He shrugged one shoulder. “I have opportunistic tendencies. This opportunity presented itself and I decided to follow it to its conclusion. There were two options in this situation—do what was expected of me, accept the negative press. Or, try to change things.”
“And that’s all? Because truly, with that as your only motivation, I’m not really filled with comfort and warm fuzzies.”
His gaze sharpened, his dark eyes intense. “It’s important for you to know something. When I say I will do something, I do. There is no going back.”
He said it with such purpose, such unequivocal certainly that she couldn’t help but believe him.
“You didn’t have to do this,” she said. It was the truth. She was the one in the stranglehold. She was the one who was in a situation that was too big for her, nothing unusual there. She was the one who needed help.
But instead of giving up, like she usually did, she’d done whatever she’d had to in order to secure her success. Unfortunately, that had meant lying. It had meant dragging Dante into the situation, and she really did sort of feel bad about that.
“I am doing it. I made the decision. I won’t change my mind.”
“But is the media thing…that’s all you want?” she asked. Seriously, it was a stupid question because she didn’t exactly have anything to give him if changing his image in the press wasn’t enough.
He put his fork down, and took in a deep breath, his expression one of barely contained annoyance. “I have been the target of malicious rumor and speculation by the media since I was fourteen years old. I came onto the stage a villain. I thought it might be interesting to see if I could end up a hero.”
There was no real venom in his words, none of the emotion that was so easy for her to think should be there. That the media had been attacking him since he was a young teenager seemed unforgivable. But he just said it like it was an interesting fact. And he talked about changing public perception as if it were no more than a fascinating experiment.
“What did they…say about you?”
“That I had somehow tricked the Colsons into adopting me. That I was holding something over their heads, that I was a plant for the Mafia—racially motivated attacks are always nice. That I might murder the poor, trusting older couple in their beds.”
He spoke so casually, without inflection. Cold horror settled in her stomach, making her shiver. He continued. “Some thought Don Colson had ‘imported’ me because I was some sort of financial genius and he lacked an heir.”
“But you knew the truth,” she said, her heart tightening, aching for him. Things with her family were hard, and sometimes she felt like she didn’t belong, but she didn’t have the media weighing in on it.
He paused for a moment. “That’s the thing. Paige, I don’t know the truth. Why they would take me in is somewhat beyond me. A fourteen-year-old boy with no people skills and no inclination to find any. But I was smart,” he said, as if trying to reason it out. “I did well in school.”
Oh, good, he was a genius, too.
“I’m sure it was more than that,” she said. Because she really needed to believe that getting good grades in school wasn’t the deciding factor on a person’s value. Otherwise she was sunk.
“Perhaps. I’ll have to ask them sometimes.”
“You never have?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“But it does.”
“No,” he said, his voice hard, “it doesn’t. They gave me a future, the best education possible, the best job opportunity possible. They gave me the means to support myself.” He chuckled. “That might be an understatement. They gave me the means to thrive. They owe me nothing. No explanation. No frilly words. I don’t need them. I have everything I need. And I think you and I have everything we need, too.”
He stood from the table, his food less than half-finished. “I’ll see you in the morning. We’ll all drive to work together. It would look wrong to go separately.”
She nodded and watched him walk out of the room. She picked up her fork and started eating again. She wasn’t going to go to bed starving just because he’d decided to get upset about something and leave.