C2, PT. 4

“I want to see what you have on Ariana that proves she’s an addict,” she said in a flat monotone. “I couldn’t talk to her without looking for hidden meanings in everything she said.”

“That can be arranged.”

His easy compliance caught her off guard, but only for a second. “And Rami?” When he nodded, she pressed, “What about Lyle?”

“No.”

Anger replaced grief, and she embraced it wholeheartedly. Better to feel the surging heat of indignant fury than cold, helpless melancholy. “You take great pleasure in exposing my family, why stop now?”

“Some secrets had to be sacrificed.”

“Why not his?”

“I owe him.”

“You what?”

“He was there for you when I couldn’t be. For that, I’m in his debt. The others, I owe them nothing.”

Her mouth opened and closed as she tried to process his words before she smacked his hand away. “He’s your biggest critic! He should be the one you threw under the bus first.”

“His secret means more to you than the rest combined. Why is that?”

Lyle was her champion, her anchor, the only one she could count on. His loyalty never wavered until she remarried. Discovering that he was hiding something that could tarnish the image of the man she loved more than her own blood would cause considerable damage to an already crumbling foundation. And Roth knew it.

Her eyes stung with tears. “Stop toying with me.”

“I’m not. It’s just an observation.” He took in her glistening eyes and defeated expression before he murmured, “Before I found out what made him tick, I thought Lyle had a thing for you.”

She jolted back.“What?”

“The frequent calls and monthly visits to spend time with you… He was too attentive.”

“He’s my brother!”

“Not by blood.”

“He’s my sister’s husband,” she said, voice thick with disgust.

“That doesn’t matter to some people.”

“It matters to me!”

“I realized that, but there was still a chance that it wasn’t just brotherly affection he felt toward you.” The chill in his eyes warmed fractionally as she gawked at him in revolted horror. “But once I learned his secret, it all made sense.”

She stiffened. “What does his secret have to do with me?”

 When he didn’t respond, she looked around for a missile. One glance reminded her that he had nothing on his countertops, aside from a fancy knife block that was too far away.

“Let it go, princess.”

Angry eyes cut back to him. “That’s impossible!”

“You could ask him.”

“I have as much hope of getting Lyle to confess his sins as I do you,” she said bitterly. And she already had.

If I hired someone to look into you, are you telling me they wouldn’t find something you’d pay to keep quiet?

She tossed that in Lyle’s face to stop him from hiring an investigator to dig into Roth’s affairs, and inadvertently hit a nerve. The long silence after her question and Lyle’s, What are you accusing me of? wasn’t a denial. Far from it. At the time, she was too caught up in her drama with Roth to ponder it. Now, it was all she could think about.

She was realistic enough to know the one percent bent the rules when it suited them. She saw firsthand how ruthless her family could be in pursuit of a goal, but she never imagined they would stoop to blackmail, drugs, and underworld dealings. Roth’s refusal to expose Lyle’s secret scared the hell out of her. What had Lyle done that made even Roth shy away from discussing it?

Roth thought he was doing her a favor by leaving her image of her supportive brother-in-law intact, but she heard enough falsehoods to last her a lifetime. No matter how painful, disturbing, or distasteful, she needed to know the truth. The cost of blissful ignorance was too high. It was better to face ugly reality than take refuge in a home with rotted pillars and hollow walls. Even if everything was stripped from her, she would survive. She did so once. She would do so again.

“All of us are capable of good and evil,” he said, bringing her troubled gaze back to him. “Even you, but I’ll tell you this—I’ve had firsthand experience with true evil. Lyle’s gray at best.”

She hated that she was comforted by that morsel of reassurance. He could be lying again, but she desperately wanted to believe Lyle was a good man. “If his secret isn’t damning, why not tell me?”

“I didn’t say it wasn’t damning, just that his reasons weren’t evil. I would have done the same, but I don’t see things the way others do. Society would condemn him.”

 “I need to know.” Her voice was as rocky as her emotions.

“And rob you of the only role model you have left?”

His words hit her like a punch in the gut. Wasn’t that a sad truth. No one in her life was who she thought they were. Not Roth, her father, Thea, Kaia, Rami, or her sisters. She stood in the ruins of a life that she now realized was a beautifully constructed sham. She’d taken countless blows since Dad’s death and managed to stay on her feet, but she knew instinctively whatever Roth had on Lyle would destroy her.

“Why let his past warp the good years you’ve had with him?”

“Do I know him? Or is the man I know a fabrication?” she said dully.

“Your faith is so easily rocked,” he taunted as he closed the distance between them again and grasped her chin. “Would you love him any less if you knew his secret?”

“How could I know unless—?”

“You either love him or you don’t,” he said curtly.

“I love him,” she said, hand slashing through the air between them. “Of course, I do.”

“Then why does it matter what he’s done?” As she struggled to come up with a suitable response, he continued. “What about Colette? She’s been married to him for over a decade. She thinks she knows him, but there are sides to a man he doesn’t show anybody if he can help it. Their marriage has been on the rocks for some time. The baby seems to have united them for the time being. Do you think their marriage could withstand him exposing a part of himself she didn’t know existed? Or, would it make her doubt everything that’s come before?”

Her heart knocked out of rhythm. He was talking about Lyle and Colette, but he was also talking about himself, about them.

“If there was a chance that it would destroy their partnership, do you think he would share it with her?”

She swallowed to coat her suddenly dry mouth. “If he truly loved her, he would.”

His lips twisted in what she suspected would have been a sneer, but he didn’t allow it to fully form.

“Love isn’t indestructible. It’s so fragile, it can vanish in an instant. It can disappear as if it had never been.”

“And you know this from experience?” she said sarcastically.

“Yes.”

His answer, so swift and unexpected, stole the scathing, sarcastic reply from the tip of her tongue. They stared at one another. A moment ticked by. Two. Three. When her lungs began to burn, she realized she was holding her breath. As she sucked in air, an invisible paring knife skated over her heart and left a trail of red seeping in its wake. She wasn’t falling for this crap. She jerked out of his hold and tried to slip past him, but he clamped a hand on her upper arm, keeping her before him.

“Take your hand off me,” she ordered.

He gave her a rough, teeth jarring shake that shifted her focus from what was going on inside of her to the asshole manhandling her. Again. She prepared to knee him in the balls, but a glance at his face banished that notion.

“Don’t tell me not to touch you. Who fucking owns you?”

**This is a raw draft of Bitter Confessions. Please do not share or distribute.

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