Page 56 of The Wife Deception
Nolan, distracted by a group of women laughing, turned back to face me.
"Club, like a secret club?"
Nolan rolled his eyes. "Typical over-hyped stuff, but yeah, it was your run-of-the-mill fraternity."
And I suspected Nolan's Yale college fraternity had very little in common with regular fraternities. "Only yours had aristocrats and sons of billionaires."
Nolan raised his hands in mock surrender. "Hey, I didn't make the rules. I was forced to join."
I frowned. "I thought one applies in order to get into those types of things?"
"Not me though. I was tapped without knowing. I didn't even want to join. I made sure to fail every test they gave and still I ended up getting in."
"Wow. They must have wanted you real bad."
His mouth twisted. "That's what I thought at first until I found out that my father had paid a hefty sum to the club to make sure they accepted me."
"Why?"
"Like you said, it's a club full of aristocrats, sons of billionaires, and of course, soon to becomepoliticians. He did the same for my brother Carey too, but at least Carey was eager to join. He wanted the best for his sons, even though it was against their will." He spoke the last sentence with unmistakable bitterness. I didn't need more evidence that Nolan and his father didn't have a good relationship. It was clear in the way he spoke about him. And in the ways he didn't.
"I guess I was lucky my parents weren't like that. I mean, they died before I went to college—"
"Ay, I am sorry."
"It's okay, it's been years. But even the only other person who could have exerted such pressure on me seemed to not notice that I exist."
"I get it. I can see why you'd rebel."
I didn't understand him until I remembered who I was pretending to be. Aelin's life story was like mine. Even though I didn't know her father, her mother had died young and our grandfather had taken the responsibility of raising her. With the little I knew of Kenneth, he probably did not have the time to raise her and she probably had to resort to attention seeking methods just to be seen. The realization made me look at her in a new light and empathize with her.
"We have our own ways of coping with our parents, I guess. But why didn'tyourebel?"
Nolan frowned. He looked like he had never considered it before. "It was good for me not to inthe long run. I got a lot of lifelong contacts from that club."
"Yeah, but you didn't know it then. Why didn't you refuse to join?"
"We all can't do whatever we want, Aelin."
It was the first time he had used Aelin's full name in a long time when speaking to me. The warning in his voice was unmistakable and made me stop my probing as much as I wanted to know more about him. He clearly didn't want to go there, even though my question was harmless. And even if I wanted to, I could not because Luca soon interrupted us, announcing that dinner was ready.
A long white table was set at the center of the garden and everyone strolled to it. Apart from the food being good, the dinner was lovely in other ways. I did not expect what I had originally assumed to be a haughty crowd, to be a fun and welcoming group. The warmest people were the trio of laughing women from earlier, and since we sat closest to them, Nolan and I talked to them most of the dinner.
After dinner, Luca and people split again into smaller groups and some people took to dancing on the makeshift white dance floor placed where the table was. Nolan had been captured by the trio of women who wanted to pick his retail fashion brain, leaving me to wander the gardens alone. They were beautiful and perfectlyilluminated by the ground lights, but after strolling aimlessly for a few minutes, I went to the bar to get a cocktail and sat down on a small concrete arch shaped bench.
"Hey! What are you doing all alone?" Luca was staggering towards me with his waist around an older man's arm. Their faces were bright, and I couldn't tell if Luca's unsteadiness was because of his own intoxication, his friend's, or both.
I gestured to Nolan and the group. The women were now showing him something on one of their phones and he had a cute scowl on his face as he read whatever was on it. "He has been captured, unfortunately."
Luca disentangled himself from his friend, stumbling in the process. He chuckled as his friend tried to steady him. I guess now I know who's drunk. Luca gave him a French Kiss, before saying, "I need to talk to her darling."
The friend, or should I say boyfriend, mumbled something I couldn't quite catch and waved at Luca as he staggered off to the dancefloor. Loca flopped onto the bench beside me. "How do you like my house?"
"It's lovely."
"I sank a lot of money into it. And I'm hoping to sell it off soon."
"Oh?" Hadn't Nolan said it had been in his family for generations?
