His gaze goes from her to me, then to the hand wrapped around my wrist. His lips quirk, and he turns to his friends. “Could you excuse us for a moment?”
They nod and eye us curiously, but they stride away. I watch them regroup at the bar.
“Leigh.” His eyebrow raises. “I thought you and I had an understanding.”
“I thought so, too,” she hisses.
“Ah.” He smiles. “Well, it seems your daughter didn’t get the memo.”
“What…” I glance between them, then settle on him. “What did she do?”
He grins. His forehead doesn’t wrinkle, his brows don’t furrow, but his eyes gleam. Another chess piece conquered, he must think. Another family divided.
Secrets will do that.
“Honey—”
“Your mother,” the senator interrupts, “has been getting paid to keep her mouth shut.”
I jerk out of her grip and stagger away.
But Mom is fast. She reacts like a snake, striking out and latching onto my shoulder. She hauls me into her. “Now is not the time to cause a scene, dear.”
“What did you do?” I whisper at her.
She shakes me slightly, then glances over her shoulder at the senator’s friends. She forces another smile. Like all is okay.
It’s not.
It’s far from okay.
“Except the payments stopped, did they not?” Senator Devereux tilts his head. “It was a decent sum altogether. It’s a pity that our agreement has come to an end.”
Her mouth drops open. “Excuse me?”
“These articles you keep writing.” He sighs and glances out toward the ice. Just a cursory glance, as if to keep up appearances. Faking his way through interest in his son’s life. “It’s getting tiresome, Leigh. Your desperate attempts to extort more money from my coffers.”
“I have done no such thing,” she snaps. “And—”
“And your daughter seems to be unable to keep away from Greyson.” He inclines his chin again, looking down his nose at us. Grey must’ve got his height from him. There are some other similarities, too. But even when he was at his cruelest, he didn’t havethissneer. “My son was part of the agreement, do you remember?”
She turns to me. “Tell me that isn’t true.”
It’s my turn to snort. “Tell me how I’m supposed to keep an agreement I wasn’t part of?”
“You agreed to keep away from my son,” the senator snaps. His composure is on the verge of breaking.
“Someone should’ve told him that,” I mumble.
What happened to my mother? She had a job, she had a house and a social life.Friends. A husband. Me. Then her husband died, and I didn’t realize how much that must’ve shattered her. She just couldn’t keep it together anymore.
I grab her hand, pulling her back a few steps. “Come on, Mom. You don’t need his money.”
She laughs. Loudly. It draws the attention of the guys at the bar, and the senator shakes his head.
“She’s high.” He doesn’t bother to lower his voice either. “She took my money and used it to buy more of those pills they gave you in the hospital. Or, perhaps you didn’t realize the bottles always ran out faster than they should’ve?”
I flinch.