Scandal Never Sleeps (27 page)

“I’ve been honest with you all along.”

“Are you going to fire me when this is over? You want Mad’s holdings to go to Sara. You’re going to give her the company. I assume you won’t want me there when she takes over.”

At least he could answer that question. “I won’t fire you. I won’t hurt your career. If I have to, I’ll find you a new job.”

“If you’re not firing me, why do I need a new job?”

“Everly . . .” He knew he was pleading with her, but he had no idea what else to do. “I can’t leave you in your current position. You’re right. Sara is eventually going to take over Crawford Industries. I can’t run two companies at once, and Crawford is her baby’s inheritance. When she takes over, you can come with me to Bond. I’ll move my head of online security to Crawford. It will work.”

In fact, the plan was perfect. He could keep her close. Bond had different security issues than Crawford. Maybe she would see it as a challenge. When he had to travel for business, he could take her with him. It could be good for them as a couple. Win-win.

“Bond is smaller than Crawford with significantly fewer cybersecurity needs,” Everly replied with a shake of her head. “You don’t exactly have a big retail wing, so you don’t need the sort of Internet security I specialize in. That position at Bond is a fluff job. So I would be taking a step down. I’ll pass.”

He felt his fists tighten, along with his temper. “Sara can’t work with you. You have to understand that.”

“Why not? I’m good at my job. I would think she would like having other female executives around.”

“You can’t expect her to keep you on.” He was happy with how reasonable he sounded when all he wanted to do was scream. Couldn’t she see he was trying to keep them both out of harm’s way?

“Why not?”

He was going to have to lay it out for her. “Because she thinks Mad left her for you. She thinks you’re the reason her baby doesn’t have a father.”

“Ah, so the would-be wife doesn’t want the whore around. Excellent. Tell her she doesn’t need to fire me. For the first time in my adult life, I’m going against my word, Gabriel. I quit. Once I can clean out my office, I’ll be gone forever, and your precious sister doesn’t have to sully herself with my presence.”

“You’re not listening to a word I’m saying.”

“I’ve heard everything,” she shot back. “In fact, I hear you so much better now that I know where you’re coming from. I’m willing to accept that you really had no idea who I was that first night. But every single second since the moment you realized Maddox spent time with me after he left Sara, you’ve plotted and planned to humiliate me in the worst way possible.”

“That’s not true, damn it.” He didn’t exactly sound coaxing now, but he wasn’t going to let her rewrite history to suit her mood. “I admit I didn’t handle our first meeting well, but I sure as hell haven’t tried to humiliate you.”

“You say you didn’t know who I was when you ordered that report, but you didn’t cancel it. You didn’t call off the PI. You’ve still got your ammunition in case I ever turn against you. Why would I want to live in that world, Gabriel?” She waved him off. “It’s irrelevant. All of this talk is completely useless because I know the truth. Tell me one thing: Do you believe me when I say I didn’t have anything beyond a friendship with Maddox?”

He sighed, deeply sick of this argument. “It doesn’t matter anymore. Everly, I don’t care who you slept with before me. I want you. I want you now, and whatever went on in the past is in the past.
Eventually Sara will accept you in my life. She’ll come around. She’s a smart woman, and you’ll win her over.”

She stood again, this time steadier than before. “No, I won’t because we’re through. You see, it might not matter to you, but it’s everything to me. I won’t be with a man who thinks I’m a liar.”

Everly walked away, and Gabe was fairly certain he really had lost her forever. He’d never felt more desolate in his life.

E
verly fought her instinct to go back to Gabriel and accept whatever he would give her. It was weak, but she really wanted to believe he was telling her the truth. A friend in her neighborhood had recently miscarried after a very stressful reorganization at work, and it had been heartbreaking for her family. So Everly understood why Gabe might have thrown her under the proverbial bus to calm his pregnant sister. But she also hated the thought that she might become one of those stupid girls who made excuses for a boyfriend’s bad behavior because she couldn’t stop loving the jerk.

All that aside, by his own admission, he intended to force her out of her job before his sister assumed Crawford’s helm because he believed she’d been Mad’s mistress. And she couldn’t get that report out of her head. Now she wished she’d been able to hold on to it. How much more had he found out besides the crap about her dad? Shouldn’t she know what he could come at her with? Maybe she should do her own digging. She wouldn’t need a PI. She could find out everything about Gabriel Bond. She could hack into his banking records and make it look like he was laundering money. . . .

Oh, god, this was what life with a man as ruthless as Gabriel Bond would be like. Warfare. She was prepping for a war with a man she’d fallen in love with. Her heart sank. Even though she’d liked Maddox, he’d been the same. Always prepared to take down his enemies.

She couldn’t live this way.

“Are you two good?” Dax asked as she walked in the room.

“As good as we’re going to get. Now what did you find?” Everly saw no reason to vomit out the details of her relationship with Gabriel, especially to his friends. Instead, she headed for the table. What she needed was to lose herself in work and figure out the mystery in front of her. Then she and Gabriel could go their separate ways.

