Page 34 of Cruel Dreams

Clayton probably had a great time laughing at my dad behind his back. Kagan Maddox looked like an absolute fool trusting Clayton Black.

My mother still thought there was some good in Clayton, or she thought too much of herself, hoping she could turn him away from his lucrative black market dealings. He made millions selling weapons—he wouldn’t have stopped for my mother.

A shadow falls over my chair, and Denton stands in front of me, blocking the sun and holding his own cup of coffee.

He’s looking better, not so haggard. He’s wearing new clothes similar to mine—khaki pants and a thin cotton button-down shirt. A watch glints on his wrist. He needs a haircut, and the last five years have put lines on his face that may never fade.

We have a lot to say to each other, and this meeting was a long time in coming, but I don’t know where to start.

He lowers himself into a chair near mine and stares uncomfortably at his shoes.

A few minutes pass and I finally say, “You didn’t tell me you spoke to Dad the day he died.”

Denton hunches his shoulders and rubs his eyes.

I’m not surprised he has trouble sleeping. I can’t sleep either, not unless Stella’s lying next to me.

“He wanted to build something for you kids. Something more than the company, something more than a business legacy. He wanted to give back, in a big way. He wanted to create something you and Zarah could nurture and pass down to your children. I kept telling him Black wasn’t the only one he could partner with. Hell, he didn’t need to have a partner at all. He was Kagan Maddox, for Christ’s sake. But he had it in his head Ash and Zarah would get married one day and that Black Enterprises and Maddox Industries would stop being competitors and unite in all ways.”

“He didn’t know Clayton’s making his money illegally.”

“No. He couldn’t figure out why Clayton didn’t want to work with him in that capacity. Clayton didn’t mind being friends with your dad. I think deep down there was mutual respect, but he liked being business rivals more.”

“Their whole friendship was a lie.” Clayton started Black Enterprises from a hole in the wall around the same time my dad founded Maddox Industries. They’d been struggling businessmen together. I often heard my dad and Clayton talk about the “good old days” before their companies employed even a single person. It hurts my dad bought into all of it. While he was building our company on something good, Clayton did anything he could to cut corners and make money the easy way.

Denton sighs and squints into King’s Crossing’s skyline. With the sun sparkling against the skyscrapers, it’s a beautiful sight. “Maybe not at the beginning. But Clayton, he always wantedmore. The running joke was Kagan was the king of King’s Crossing. He had the looks, the charm...the kindness and compassion. Clayton took that in stride. He didn’t want to be king. He wanted to be God.”

“Ash’s and my friendship was the same. Nothing but a sham. I invested years in a man who hated me.”

“The Blacks’ motto is to keep their friends close and their enemies closer. You were friends growing up. Real friends. You would have to ask Ash when that line blurred.”

I sip my cooling coffee. “You never said anything to Dad about it?”

“Said anything about what? Clayton not wanting to work with Kagan wasn’t proof of anything. Clayton did, or does, have his fingers in a lot of pies. Maybe he didn’t want to add another project. It could have been as simple as that, but Kagan took it personally.”

“Did you know what my dad wanted to do? What kind of nonprofit he wanted to start?”

Denton shakes his head and rests his elbows on his thighs. “He didn’t tell me much about that. All I know is he viewed Clayton not wanting to partner with him as a slight. Kagan was thinking of you and Zarah and Ash. When Clayton turned him down, he thought Clayton wasn’t taking your futures as seriously as he was.”

“And later, after the plane crash?”

“All I had to go on was my instincts. I was trying to find something, anything, and I met Clayton several times. I almost had him convinced I wanted out of the company because you weren’t listening to me and were doing a horseshit job of running it. Stella must have known something to snoop through my email and I should have told her my suspicions, but I didn’t know if I could trust her.”

“Chase Forrester saw you and Clayton having drinks at the Alibi Lounge. We met them for dinner and he told me. That’s why Stella hacked into your email. She was looking for evidence against the Blacks because she had the same suspicions you did. She tried to tell me Ash wasn’t the man I thought he was. He threatened her, but I accused her of blowing things out of proportion and I brushed it off as Ash being Ash. She would have made a good ally.”

He scoffs. “For all the good that would have done. I didn’t know what the hell was going on, then she disappeared and you had Wagner cut me out. Clayton accused me of spying and froze most of my accounts. For five years I tried to dig up enough dirt that would convince you to believe me, lived on pennies a day using a small account Clayton didn’t find. All that changed when I heard Stella surfaced.”

He didn’t say, “When Stella came back to the States,” and I swallow hard. “Did you know Stella was trapped at Black Enterprises?”

He pauses, and I know right away I’m going to hate what he has to say. “Yes. I paid one of Ash’s interns to dig around, keep her ear to the ground. I knew the position I was putting her in, but I was desperate and couldn’t think of anything else. We met for coffee, and she told me she saw a woman who looked like Stella in a hallway delivering paperwork to Ash’s office. She showed me a picture of Stella she took on her cell. Communication dried up after that. I posed as her uncle and used a payphone to call Black’s receptionist, and she told me the intern no longer worked there. Two weeks later, her name popped up on a missing persons website. I never heard anything else.”

“There’s no way Stella knows that.”

Denton shoots me a look. “I didn’t tell her. She already feels responsible for so much, and I couldn’t add to it.”

I force myself to relax. Tension and guilt turned all my muscles to stone. “How did you find out she escaped?”

“Same as you, I imagine. Saw her on the news. The subway, when someone pushed her off the platform, then Quinn was shot outside your building. I drove around the city for hours looking for her, and I managed to pick her up the night she found her foster mother dead. She was going to let a car run her over.”

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