Page 75 of Filthy Rich

“Thank you,” I managed to get out before my throat seized up.

“I’m going to take this little monkey to the kitchen and leave you to it. Come find us if you need anything at all,” she said gently, probably sensing that I was getting emotional. Zara gave me a sweet little wave as she left with her mum.

Once I was alone, I took the second book to a chair by the window and sat. For a few moments I just looked out at the beauty of the grounds covered in snow before I opened the photo album and started looking at pages.

Seven page-turns into the book and there they were. In life... in color... in a picture I had never seen before. Susanna and Michael. My mother laughing up at my dad as if he’d just said something incredibly clever. Happy. That’s how they were in the picture. So happy. My eyes filled with tears, growing blurry to the point I couldn’t even read the message on the page in the familiar hand of my mother’s writing until I gave myself a minute.

Once I was able to read it, the message wasn’t anything remarkable at all, just how much they’d enjoyed their weekend at Hallborough and that they would love to come back again someday. That never happened, obviously, but that wasn’t the point. The important thing was that theyhadbeen here and enjoyed themselves together... spending time with each other and finding happiness in those precious moments they were given.

The warm weight of Caleb’s arms came around me from behind. I was so absorbed in my trip down memory lane, I hadn’t even heard him come into the room.

“Your parents came to Hallborough,” he said softly as he studied their picture.

“They did.” I reached a hand up and cupped his cheek, needing to touch him.

“That’s why you were so excited about seeing the house. You suspected they came here.”

“You caught that from me?” The level of Caleb’s intuitiveness amazed me. It must be why he was so good in business. He could read people.

He kissed the top of my head. “I like to think I can know what you’re thinking but I don’t. I just sense changes in your body language, and you were trembling when we drove up to the house, and then taking happy selfies in front of it two minutes later. When Hannah said you were in here looking through the photo albums for your parents, I figured it out.”

“I’m glad you came to find me.” I got up from the chair and went into his arms and let him hold me. Caleb’s touch was my lifeline now. He balanced my highs and lows with his ever-present strength and love.

“Me too. I love seeing you so happy, it’s the best gift you can give me. Well, that, and our baby,” he said sweetly against my forehead.

“I love you, Caleb Blackstone, and I needed this trip so much more than I could have ever imagined, but you imagined it. You know me better than I know myself sometimes. Thank you for bringing me here, but more than that, for loving me the way that I am.”

“I love you, Brooke Casterley Blackstone, and thatismy most important job. It’s what I do best.”

“I know.”

I know.

Epilogue

CALEB

February

“You have always been just like your father. I never understood his fascination with thehelp.” My mother waved her hand in a graceful circle toward Brooke and Ellen. “JW’s philanthropic notions with his charities and good works to help those less fortunate were deeply in him. You’ve followed right in his footsteps, Caleb.” I knew what she was doing. Her skills at delivering an insult while making it appear as if she was simply being charming were almost legendary. I decided to call her out on it.

“Okay, since I am just like my father, is that why you sold off his treasured Blackwater without ever mentioning to me you were selling, because you knew I would object?”

“No, Caleb. I sold Blackwater for the reason that it was mine to sell. Your father gave it to me to do whatever I saw fit.” I could hardly believe it, but I’d seen the documents to prove that she was indeed, telling the truth. Why would Dad give her Blackwater in the first place, though?

“Why keep the news of selling from me?”

“I didn’t really. I just put it up for sale and didn’t discuss it with you. It’s not like you showed much of an interest, Caleb. It’d been years since you even went there, until you met Brooke that is.”

She waved her hand in our direction again, as if she was bestowing her grace upon poor peasants begging for a favor. It annoyed me greatly. “Do not go there with Brooke.” I was barely able to keep a lid on my temper. You would think with how incredibly, seriously wrong my mother had been about Janice that she wouldn’t even consider showing anything but kindness toward my beautiful girl. But that would mean conceding, and in her twisted view, it put her on the losing side. Very fucked-up ideology to liken us to combatants in a battle, but sadly those were the rules she played by—and they were ironclad. Losers were given no quarter and even less sympathy. No second chances.

Janice, for instance, had been shunned by the tribe and would never be welcomed into Boston’s inner circle of society again. Despite the actual fucking restraining order preventing her from coming within two hundred feet of us, I’d made sure her wings were clipped. It was either agree to leave the country or face a messy trial inside a Boston courtroom. A courtroom with plenty of drooling media hacks lying in wait to deliver the most unflattering picture of the day to the eager public, whose sole entertainment was watching celebrities go off the rails—she figured her psycho shit out real quick. Janice might be crazy, but she wasn’t stupid. She chose Hong Kong.

My mother did not heed my warning tone and turned away to take a sip from her wineglass. “I don’t understand what the fuss is with selling Blackwater. The old place brought in a fortune. All’s well that ends well.”

“What the fuck,Mom?” I exploded. “I want an explanation, and I want it now.” I stabbed my finger down on the table. “Why did Dad ever give Blackwater to you in the first place?”

She scowled at my f-bomb. “Language, Caleb, remember how you were brought up, please.”

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