s been married to him for more than a decade. She thinks she knows him, but there are sides to a man he doesn’t show anybody if he can help it. Their marriage has been on the rocks for a while. The baby seems to have united them for the time being. Do you think their marriage could withstand him exposing a part of himself she didn’t know existed, or would it make her doubt everything that came before?”

Jasmine’s heart knocked out of rhythm. He was talking about Lyle and Colette, but he was also talking about himself; about them.

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