Page 75 of Fierce Love
“Yeah,” I agree, stepping back. “I just hope it’s enough. If it’s not, I’m going to keep going for her. I don’t care how long it takes or what I have to do. I’ll get her out of Hollyn’s life.”
“When did you hire a PI?” Owen asks.
“A long time ago.”Fourteen years ago. “Hired some guy in New York City.”
Owen squints in thought. “You remember his name?”
“No, but he must have been ill-qualified. The person I was trying to track down was literallyinNew York City.”
Owen sweeps all the printouts and photos back into the envelopes he brought with him, and he seems lost in thought for a beat. “Your mom has a lot of ties to a lot of people.”
“Yeah, I know,” I say with a sigh.
“Do you really know, though?” He stops what he’s doing to look me in the eyes. “She’s got her fingers in a lot of pies across the island.”
“Her currency is gossip.”
“Maybe that’s what you thought it was as a kid, but her currency islives, man. Your mom makes and ruins lives. That’s not even an exaggeration.” He shakes his head. “You and Sawyer and Maren are out there trying to make people’s lives better, and your mom is out there covering up some things, digging up other things. A dog with a bone that she’s constantly burying or revealing. It’s fascinating to watch and scary as shit. I would not want to cross her.”
“Sounds ominous,” I say, though I’m not as surprised as I wish I was. She’s always been one to trade in information, but I don’t think I ever really thought enough about the consequences of that—who gets helped, who gets hurt. Much of what she does has never touched me, and in cases like Gage, where he got into trouble with the government, her ability to wield information often proved helpful to the family overall. At times, I’ve even gone to her, knowing she’d get something done that I’d find distasteful or that I wasn’t sure how to approach. Less now that I’m older, but there were definitely times when I asked for help and didn’t question how she solved my problem.
“I suppose that’s why Celia and Jonathan are still together,” Owen says. “I bet she knows all the skeletons in his closet.” He lets out a little laugh. “I wouldn’t even be surprised if she was the one who buried them all there.”
“She’s never deliberately set out to hurt any of us kids. Neglectful, in a lot of ways. Self-absorbed sometimes. Since she got sick, she’s been a bit better.” I shrug, but I wonder whether I should be looking into exactly whose lives my mother has been making and ruining. It’s not a path I’ve ever wanted to go down, because I’m afraid it’ll fragment our family, but it’s also the height of privilege to be able to ignore whatever she’s doing. Not exactly a great feeling to realize that maybe I’m not as far removed from my rich, entitled upbringing as I’d like to believe.
“When are you turning all that over?” I ask.
“I’ll talk to Stephen to figure out the best way to get it into the right hands. I want to make sure they can use as much of it as possible. You want her nailed to the wall, right?”
“That’s right,” I say, “and I don’t want any possibility that she can hang those nails on a cross. Mickie is not the victim here.”
“Fair enough,” Owen says, tucking the files under his arm before slapping me on the shoulder. “It’s been good to be out of special forces and back on the island.”
“Business is going well?” I ask.
“Palace has hired some of my people for the princes and their babies. We’ve got celebrity clients coming to the island looking for local security. My bodyguard and security guard training programs are up and running, and my brother Weston built all the tech for the company to keep us secure and state-of-the-art. Things are ticking along. Can’t complain.”
Then we stand around talking for a few more minutes about producing television, working with Interflix, and the hit documentary my company put out about Prince Nicholas and Julia Jensen, which was picked up around the world.
When there’s a knock on the apartment door, Owen excuses himself just as Maren enters with a small dog carrier.
“Kinsley is going to bawl her eyes out when she sees he’s gone later,” Maren says, setting the carrier on the island. “You have to give him to her before then.”
“I’m picking her up from school,” I say, “so telling her won’t be a problem.”
“Telling Hollyn?” Maren says, raising her eyebrows.
“Might inspire a fight,” I admit. “But he seemed like a good dog, and I couldn’t take Kin’s tears.”
“Your little marshmallow heart,” Maren says, patting me on the arm.
“Hey, what’s going on with Sawyer? I texted her. She’s dating Dalton Worthington?”
“Yep,” Maren says, her expression tightening. “He’s running for the Advisory Council, just broke up with his wife about six months ago. There’s something about him that rubs me the wrong way.”
While I love Maren, she can be a little prickly sometimes, particularly with men, so it’s hard to know whether her gut feeling is accurate or a knee-jerk reaction to a political figure.
“I haven’t heard anything about his divorce,” I say. “Good or bad.”