Connor glanced up from the papers he’d been studying. “You knew Mad pretty well, right?”

“I think so.” She wished Mad was here now so she could get his opinion on how to deal with Gabriel, who’d behaved this morning like a complete douchebag-asshole-idiot. She bet that Maddox would have given her some crazy-sounding advice, which, under the punchline, would have been terribly sage. Or he would have offered to find her a male prostitute. Really, it was a fifty-fifty proposition with him.

“Do you have any idea why he would be looking for two women?” Connor asked.

Roman sighed as if the answer was obvious. “You’re talking about Mad. Ménage à trois, you moron.”

Connor rolled his eyes. “I don’t think he would have spent ten grand merely to find a threesome. Fine. He might have, but I doubt he would’ve hired a PI. He knew a fair number of high-class escorts. He would have just called them.”

“I’ll give you that,” Roman conceded. “So who did he hire this PI to find?”

Connor looked down at his notepad. “According to the PI’s daughter, Mad hired her dad, Wayne Ferling, to find two women over the last two years. The first was named—”

“Why talk to the daughter, rather than the man himself?” Everly interrupted. “Could you not reach him?”

“Mr. Ferling was killed by a mugger two months ago,” Connor explained. “Right in front of his house, in fact.”

“That’s suspicious,” Dax said with a whistle.

“Yes, it is, considering the fact that Ferling lived in a safer part of the city,” Connor admitted. “I checked and his was the only murder in that vicinity in the last two years.”

“So Mad’s dead and so is the PI he hired under mysterious circumstances,” Gabriel posited, strolling into the room.

Everly tried to act as if he was nothing more than another cog in the wheel of this mystery. “Sorry I interrupted you earlier, Connor. Carry on.”

He nodded. “Ferling’s daughter said that Mad first hired her father to find a woman in her fifties, Deborah Elliot. That was a little over nine months ago. She’s alive and living in Florida. Then more recently, Mad sought a woman named Natalia Kuilikov. She was a Russian immigrant who came to the States almost fifteen years ago. Apparently, she disappeared a while back.”

“We keep finding Russians in the middle of this shit.” Dax paced the floor, his face thoughtful. “First, Sergei, then the
Bratva
, and now Natalia. That’s awfully coincidental. But Deborah Elliot doesn’t sound remotely Russian. How does she fit in?”

Suddenly, Everly wasn’t thinking about Dax’s question or her problems with Gabriel. “Maddox was trying to find Deborah Elliot? You’re sure about that?”

“Yeah.” Connor nodded, looking quite certain.

A wave of dizziness rolled through her head. She braced her hand on the table, trying to process the possible implications. Now more than ever, she wished she could lean on Gabriel.

“Everly? What’s wrong?” He moved behind her and pulled out a chair.

She sank into the seat. Deborah Elliot. He’d been looking for
Deborah Elliot. The idea made Everly’s head spin again. “Deborah Elliot is my mother.”

The room stopped, and every eye suddenly turned to her.

“Are you kidding me?” Roman asked.

She shook her head. “No. I mean, that’s my mother’s maiden name. I’m sure there are plenty of Deborah Elliots out there, but for this to be another coincidence . . .” She finally looked at Gabriel. “Maddox searched for my mother. Once he found her, he apparently went out of his way to find and hire me. Why? And what made him go looking for her in the first place?”

“With Mad gone, we may never know,” Gabriel answered. “But I think I remember your mother’s name listed in the financial records I found on his desk last night.”

“Are they in that folder you saved from the fire?” Connor asked, looking around the table for said file.

“Yeah.” Gabe pointed to the plain manila folder at the far end of the table. “That’s it. When I studied it, everything inside seemed so random. Mad had shoved a ton of receipts into that folder, along with old payment records to a Deborah Elliot.”

“Payments? How did Maddox even know my mother?”

Connor flipped through the files Gabriel had saved. “He didn’t. His father did. These payments were made some twenty-odd years ago. Is there any way to pull up Crawford Industries’ archived HR files? I have a hunch. I happen to remember Benedict Crawford really well, since I spent a bunch of holidays with Mad and the old bastard.”

Before she could clear the shock buzzing through her brain to volunteer for the task, Gabriel grabbed Connor’s laptop and started typing, his face grim. “I remember, too. Do you think—”

“Yeah, I do.” Connor’s face tightened with thought. “These payments totaled north of two hundred thousand over the course of six years. What else could this be about?”

“Sounds like hush money to me,” Dax put in.

All four men studied one another, as if looking for consensus. They
conducted a whole conversation through raised brows, facial tics, and half sentences. Feeling completely left out, Everly’s head spun faster.

Hush money? Why would anyone need to hush her mother? She could easily see the woman accepting the money. It was what she’d always wanted. Her mother hadn’t hung around long, but Everly could remember her talking about a time when her life had been better and it had all revolved around money and social position. She couldn’t help but look at Gabriel. He had both. She would do well to remember that. People who lived in this world—or had fallen from it like her mother—would do anything to stay in it or get back to it.

