A Man of Wealth (The Kingmakers of Kensington Book 2) Page 6

  Out of total curiosity, I click on The Tribune’s archive page. I type in my search and bite my lip as I wait for the article to appear, when it does, I click on it and begin to scroll down. That’s when I see it…what the hell? He’s not wrong, the article says what he claimed it said. I scroll back up and read from the top down. It paints a horrible picture of his mother. Jesus, no wonder why he hates me. I’m so confused. This article is so different from what I wrote. Methodically, I start pulling up all my articles. I make myself a coffee and settle in for a long night. What else has been changed? And who is changing it?

  Chapter 9

  Conner

  I’m stewing over the events of last night. I prop my feet up on my desk and lean back. I fucking love my home office. The carved wood ceiling soothes me along with the classical music pumping through the hidden speakers in my shelves.

  A knock on my door has me raising my head. Felicia pops her head in and grins. “Relaxing finally?” she asks.

  I shrug. “Just thinking.”

  She opens the door a little more and props her hip against the doorframe. “Wow, this is a first. A woman has you thinking.”

  I glare at her. “I didn’t say I was thinking about a woman.”

  “You didn’t have to. Carry on, I’m all done here. I have to take my mom to chemo tomorrow, so I won’t be here.”

  “How’s Janet doing?” I ask, lowering my feet. I met Felicia because of her mother. Janet used to clean my father’s house. He fired her after she let me eat a snack while home from college. Yes, my asshole father didn’t want me eating his food. I hired her immediately to clean my apartment, and when she retired, I hired Felicia who decided to take over her mother’s business. She cleans homes for a few people on our street, but I keep her mostly to myself. She’s excellent at keeping my social life organized and some things I don’t want Pricilla to know about.

  “She’s doing OK. This round has been tough. She only has one more week.”

  “If she needs anything, anything at all, let me know,” I state as I rise and walk over to her. I hug her, and she hugs me back. I let my guard down with her, but not too much. I don’t hug many people, but Janet and Felicia are the exceptions when we’re alone here in my home, away from prying eyes. Besides them and Aiden and Sebastian, only my pledge brothers know my truths and see the real me.

  “You should stop by and visit her. She’d like that,” Felicia says as she pulls away.

  “I will. Things have just been…busy,” I explain. It’s a lame excuse since they live on my route home from the office, but it’s not a lie that I’ve been preoccupied with things lately.

  “Well, I’m sure she’d love to see you.”

  I nod and watch as she walks down the side hallway and out the back door. My phone buzzes and I reach into my pocket to check it.

  Vivienne: I need to talk to you.

  I should meet her at my office or better yet just call, but for some stupid-ass reason, I send her a response with my address since I doubt she memorized it on the drive over the other day, and tell her to come over here.

  I go back to my office and try my father again. This time, I get no answer at all. I hate him more with each passing day. He can’t hide from me forever. And he was the one who last called me. It’s always a fucking game with him. He’ll make me track him down for weeks, just so I can have five precious minutes of his time.

  I hear a buzz and I look up at the screen on my wall. The motion sensor video camera on my driveaway has gone off, and I watch each camera on my property turn on as Vivienne drives up and parks her car. It’s silver with a red leather interior that’s as fiery as she is.

  She’s wearing tight pants and high heels that make her look four inches taller than she is. I grin, she’s wearing a power outfit, how adorable.

  She presses the doorbell on my front door, and I turn on the speaker. “Come in,” I state as I unlock the door with a click of a button.

  She hesitates for a moment and then proceeds to enter my house. I watch as she looks around, unsure of her next move. This little game is fun. It’s taking my mind off things I’d rather not be thinking about.

  “Conner?” she calls out as she steps tentatively into my foyer and looks around. She allows herself to re-examine the giant chandelier and the double curving staircases that lead to a balcony upstairs. Several large paintings grace the white walls and the floors are my favorite, a checkered pattern of light and dark wood. She takes a moment to look at each painting.

  “You’re warm,” I say into my house speaker after allowing her a moment to snoop. I try to fight the smirk threatening to emerge on my face as her head whips around and her face pinkens with guilt. I love that she knows that I’ve caught her investigating my things. I’m very pleased with myself for not giving her a full house tour last time. Why this little game is making me so happy is beyond me.

  She sighs and takes another step toward her right.

  “Colder,” I respond, propping my feet back up on my desk so I can enjoy the show.

  She steps to the left. “Warmer,” I reply. I watch her open a door and realize it’s a closet. And then she turns to go down the hallway in front of her.

  “Getting hot.” She starts opening doors as she walks, and I shout “cold” a few times. Finally, she throws her hands in the air and spins around. I laugh at the look of frustration on her face. Yes, having her come here was well worth it.

  “Conner, can we move past this game? I really do need to speak with you.”

  She steps forward. She’s standing in front of the double doors of my office.

  “You’re on fire,” I say, this time letting myself grin as she puts her hands on the doorknobs and throws open the doors.

  She glares at me the second the doors are open. “For the love of God! Couldn’t you have just directed me here? Enough with the games,” she says tersely as she struts toward me, her high heels making a clickity-clack sound on my hardwoods and having a completely different effect on my own wood.

