Net Worth by Amelia Wilde

22

Mason

I’mawake when the doorman texts me.

Derek: Your sister’s on her way up.

I don’t text back. Remy’s been spending Friday nights with her archeology cohort at a house near campus. I allow it because it’s a house I own on a block I own where her security team won’t be so obvious. She usually comes home early in the morning and sleeps a few hours.

It takes longer than I would like to stretch out my knee and be in a position to walk without showing the damage, so Remy’s on her way into the kitchen when I get there. She pauses in the hall, blinking at me. “You’re still up?”

“You’re home early.”

My sister scrunches up her nose. “You’ll laugh at me if I tell you why.”

“I will not.”

“Want some tea?” Remy goes into the kitchen before I answer, so I follow her. The summer after I bought this place she picked out this antique wall organizer that was a pain in the ass to install. She hangs her purse on one of the hooks and pats it like it’s going to bed for the night. “Or coffee, I guess?”

I lean against the island and fold my arms over my chest. “I’m fine.”

“Okay. Anyway, I just didn’t feel like staying. They wanted to party. I wanted to study. Plus, I wanted to talk to you about Greece.”

“Remy, you can’t go without your team. It’s not something I’m willing to entertain.”

“But Gabriel’s all over the city without people to protect him. Jameson does all sorts of crazy shit. And don’t say I’m not like them, because that’s bullshit, Mason.”

“You’re not like them. You’re my baby sister. I’m not going to stop caring. And I’m not sending you to a foreign country by yourself.”

She laughs. “It’s a study abroad program. I’d never be alone.” She yawns so hard I don’t know how she’s going to get through her tea.

“No. You won’t.”

My phone buzzes in my pocket. Another message from Derek. Jameson, probably, or Gabriel if he’s in a particularly obnoxious mood. I swipe the text open.

And freeze.

DEREK: Ms. Van Kempt just came through the lobby. She’s on her way up now.

Why? I want to type back, but Derek’s not going to know anything about that. Now that he knows who she is, he’ll wave her through with mild pleasantries until I tell him to stop letting her in.

Why, indeed. I sent her home a long time ago. It makes my pulse kick up to think she might want to talk about what happened. Cry about it? Beg for more? I don’t know.

Remy dips the tea bag into the mug and yawns again. “I’m taking this to my room, I think.” Then she cocks her head to the side. “Are you still trying to do that brunch thing?”

“Yes, and you’re going to be there.” If it were anyone else, I’d be snappish. What the hell is Charlotte doing here? She didn’t leave any of her things. I know. I looked for them after she left. Some foolish part of me had hoped there was something left behind. Lord knows why. I don’t need her to forget anything in order for her to come back next Friday. Remy takes her mug by the handle and comes across the kitchen to hug me. “Sleep well.”

“Goodnight,” she says. “I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

I should have told her while she was in the kitchen that our mother used to do the same thing—stop there whenever she came back to the house. Kitchen first. Even though we had chefs and cooks and all kinds of people to manage the household work. She liked to go to the kitchen and sit down at the big table there and look out at the backyard. My kitchen looks out over Manhattan, but it’s still the same.

The elevator arrives a few moments later, and I go out to meet it, my heart beating harder than I’m willing to give it credit for. I don’t fantasize about Charlotte Van Kempt coming back to my penthouse after I’ve finished with her to beg on her knees for more. Definitely not.

However, I wouldn’t hate it.

The doors slide open and she steps out. Charlotte looks down at the floor like she’s not sure of the terrain and my pulse stutters. With her head bowed like that, the elegant line of her neck—

She’s changed out of her clothes. Into leggings and an oversized t-shirt that looks soft and expensive.

Charlotte lifts her head and meets my eyes.

Cold. That’s all I feel at first—cold, rushing through my veins, sloshing through every part of me, head to toe. It’s worry, that cold. The certainty that something’s gone wrong. It’s in her red eyes and splotchy cheeks and the subtle shake of her hands around her purse.

It’s in the cut on her cheek.

The cut.

On her cheek.

Blood beads at the line. My own blood rushes to my head.

I’m moving before I can think about compensating for my knee. The first step lands wrong and it gives, a shock going through it like a blade. Charlotte blinks up at me but her face doesn’t reveal anything else. A quiver in her chin. Like she’s about to cry.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she says.

