“You could never be anyone’s demon. Soulless people cannot be owned or loved.”
With that, I walked off to the kitchen, needing something…something to calm me the fuck down. I downed a bottle of water and came back to the living room. Jordan was arranging stacks of paper all over my coffee table. It looked like a plan. One I wasn’t going to like.
“So let’s make it short and sweet, shall we?” He rolled up the sleeves to his crisp, button-down shirt, licking his fingers as he thumbed through the pages, acutely concentrating on them. “Five years ago, I had a company called SilverStar, Inc. It was located in—”
“Chicago,” I finished for him.
Jordan’s shoulders shook with a chuckle. “That’s right, boy. And so, during one of my many trips to Chicago, I met Valenciana and we started dating.”
I was tempted to remind him the word he was looking for was “affair,” but semantics weren’t really top priority at that moment.
Jordan plucked one document out of a pile.
“Val caught my attention in one of my trips. How could she not? Look at her. We began to see each other every time I was in town. Which was a lot. I admit, I was smitten. Val, however, did not share the sentiment, as she continued her straying ways. I let her, because, let’s admit it—she wasn’t my only mistress, either.”
He handed me the document, and I took it, examining it through a mist of red anger. It was a report conducted by a private investigator named Barry Guilfoyle. There were highlights of the times I’d been away from the apartment, from Luna, showing I was working long hours and going on frequent business trips, leaving her with Camila or with my parents.
“We were supposed to get stronger as time progressed, Val and me. I told her to have an abortion. It didn’t matter who was the father. I didn’t appreciate being fiscally chained to some stripper, either.” Jordan drew a breath, handing me some more documents. “Val said you were the father. That you were too good a financial opportunity to pass up. I didn’t offer her money, assuming that you would. I’d knocked up a couple of women in my day after marrying Lydia, and I bought my way through their abortions easily enough. But you chose not to pay, and by the time I calmed down and got back into the picture, Val was already five months pregnant. Too late for her to get rid of the kid.”
To get rid of the kid.
I clenched my fists, my jaw, my fucking ass, in an effort not to murder him. He passed me a few low resolution printed pictures. They showed Camila frowning at Luna. That was just Camila’s stern expression sometimes. It didn’t mean shit. Another picture of me pulling Luna’s curls into a ponytail. She liked her ponytail tight, no bumps, so it looked like I was hurting her. But I wasn’t. She was standing between my legs in a coffee shop, both her arms resting on my thighs, looking elsewhere. The pictures looked bad, but the situations were completely innocent. Still, why take any chances?
“You better watch your mouth,” I warned, “or you’ll be very fucking sorry.”
Jordan laughed, sighing with contempt. “When we did a test and realized the baby was yours, I left. But I got back with Val…eventually. See, in the space between the time Luna was born and when she turned one year old, Val was trying to win you. Seduce you. Be with you. I get it. You’re younger, hungrier, better looking. But you’re not smarter, Trent. You’re a bloody idiot who got lucky because his friends were too generous and let him have a piece of the pie. You should have never gotten a piece of the pie. The pie is not for you to eat.”
I gritted my teeth, letting him finish, processing everything. The pictures. The reports. The case Jordan had been building against me for fucking years. My greatest fear—Val coming back to take Luna—was materializing in front of my face, with a cherry on top in the form of Jordan scheming against me. I knew exactly what Val’s angle would be. We did coke together the night I knocked her up.
She could say I had a drug problem in court.
She could even make it believable.
Our case had years in court written all over it.
I took a step in his direction, and he almost flinched. I tipped my chin up, looking down at him. “Why go through all this trouble?”
“Because I never lose, peasant. Especially not to another ex-poor boy like you.”
Ex-poor boy. I should have known that Jordan was like me. The chip on the shoulder was there—it was always there—only difference was mine was skin deep. His—bone deep.
Every muscle in my body told me to pounce on him and rip him apart. My mind told me to wait it out and hit harder than with my fists.