  I adjust myself as I lower my feet and slide my chair back a bit. I motion for her to take a seat and she does, bringing one leg over the other.

  “What’s up?”

  She rolls her eyes. “This,” she says as she pulls some papers out of a bag and drops them on my desk.

  I glance down to see news articles, written by her. “What? You finally realized you lack skills as an investigative journalist?”

  “Ha. Ha. No, these aren’t my articles,” she states. I frown, confused by what she’s saying. “Well, they aren’t how I wrote them.”

  “Don’t you have an editor?”

  She nods again and pulls out a second pile of papers and drops those on my desk. “They aren’t how she edited them either. Someone else changed them before they went to print.”

  “But…why would someone do that?” I ask, my frown deepening as I pick up matching files from the two piles and examine them more closely. She’s right, words are slightly changed and there’s an entire paragraph missing from one of them.

  “Someone doesn’t want me reporting the truth on you or your fraternity brothers. It’s only articles about you all that have changes,” she says, looking at me with a raised eyebrow. “Any idea why that would be?”

  Yes, I do, and no I’m not going to tell you, I think to myself.

  “No idea,” I state as I drop the articles back to my desk. “Maybe a higher-up changes stuff before it goes to print?” I suggest. It’s bullshit, she knows, and I know it, but I won’t have her calling my bluff.

  “Nope. No one should be doing that. I even asked my editor about it. She said the version I have in my email, should be what is printed.”

  “Well, that’s quite the mystery, then. But why bother telling me that? And why don’t you read your printed articles?”

  She stands and steps toward me, rifling through the two piles until she finds what she wants. Turning the papers around, she sets them down and pushes them toward me. I pause. It’s the article that I’d mentioned to her, the one about my family. The one where she all but called my mother a whore. I study the two and realize what she wrote was completely different than what was printed. Huge sections of her article are missing, giving a very one-sided view of my mom. It can’t be the work of the brotherhood, they’d never smear their own, not intentionally anyhow.

  She blushes and looks down, following my gaze. “I never read the print copy. I…I just don’t.” She pauses and looks back up at me, but my gaze is fixed on those articles. “After you told me that…I went home and was confused. I pulled up the article and realized it didn’t look like the one I wrote. It started out the same. If someone had spot-checked it, they may not have even noticed. I only noticed because of the missing quotes. Then, I looked at another one and another one and found that only the ones about you and your brothers are altered. None of the others. And that is why I’m here. What are you not telling me?”

  Chapter 10

  Vivienne

  Conner’s usual poker face falters for a moment. I see a myriad of emotions play out over his face. Confusion. Realization. And finally, anger.

  He pounds a fist on his desk, and I jump. He doesn’t say anything as he picks up his phone and makes a call. I don’t know who he’s speaking to, but he relays everything I just said and then hangs up.

  “Who was that?”

  “Sebastian.”

  “Congressman North? Why are you calling him?” I ask as I step away from his desk. For the first time since I’ve become well-acquainted with Conner Sterling, all of Conner Sterling, I’m scared. Why did I come here? He has a home-court advantage here. I’m fairly certain that’s why he brought me here the other night. This house is everything I expected of Conner. It gives me zero ne
w angles. I internally curse myself for having played right into his ploy. Conner, as it turns out, is a worthy opponent.

  Conner sighs and runs a hand over his face. “We need to talk.” His eyes search mine and I can see him, really see him for the first time. He’s not the arrogant prick I thought he was, at least not right now.

  I lower my shoulders, realizing that I’d bunched them up in my retreat from his desk. “OK,” I reply slowly.

  “I’m not going to hurt you, Vivienne,” he says in a low rumbling voice that has chills running through my body, but no longer from fear. And why do I get the sneaking suspicion that he is going to hurt me, just not in the physical sense?

  I release the breath I’m holding. “Fine. What do we need to talk about?”

  “Follow me,” he says as he opens the door and walks out of the room, holding it for me to pass over the door’s threshold. I follow him to a bar in the corner of his kitchen. He pours himself a drink and reaches into a wine fridge to grab a bottle. He pours me a glass of wine, my favorite type of wine. He hands me the glass and motions for me to follow him. Frowning in confusion, I comply as we walk to a set of double doors that lead outside. He presses a button on the wall and a firepit turns on. Another press of a button, and classical music begins to play softly from outdoor speakers. I roll my eyes. His house is insane, and that’s saying something considering where I was raised.

  He sits down on a comfortable outdoor sofa and pats the seat next to him. “Sit,” he commands. I give him a pointed look and he returns it. Rolling my eyes again, I comply, but only because my curiosity is killing me.

  His voice is low when he speaks. “I don’t trust that we aren’t being listened to inside.”

  My hand pauses on its way to bring my glass to my lips. “Listening?”

  He nods and scoots a little closer to me. I can feel the heat of his thigh against mine. Memories of our hate fuck at the hotel come tumbling back to me. I squeeze my legs together remembering how he felt slamming into me.