I take her face in my hands and turn it so I can see, my heart trying to slice its way out of my body. Her blood is the color of my rage. It’s all I can do not to shout. “Who did this to you?”

Her hand comes up to touch it but she flinches away at the first brush of her fingertips. “It was an accident.”

She won’t look me in the eye. This wasn’t an accident. “What kind of accident, Charlotte?”

All I can see is bright blood and blue eyes. Tears swim over them. “My father was angry,” she says. “He threw a glass. It hit the wall next to me.”

Oh my fucking god.

I’m torn in two. I want to kill him. And I need to take care of her.

Charlotte is closer.

I have to get her out of the foyer. Remy could walk in any second, and that can’t happen. Not with Charlotte bleeding and on the verge of tears and looking like she just wandered off some college campus. I put my arm around her. “It’s okay.” I don’t sound like it’s fine. I sound pissed as hell. Try again. “You’re going to be okay.”

She lets me usher her down the hall to my bedroom, and if she has any complicated feelings about what we did here before she left, it doesn’t show on her face. Charlotte barely looks. Three steps inside, and she turns to face me while I’m shutting the doors.

One tear slides down her cheek, then another.

For Christ’s sake. This is not like when she cried earlier. That was the hottest thing I’ve ever seen anyone do, the way she sobbed from all that punishment and pleasure. This is different, and I hate it. Her soft cries wrench my heart.

I fold her in my arms without thinking of anything but getting her calm. I don’t consider what it means to hold her in the context of our agreement. I don’t consider anything. I want my arms around her, and so they are.

Charlotte buries her face in my shirt, her shoulders shaking. Her body trembling. I run a hand over her shoulders, her back. Inside all my cold dread is a hot ember of anger. I made sure she was all right before she left.

Shamefully well-fucked, but fine.

That motherfucker threw a glass at her.

I want to take her to bed and hold her for as long as she needs, but when I lift her face from my shirt, the cut is still bleeding. “We need to take care of that,” I tell her. “Come with me.”

In my bathroom I find the first aid kit in the linen closet and sit her down on the ledge of the tub. She swipes at her eyes. Tries to stop crying while I get a washcloth and take a spot next to her.

Charlotte blinks at me when I take her chin in my hand. “I’m going to clean the blood off your face and put some liquid bandage on the cut. Okay?”

A nod. Her frown is shaky, but she’s trying to be brave. Jesus Christ. More tears come at the first touch of the washcloth. “Shh,” I tell her, though she’s not making much sound. An old habit from the bad days, when our parents had just died and there was no one but me to help my siblings. “I know it stings.”

“I can’t believe he threw it at me,” she whispers.

“You were talking to him?”

A shuddering breath. “I went home. Obviously.” A strained, shocked laugh. “I went home, and he was yelling at my mom. Which doesn’t sound like—I know that doesn’t sound like anything, but it’s not like him.” She makes a cutting motion in the inches between us. “It’s really not. Afterward he went down to the office and when I went upstairs she was packing a bag.”

“To leave him?”

There’s always more blood from a wound on the face than you imagine there will be. It makes me furious to see it on her delicate skin. But no one else is touching her now.

This belongs to me, too.

“To leave the house. To leave him. That’s what she said.” Good. Cyrus is a bastard who’s never deserved anything, much less a wife. “That’s not like my mom, either. But then she said that she couldn’t do it again. I never got an answer about what. She couldn’t stand by and watch my father do something terrible.”

“Did you talk to him?”

“He was drunk,” she whispers, and her face goes pale. “I mean—he was really drunk. He’s not—” A hand over her mouth, and then it drops away. “You probably already know all this. You made it a point to learn everything about us.”

“Enlighten me anyway.”

“My father has always been so careful.” Her voice is rising with fear, and I’m honestly going to kill that motherfucker. For scaring her. Whatever he did to scare her, he deserves to pay for it. “He drinks from the glass. Do you know what I mean? He only ever has his glass on the desk, with not much in it. This time he had the whole bottle and it was mostly gone.”

I get a dry washcloth and press it to clean skin, then reach for the liquid bandage. “This is going to sting, too, but I don’t want to put anything with adhesive on your face.”

“Okay,” she says softly. “So then—then he started talking to me.” Color rushes back into her cheeks. “He was being awful.” From the way she’s choosing her words, I know it’s so she can avoid telling me exactly what he said to her. “But the scariest part was that he kept saying things about Cornerstone. And about you.”