None of her morbid thinking answered the question of why a man as powerful as Maddox’s father would have given her mother so much money.

“I don’t understand,” she demanded finally. This was their world. Surely they did. “Someone explain this to me.”

“As soon as Gabe finds what we’re looking for,” Connor promised.

“Got it. Yes, she worked for Crawford briefly twenty-eight years ago. She left the firm, married Everly’s father, and gave birth all within a few months. Benedict Crawford continued the payments until Everly was six.”

The implications were immediate and staggering. If she hadn’t been sitting, Everly would have fallen over.

“My parents both had blue eyes. I-I never knew where I got my hazel green.” The thought hit her from nowhere and she murmured that fact to no one in particular.

“Maddox had green eyes,” Gabriel said softly. “So did his father.”

Everly closed her eyes. Oh, god. She was a Crawford. The knowledge made her sit back and gasp for breath.

Gabe turned to her, concern glowing from his blue eyes. “Everly?”

She nodded. “Benedict Crawford would only have had one reason to shut my mother up. Deborah Elliot wouldn’t have cared enough to be a whistle-blower, but she was definitely the kind of woman to sleep with her boss and use her illegitimate child for financial gain.”

“Damn . . .” Dax muttered. “You’re Maddox’s half sister?”

That revelation answered some questions but raised others. Why had her mother never bothered to mention that her dad wasn’t really her father? Had he even known? Why had no one told her that she had a sibling, especially Maddox himself? Obviously, he’d known. He’d hired and mentored her, offered his friendship, and made her laugh. He’d simply never given her the truth.

“Now that I think about it, baby, you actually look a little like the Crawfords. Besides the eyes, you have their chin. Be happy you didn’t get the old man’s nose.” Gabriel was actually smiling at her. “Well, now we know why Maddox didn’t touch you.”

So many years. So many lies. So many questions. Everly knew that dwelling on this revelation wouldn’t help with the job at hand. Still, the weight of this information staggered her. Froze her. How was she supposed to feel? Betrayal and anger were sure to set in soon, but at the moment . . . just shock. Her head told her that being an illegitimate Crawford didn’t change who she was as a person, yet how could it not change her perception of her past—and her future?

Everly dragged in a deep breath. Later. She’d examine this when she had time, when she could be alone. No way she wanted to show Gabriel another ounce of her vulnerability.

She forced herself to focus and turned her attention to Connor. “That’s all fascinating, but how does it have anything to do with the reasons for Maddox’s murder? Do we have any idea who this Natalia is? Have you run a skip trace on her yet?”

Gabriel went down on one knee beside her. “Hang on. You understand this changes everything? I can tell Sara the truth now. Do you know how much better she’ll feel that Maddox wasn’t sleeping with you? That he merely spent time getting to know his sister?” He smiled. “She’ll be so happy that her baby will have an aunt.”

Everly gaped at him. Did he really think uncovering this secret made everything somehow better? In his head, probably. But Sara wouldn’t accept her any more now than she would have while
believing her to be Maddox’s lover. Sara would likely see Deborah Elliot as a whore, and Everly as an illegitimate something far beneath her. “It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course it does.” Gabriel put a hand over hers. “This changes everything.”

She pulled away. “It merely means that since you have some proof Maddox didn’t sully me, you’re finally willing to believe I wasn’t lying. So
now
you feel like having a relationship. It’s too late, Gabriel. I ended it twenty minutes ago when you proved that I can’t trust you. We’ll try to figure out who killed Maddox, see if this Natalia person had any possible connection to my mother, and determine if any of this was relevant in Maddox’s death. Then we’re done.” She directed her attention to Connor without missing a beat. “Did the private investigator find a phone number for my mother? I haven’t spoken to her in years. I would greatly prefer not to now. Can one of you call? I’m sure if you offer her cash, she’ll answer your questions.”

She couldn’t stomach the idea of talking to her mother, especially after the way this morning’s revelation had shaken her. If she actually found herself on the phone with Deborah Elliot, Everly knew she’d probably yell. The selfish bitch had split with her hush money and left her daughter to be raised in near poverty by a man with whom she didn’t share a drop of blood. Despite all that, George Parker had raised her as his own. He’d been a dad to her—far more than the sperm donor who had been her biological father.

Dad had never told her that she wasn’t his daughter by DNA, but maybe he hadn’t known. And if he had, she loved him all the more for being the best parent a girl could have. He’d given her everything he could, especially his affection and support—unlike the other men in her life. Benedict Crawford had paid her mother to be rid of his responsibility. Maddox had withheld the truth and manipulated. He could have told her they were siblings at any time, but he’d remained mute. And Gabriel . . . she didn’t even want to think about Gabriel.

“Everly?” Gabriel searched her face. “Baby, that’s not true. It doesn’t have to be that way.”

She stood because she didn’t have anything else to say to him. Everly needed to make an exit, but she wasn’t sure where to go. She turned back to Connor, Roman, and Dax, all watching her quietly. She was ready to argue that she should leave when some pictures caught her eye. Among them, a trio of familiar faces sat on the table. “Where did you get those?”