Page 124 of Braving the Storm
Five.
Four.
Antoine screws his nose up and lifts a couple of the pages with a forefinger, before letting them drop, then sneers back at me.
Three.
Crispin skim reads the first couple of paragraphs on her page and starts laughing.
Two…
“Are you fucking for real?” Antoine snaps. “I’ve already told you, this arrangement isn’t going to be anything but the business deal your father promised me. I’m not signing these.”
“You’re the dumbest bitch alive.” My sister shakes her head. “What’s your plan? To run back to the mountains, shack up with our uncle, and have his babies like some hillbilly whore? You’d never outrun those headlines.”
She gives me an ugly smile, and Antoine does the same. His face already contorting into an expression that tells me he’s got the threats ready to fly, his way of attempting to drag me obediently back into line.
Not this time, douchebag.
“Here’s a headline for you.” Spinning the first of the pages from my third stack of documents around, I hand them a duplicate copy each. “How about something catchy like, ‘Lane Enterprises founder groomed a minor, impregnated her, and then refused to acknowledge either her, or the baby.”
They both hardly look at the printout before them, eyes bouncing up to glare at me.
“Oh, yes, let’s just clarify that little detail, shall we, Cris? Seeing as you happily followed Dad’s lead in spouting the bullshit rumors that Tegan Mitchell was pregnant. Whereas her healthy baby boy was actually born prior to Tegan's death.”
I take their continued silence as my opportunity to keep pressing forward.
This time, I pluck the duplicate copies of the photo showing my father with his arm around the bared waist of averyyoung teenage cheerleader. She beams at the camera, all of fourteen, complete with her blonde curls, red lipstick, and a distinctive beauty mark on her upper lip.
“Or, what about, ‘underage statutory assault by Erik Lane revealed: the man who covered up his depravity by planting a girl in front of his brother while blackout drunk, just so he could use the excuse that she was Stôrmand Lane’s wife as a way to keep her in secret at his apartment.’”
Cris turns bright red.
Antoine might burst a blood vessel from the look of him.
“Do either of you need to sit down? Want a glass of water?” I smile and cock my head to one side.
“What is this shit, Briar? I didn’t think you’d stoop as low as making up outrageous lies. I should have you fucking committed.” My sister finally rediscovers her forked tongue.
“No. What I’m doing here is providing an opportunity for both of you to not end up in jail for aiding and abetting a man who was a predator.”
I take a deep breath and smooth down my hair.
“Tegan Mitchell didn’t specify who she referred to in the note she left, and the convenient assumption that played into the hands of our father was that it was her husband—even if they were only married on paper—who drove her to take her own life.”
Tapping the papers in front of me, I fix my sister with an unflinching stare.
“As it turns out, she meant our father all along. No wonder he was so eager to cover every little sordid detail. Maybe she wasn’t thinking straight when she wrote something non-specific, maybe she was scared right ‘til the end, and that’s why she didn’t outright name him, or maybe she was simply trying to protect her newborn son from his own biological parent. Either way, she left it all detailed for her own parents. An attempt to give them closure knowing how much pain they would be in.”
The air in here is so thick you could slice it in two.
“I doubt you’ll want to look through all of these documents right now, but I have had my attorney copy you into the files via email, so you can enjoy perusing them at a later, more convenient time. Although, Cris, you’re familiar with all these details, aren’t you? You’re more than familiar with all the details of Tegan Mitchell’s child being born prior to her passing. While I don’t want to make assumptions, since you were well aware of our father’s efforts to make sure the story stuck that she was still pregnant at the time, I doubt you’ll need to take a look over things.”
“This doesn’t win you a divorce, Briar. You can trash your fortune if you want, but I’m still owed the connections to Lane Enterprises your rotten fucking last name gives me on our marriage certificate.”
Antoine leans on the counter, narrowing his eyes on me.
I straighten my spine and glare right back.
