Chapter 24

Evan

Evan gazed out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his office, watching a white charter boat as it slowly cut a path down the Potomac River, sending up a froth of white spray along the way. He had been gazing out the window for the past hour, watching the boats go by and the planes fly overhead on their way to nearby Reagan National Airport. He was unable to focus his thoughts on anything substantive. He had emails to write, sale figures to review, and marketing plans he was supposed to discuss with his team later that day, but he didn’t care. He couldn’t work up the energy to care.

“I fucked up so bad,” he muttered to himself for the umpteenth time.

Leila was now living in one of the guest rooms in the east wing, not far from her daughter’s suite. She hadn’t exchanged more than a few words with him in that period of time, treating him with a cool demeanor that one would reserve for a perfect stranger. Even Diane had noticed the difference between them.

“What on earth did you do, boy?” she had asked only yesterday as she stood in the doorway of his study. He had looked up from his laptop, startled to find her sternly gazing at him.

“I’m sorry?” he had asked her, confused. He had been staring at his laptop screen, trying to type, but only managing to click out a few sentences.

“What . . . did . . . you . . . do . . . to . . . my . . . chile?” she had repeated slowly, taking another step into the room. “It must be pretty bad, because she won’t even tell me what you did!”

He had raised his brows in response. “Why do you assume I did something?”

Evan had watched as Diane had crossed her arms over her chest and puckered her lips at him, as if she had just tasted something sour. “Son, don’t play with me.” She paused. “You didn’t cheat on her, did you?”

Would kissing Charisse really qualify as cheating? He had felt a spark, but it was nothing compared to what he felt when he kissed Leila. And he hadn’t gone to Charisse’s condo with the intention of doing anything out of bounds. He’d had the best of intentions. But that didn’t seem to matter very much now.

Besides, what was that old saying? The road to hell is paved with good intentions, he had thought.

“You’re taking way too long to answer that question,” Diane had said, eyeing him from the doorway.

“No offense, Diane, but I really don’t think it’s appropriate for me to be discussing what goes on between me and Lee with you.”

“Uh-huh.” Diane’s nostrils flared as she released a loud breath. “Well, let’s hope for your sake, Evan Murdoch, that my daughter forgives you for whatever you did, because we both know you’ll be a lot more torn up if she leaves you than the other way around.”

She had then raised her nose into the air, turned on her heel, and walked back into the hall.

“Meddling old biddy,” he had muttered to himself.

He had been angry at Diane’s words, but he knew she was only telling the truth. If Leila really did follow through with her promise to leave him, he didn’t know what he would do. It was one of the reasons why he had lashed out at her, why he threatened her with a custody lawsuit if she left him. It had been a desperate, callous move, and he regretted it just as much as the kiss he and Charisse had shared.

Evan heard a knock at his door, momentarily drawing him from his thoughts. “Come in,” he called out, still gazing out the floor-to-ceiling windows.

“Mr. Murdoch,” Adrienne said from the doorway, “you have someone here who’d like to speak with you. She wasn’t sure if you were busy. She didn’t want to interrupt you.”

At the reference to “she,” Evan snapped out of his malaise. Had Leila decided to come to his office out of the blue and talk to him? Was she finally ready to forgive him?

“No, I’m not . . . I’m not busy,” he said, turning away from the windows. He sat upright in his chair and his hand flew to his tie and collar in a hurried attempt to look more presentable. “Who . . . who is it?”

“Your sister, Mrs. Williams, sir,” Adrienne said. “Should I send her in, then?”

So it’s not Lee, he thought sadly. His shoulders slumped. He had been foolish to expect that it was her.

“Sure,” he said softly to Adrienne. “Send her in.”

Adrienne smiled and nodded before opening the door wider and waving Paulette inside his office.

Evan was disappointed Leila hadn’t come to speak to him today, but truth be told, he was just as surprised that Paulette had paid him a visit. He hadn’t spoken to her or Antonio since the baby shower, since she had stormed out with tears in her eyes. Antonio had trailed behind her with a look so tortured that Evan honestly felt for the man, even though he knew what Antonio had done. He had tried calling Paulette, and she had finally answered, only to tell him that she was fine but she didn’t want to speak to anyone right now. He had obeyed her wishes. Evan now watched as his sister stepped timidly into the room.

She may have been bad off emotionally, but you couldn’t tell it from the way she looked. She wore a camel wool coat with fox fur along the lapel. Her hair was pulled back into a bun atop her head. Her makeup was flawless, but he could still clearly see her withdrawn expression.

“Hey,” he said as Adrienne closed the office door. He rose from his desk and walked across the room and opened his arms to embrace her. She seemed to hesitate before stepping into his embrace. She let him hug her but didn’t hug him back.

“Hey, Ev,” she answered. She then took a step back and looked up at him, fixing him with her dark eyes. “We . . . we need to talk.”

He nodded and pointed toward the sitting area on the other side of his office. She removed her coat and tossed it aside, and then sat down on the leather sofa. He took the Bauhaus chair facing her.

“First,” she began, staring down at her hands, which were clasped in her lap, “I want to begin by telling you that I’m not angry at you or Terry for not telling me what . . . what Tony . . . well, what he did. I appreciate you not telling anyone else, either. Thank you for not turning him in, Ev.”

“I wouldn’t do that to you, Sweet Pea.”

