Grandma was the one who raised me when my own mother was too busy running the family empire. I couldn’t leave her behind, not with my busy schedule and Mom being too busy to even visit her own mother.
Boston would give me a new start. A place Camila hadn’t tainted with her presence. It would give me the chance to expand the company further. Perhaps I could even find my passion again.
The car waited for me at the terminal, and I got on, bracing myself as I turned the phone back on. Immediately, I was assaulted with notifications of missed calls and messages. A few of them were from my assistant, but most were from Camila, and even some were from Marie. I ignored as many as I could and called my assistant back.
The silence in the car was deafening. I had about three hours before I needed to be at the meeting. That was a lot of time to spend by myself to think—on this day of all days.
Both my parents came from old wealth, but it was my mom’s family that had the actual money. My parents’ marriage was an arranged one. A mere business transaction that would financially benefit both sides of the party.
My parents were not in love. They were friends—great friends—but they were not in love with each other. Never had been, and I doubt they ever would be.
They did their duty when they produced an heir for their growing empire, and have since lived separate lives from each other, with my mom mostly in Paris, taking care of the European branch, and my dad in Toronto, heading up the North American branch—and I was in New York, with my grandma.
I had only come into the position of CEO a couple of years back, when I had graduated with an MBA from Yale.
I was still trying to prove to myself and to my family that I could do it, that I could make a name for myself in a family that consisted of overachievers and business leaders.
Kinsley Reed Capital was a large private equity firm that started upon my parent’s marriage. The fact that my mom’s name was first wasn’t lost on me. I knew who wore the pants in the very unusual relationship my parents had.
This was their love child.
And in the thirty-four years that it had run, the firm had only gotten bigger and more successful than in its preceding years. Both of my parents had decided to step away from it when I graduated to focus on other business ventures, handing the reins over to me.
It was a big responsibility, and one I flourished under, yet I found myself only going through the motions in the past year, only getting up to do the job because it was what was expected of me, not because I got the same thrill I used to get.
Today was the death anniversary of Elijah, my would-be two-year-old son.
How fitting that I served his mother divorce papers on this day.
I didn’t even think Camila remembered what today was. The woman had no maternal bone in that porn star body of hers.
She used to joke, years before we were married and when she was still trying to get me entangled in the messed-up, toxic web of hers, that her body was made for sex, not babies.
Yet, she had gotten pregnant, forcing us into marriage—and Elijah was born the most perfect little baby I had ever seen.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew Camila had gotten pregnant on fucking purpose to tie me to her. I had been cocky back then... I didn’t think it would happen because I was always careful. I underestimated Camila’s desire to carry the Reed family name.
For nine months, Elijah was the center of my world.
I found it bearable to stay married to Camila, because I would have done whatever it took to give Elijah the family I never had.
I wanted my boy to know he was loved.
And then he died, and things weren’t the same.
My family didn’t believe in divorce. I knew both of my parents had other people they turned to for companionship, for love and sex…
But they were still married.
I was breaking tradition by serving my wife divorce papers, but fuck tradition, because I couldn’t stomach the idea of staying married to her.
The car pulled up to the hotel and the valet opened the door for me. I walked in, bypassing the front desk and heading straight to the elevator.
I spent enough time in Boston to have a room always ready.
My firm represented Corden Ryan, the owner of the hotel, when he had been going through a bit of a financial rough patch, so I was given a presidential suite of my own.
Camila knew this, of course.