  His gaze drops to my legs for a moment. I watch as his Adam’s apple bobs on a swallow. There’s no way he’s affected by me, is there?

  “Why do you report on us?” he asks as his arm comes up to the back of the sofa and he turns a little to face me.

  I process his words. Us. He said “us.” “So, there is a brotherhood?” I ask with a raised eyebrow.

  “My fraternity,” he clarifies, but something about the way he says that tells me that he isn’t unveiling the entire truth yet.

  I nod and clear my throat as I run a finger along the seam of the cushion. I look to the flames in front of us, unsure how to begin. His hand gently grabs my thigh right above my knee and gives a squeeze. I give him a sideways glance.

  “I know you won’t believe me yet, but you can trust me,” he assures me. Part of me wants to laugh because I don’t trust anyone. Yet, for reasons I can’t explain, I believe him when he says this, maybe I want to or maybe I’m letting my lady parts do my thinking. I watch his bicep flex through the thin fabric of his shirt. It’s a crime that this asshole has a body that apparently was carved out of stone by the gods of man's bodies.

  I suddenly realize he’s watching me as I essentially undress him with my eyes. I blush and nod. “Just tell me what you need to tell me,” I finally manage to say although the words come out rushed and too high-pitched.

  I watch the corners of his mouth twitch before he composes himself. “Tell me what you think is actually going on.”

  I tilt my head to the side. “You already know. You clearly have read my investigation pieces.”

  “I want to hear it from you,” he insists.

  I let out a long breath and curl my legs up on the sofa next to me. The night air is cool, and as if sensing my needs, Conner reaches to the side of the sofa and pulls out a blanket from a side cupboard. He lays it across my lap.

  “Thank you,” I say softly. He nods and motions for me to continue. I consider my words carefully. I’m about to divulge information that I hadn’t intended on sharing with him. I have no idea why I suddenly have an irrational need for him to trust me. So I decide to tell him the truth, or at least a shortened version of it.

  “I guess it started with my grandfather…” I trail off and search his eyes, but he gives nothing away. “When I was younger, I overheard a conversation. And it stuck with me. As I grew up, I realized that my grandfather won the presidency because of who he knew and not what he knew. While he did do some good things, he also did some bad things. I tried to stay out of the politics business as much as possible, but then when I came home from college wanting to change my major to journalism, my father basically lost his shit and said if I did that, I’d be disowned.” I pause. “So, you know how that turned out. My grandmother and my brother kept begging me to change it back to political science, but I refused. I wasn’t going to go to law school. I wasn’t going to be a Stepford wife. And so, I was on my own at the age of nineteen.”

  “How did you survive? Did you get a job?” Conner asks as if he’s truly curious.

  “I did, but to be honest, I had a professor who took pity on me. She let me live in an apartment above her family’s garage for free as long as I babysat her kids after school, and she also helped me navigate grants and scholarships. I wouldn’t have been able to stay in school if it wasn’t for her.”

  “My mother would have called that tenacity,” he says with a small smile.

  I return his grin with my own and shrug. “I suppose. Anyhow, I got a coveted internship at The Tribune and when it came time to graduate, I was hired as a local reporter. I think mostly they liked to put that I was a granddaughter of a former president in my bio on their website. I didn’t love that, but if it got my foot in the door, then so be it. I worked my way up slowly. And during that time, in secret, I started researching my grandfather’s fraternity.”

  “What did he say that you overheard?” he asks.

  I bite my lip because I don’t know how much I want to share. Can I trust him?

  “How old were you?” he asks. Now, this I can answer.

  “I was sixteen,” I reply.

  “And what did he say?” he asks again. I decide to share the truth. It might be the only way I find out if we are playing for the same team, or if I’ve made a horrible mistake.

  “He said something about knowing what had happened. He said Todd knew and the council would speak. And because she didn’t die, they would need to take care of it…to protect their own? It was strange. It was the second time that I heard him speak of this guy named Todd. The first was when I was maybe ten. I was visiting him at the White House. It was Christmastime. And he was in the hallway, speaking to some man. The man said Todd would take care of it. And then started to say something else but stopped when he saw me. I thought that was a little strange, but not totally since it was the White House. It was stranger how my grandfather looked at me. He asked me later if I’d heard that conversation, and I just said no that I was thinking about a school project and hadn’t heard them. He seemed to believe me, but it was just weird because he’d never asked that before. It stuck with me. And then when I heard the other conversation, I got curious. I wanted to know who Todd was. And what was being ‘taken care of’ and so I started researching.”

  I stop and stare at him. “You know,” I state because I see an understanding in his eyes.

  He nods.

  “You’re part of it,” I state.

  He nods.

  “It took me a long time, embarrassingly longer than it should have, to realize Todd wasn’t a person. TOD was Theta Omega Delta.”

  He swallows. “What else did you figure out?”

  “What my grandfather is part of…what I think you are a part of…is beyond TOD, isn’t it?”

  He doesn’t speak.

  “I know you must have taken a vow of some kind. TOD is a front. I bet not everyone in TOD is part of the brotherhood, now, are they?” I ask.