Page 80 of The Cinderella Secret
“It’s a good thing you didn’t,” said Sabine. “I saw him a few years ago at a different fight.”
Ella couldn’t stop a small noise of surprise from escaping her mouth.
“He told me to go fuck myself. And then I’m pretty sure he threw the fight because I bet on him. Such an asshole.”
Ella laughed again, the chuckle bursting out of her in an uncontrolled gust.
“You can laugh, but it cost me a lot of money.”
“I don’t think he cared,” said Ella.
“Apparently not. Well, to what do I owe the pleasure of this call? Or have you suddenly come to your senses and realized that your uncle is a humorless automaton and you want me to rescue you?”
Ella tried not to let that idea enter her consciousness.
“I want to ask you about Dad,” said Ella, and Sabine groaned.
“God, I should hang up on you right now.”
“Just answer a couple of questions and I’ll go away again,” said Ella soothingly. “If you don’t, I’m sure I could get someone to hack your email and send your entire address book your real age.”
Sabine made a squawk of outrage. “You want to play dirty? Fine. Let’s play questions. You want your questions answered, then I get mine answered. A question for a question.”
“Sure,” said Ella, with the confidence of someone who had no secrets. “I’ll go first. When Dad worked at DevEntier, what exactly was he doing?”
“Project Management. Who are you dating?”
“Aiden Deveraux.”
There was silence on the other end of the phone. “Honey, don’t do that. That’s not funny.”
“What’s not funny, Mom?”
“Don’t joke about that.”
“I’m not joking. I’m dating Aiden Deveraux.”
“Honey, stay away from the Deverauxes. They’re not nice people. And Randall and Owen are… out of your league.”
“Randall and Owen are dead, Mom. They died in a plane crash with their sister and her husband about a year after Dad. Aiden is Genevieve’s son.”
“Hm,” said Sabine thoughtfully. “Genevieve was always a boring little twit, so that’s probably OK. And he probably has lots of money if his parents are dead.” Her tone brightened significantly on the last sentence.
“Glad to have your seal of approval,” said Ella drily. “Back to Dad. He was working with Randall, who we have all established was not a nice man, but was Dad working with anyone else?”
“Who have you been talking to?” demanded Sabine.
“Lots of people,” said Ella. “Answer the question.”
“You need to leave this alone, Ella,” said her mother warningly.
“Mom, after Dad died, we had a break-in and the place was trashed. But they didn’t really take anything, and you never called the cops. We left after that and you took a gym bag full of cash with us. It doesn’t take a genius to think that maybe Dad was doing a little more than working for DevEntier.”
“No, he was working for DevEntier all right. Or at least someone at DevEntier,” said Sabine.
“Who? And what was he doing?”
“I don’t know,” said Sabine.