“I know you wouldn’t.” She raised her eyes to look at him and gave a pained smile. “You want to protect me—just like Tony does. That’s why he did it, you know?”

Evan nodded in silent agreement.

“He told me everything—what he did and why he did it. It wasn’t just blind rage, Ev. He said Marques was owed a . . . a punishment. He said that bastard deserved to be punished for what he did to me . . . what he did to us.” She closed her eyes. “And you know what, Ev, the whole time Tony was telling me all of this, I felt so sorry for him. I was angry at myself because Tony didn’t used to talk like that before all of this happened—before I made mistake after mistake after mistake. He was a kind and decent man before I came along, and now he’s . . . he’s a . . .” She couldn’t finish. She couldn’t say the word. Instead, she squeezed her eyelids so tightly that they were starting to jitter, like her mind didn’t want to see the man her husband had become. “It’s . . . it’s all my fault!”

“No, it’s not,” Evan said, reaching out to place his hand over his sister’s. “Please don’t blame yourself.”

Her eyes flashed open. “But who else would I blame, Ev?”

Maybe the man who blackmailed you, Evan thought, or the man who strangled and beat him to death. But he said neither aloud, not wanting to upset her.

“You’ve had to deal with a lot of guilt for the past year, Sweet Pea. Please don’t add another thing to feel guilty about.”

“That’s easier said than done.”

He could agree with that one. He of all people knew what it was like to walk around with the heavy burden of guilt.

“So you say Tony told you everything,” Evan ventured. “Did he happen to mention what happened with Dante?”

Evan was still unsure about that one. It had been his suspicion that Antonio had tried to kill Dante, and he thought Dante would point the finger at his brother-in-law as soon as he woke up. But it had been months now, and Antonio still hadn’t been arrested. Detective Morris had gone conspicuously silent. What was going on?

Paulette stared at him, confused. “What do you mean, what happened with Dante? Why would Antonio have anything to do with Dante?”

“Well,” Evan began, “I told him about what Dante tried to do to you. It made him angry. I wasn’t sure if . . . well, if—”

“If Tony went after Dante, too,” she finished for him.

Ever so slowly, Evan nodded.

“He didn’t do it,” she said, quickly shaking her head. “Dante was shot . . . when? In late July, right?”

Evan nodded. “July the eighteenth . . . at around nine p.m.”

That date, and the date Antonio had made his confession to him, had been burned permanently into Evan’s memory.

“We had made up by then! He couldn’t have done it,” she argued, vigorously shaking her head again, making her large hoop earrings swing and hit her cheeks. “He was home every night, Ev. We were sleeping in the same bed. He wouldn’t have had time to disappear and then come back home.”

“Are you sure? You’re certain?”

“I’d swear on the Bible!” She held up her hand.

“Oh, thank God,” Evan said, exhaling with relief and leaning forward in his chair. He didn’t know it but he had been carrying the burden of the guilt over Dante’s shooting himself, much like his sister mentally carried the burden of Marques’s murder. He had wondered if his confession to Antonio had almost pushed the younger man to pull the trigger. Now he knew that it hadn’t, and he felt like he had been given a reprieve.

I didn’t fuck that up, at least, he thought.

“Well, now that we’ve settled that, I have one last thing to ask you, Ev,” she said, gazing into his eyes again.

“Anything! Go ahead.”

“Please continue to keep Tony’s secret. I . . . I understand that you told Terry. I even understand if you tell Lee, but don’t tell anyone else, please. Definitely don’t tell the police.”

“I told you, I wouldn’t do that to you.”

She stared at him for a long time and then finally nodded. “Thank you, Ev.”

He watched as his sister rose from the sofa. He followed suit and walked with her to his office door.

“Oh,” she said, halting abruptly just before he reached for his doorknob, “please apologize to Lee for me. I felt bad for walking out of your baby shower. I hadn’t intended to do that. I didn’t want to ruin her day.”

“I’m sure Lee would understand if she knew the circumstances.”

“But please . . . tell her anyway.”

Evan laughed sadly. “I would, but . . .”

“But what?”

“She and I aren’t really talking. She’s angry at me.”

Paulette’s serene expression changed. Her brows drew together and she frowned. “What did you do?”

“I’d rather not get into it. Let’s just say, I overstepped—greatly.”

Paulette slowly shook her head. “You’re one of the smartest guys I know, Ev, but sometimes you can be so dumb! When will you ever learn?” she asked, making him frown again.

“Learn what?”

“That the people in your life aren’t little pieces on a chessboard for you to shift around and strategize their lives anyway you want. It annoys the hell out of all of us! It makes us feel like you don’t really respect us.”

At that, he winced. He never knew his family thought of him that way—let alone Leila. But she had said it. She had used those very words.

“I’m not going to be married to or live with yet another man I can’t trust . . . who doesn’t respect me!”

“Look, we know that you love us,” she said, reaching out, rubbing his arm, trying to soften the emotional blow she was giving, “but sometimes you just find it hard to . . . to let go. You think you know everything, and to hell with what all the fools say. But we’re not all fools, Ev! That’s no way to treat people, even if you have the best of intentions, even if you love them.”

He stared at her, dumbfounded. He was only shaken out of his trance when Paulette stood on the balls of her feet and kissed him on the cheek.

“But I know you guys will work through it,” she whispered. “If Tony and I can, I know you and Lee certainly can. Just . . . just remember what I said.”

He nodded vaguely and watched as his sister opened the door and walked out of his office.