“Like what?”

What hasn’t Cyrus Van Kempt said about me over the years?

I put the liquid bandage over the cut. One fast swipe. Charlotte sucks in a breath, and on instinct I lean in and kiss her. She relaxes into the kiss like it’s taking away her pain. The liquid bandage is almost dry when I pull back. Pull her to her feet. Take her out to the bedroom.

Where I fold my arms around her again, because she looks like she needs that.

Charlotte gathers herself for the rest of our conversation. “He said he visited Cornerstone today to survey it for some—some plan he had with it.”

“He’s not in charge of any of that anymore.” He’ll be dead soon, if I have my way about it.

“He said he did what he needed to do. Something about appraising the asset.” Charlotte puts both hands on my chest like she needs me to steady her, which is not possible in this life or any other. For the kind of stability she’ll want in her life, she’d need someone else.

The drunken ramblings of a man who used to work in real estate and couldn’t hack it—but worry taps somewhere deep in my mind regardless. I spent the time after my parents died in a haze of painkillers, with lawyers and assessors who talked about assets in relation to their will. About beneficiaries, most of whom turned out not to be us. Even if I hadn’t been high on opioids, I still wouldn’t have understood a thing. Both my parents were dead and I was in the process of getting custody of my siblings.

“Are you sure he wasn’t remembering his former life?”

I ask this without malice. Cyrus’s former life is also part of mine, but there’s no way it has anything to do with why she’s so upset now. That was separate.

Charlotte frowns, her lips trembling. “Both, I think? He was talking about your father.”

My jaw clenches tight. This isn’t her fault. “Well, my dad’s been dead a long time. If he’s still obsessed—”

Her eyes shine in the low lights, a new red flush on her cheeks. “That’s the thing. That’s the thing that I didn’t—he was talking about you. He said…” Charlotte closes her eyes. Swallows. “He said he would pay to see your face when you realized.” Her voice shakes. “I don’t know what that means.”

“Of course not.” It takes all my strength to remember that Charlotte Van Kempt is an innocent. She’s never been in a building that’s burning down. Never suffocated in black smoke. I’m not breathing it now. My lungs are clear.

“I’m sorry,” she whispers. More concern fills her expression. Concern for me, I think, which is ridiculous. She’s the one with a cut on her face from her bastard father. Until I feel the tension pulling my muscles apart. Until I feel the pain like a thick metal band around my knee. “He—he mentioned an insurance payout. He said, what works once will work again. I don’t know what he meant.”

There’s a moment when I feel the knowledge coming. It’s a moment before impact, when you’re aware your body is going to slam into an unforgiving surface with far too much force and terror has never felt so pointless because there’s nothing you can do to fight gravity.

What works once will work again.

The building my parents died in was all but complete. Only a few inspections remained. Normally that would have been a cause for celebration. It would mean a big payday. But the real estate market had taken a downturn. The neighborhood that had been poised for a renaissance was now dead in the water. None of the luxury stores and restaurants wanted class A space. A hundred million dollars spent on construction and high end finishes—down the drain.

My father was prepared to take the loss. It would have been substantial, even for the Hill family fortunes, but we would have survived. Every development carries risk.

Then the fire happened.

An insurance policy recouped most of the debt. It would have been a windfall, a relief from the real estate downturn… if my father had survived. Instead a quirk of the company’s operating agreement meant the payout went to the other members of the corporation. It didn’t go into probate with the rest of my father’s estate. Which meant we absorbed the loss completely.

“He talked about insurance,” I say slowly, processing this.

Cyrus Van Kempt was the recipient of the insurance money. I went to him for help, needing something to keep my siblings alive. He turned us down. I knew then that he was a bastard, but I thought he was a lucky bastard. I thought it was pure chance that he had been bailed out by that insurance policy. I thought it was random that the operating agreement had been written that way. But no—it had been carefully orchestrated.

What works once will work again.

He set that fire.

“Yes,” says Charlotte. “He talked about witnessing results. He talked about seeing your face when you realized. And how it would look the same as your father’s. But I don’t know, Mason. I don’t know what he meant.”

“I do.”

My phone buzzes three times in my pocket. Messages, coming in fast. And then a call. I know who the call will be from. I know what it’ll be about.

Time to go.

I take Charlotte by the arm and pull her along with me. If I have to see this, so does Cyrus Van Kempt’s daughter.