Reveling in Sin Read online

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  When no further protests are made, Commodore gives us a final nod. “Good. Everyone, back to the estate. Say nothing to anyone, especially the media.”

  Harrison is the first one to stalk away, and when he pushes through the doors to enter the waiting area, I catch a glimpse of Aunt Jackie. I was texting her as we landed back in Gable, but I didn’t expect her to show up here.

  Lincoln must feel my body tense, because his fingers curl tighter around me. “What’s wrong?”

  I incline my head toward the direction his brother just exited. “I need to talk to Jackie. She’s out in the waiting room.”

  “I’ll come with you.”

  My lips press together, and I debate whether that’s a good idea. Jackie will undoubtedly have opinions to share that Lincoln may not want to hear.

  When I don’t move or reply, he releases his hold on me for a moment, but only to stand directly in front of me and grip my shoulders with both hands.

  “You’re not getting rid of me, Blue. We’re in this together. No matter what happens, it’s you and me against the world. I’m not going to lose you now. Whatever comes next, we deal with it together. Nothing breaks us.”

  His words should give me comfort, but instead, they drive home exactly how much I have to lose. Lincoln doesn’t know the secret I’ve been keeping for ten years. The one that could change everything between us. And I can’t tell him right now. It isn’t the time or the place.

  Instead, I settle for nodding and taking as much comfort as I can from the way he threads his fingers through mine as we walk into the waiting room. Lincoln doesn’t release my hand until Aunt Jackie rushes forward to hug me.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get your calls sooner. We were in the air—”

  Jackie cuts me off. “Renee Rango is in town. I just heard.”

  “Where? We need to find her,” Lincoln says as I step back.

  Jackie directs her answer to me. “I don’t know yet, but I have to believe she’s going to be looking for Whitney.” Her tone matches her grim expression.

  “She’s not getting anywhere near Whitney. She’ll have to go through me first.” Lincoln pulls me into his side.

  I meet Aunt Jackie’s gaze and find knowledge there I didn’t expect. Does she know that Renee threatened me and that’s why I married Ricky? Has she known this whole time?

  Commodore’s power chair stops beside us, and I can’t ask any of the questions swirling in my brain. “Ms. Gable, you’re supposed to be at the resort, where you’ll continue to be a guest for as long as this media circus continues.”

  “Are you telling me I can’t leave The Gables?” Jackie asks, her shoulders going back. I recognize her battle posture.

  “I’m telling you to be smart with your actions—and your words.”

  Jackie’s gaze narrows on him. “And if I want to go home and get back to my normal life instead of hide from this mess?”

  “That’s not possible. Security is assigned to your house, and they’re under orders to keep everyone out, including you.”

  Oh shit is all I can think when Commodore speaks. This isn’t going to end well.

  “Listen to me, old man.” Jackie takes two steps toward him. “If I want to go home, I will.”

  Commodore folds his hands in his lap, and instead of yelling, his tone is calmer than ever. “If you want your house to still be standing when this is all over, you won’t defy me. Now, go back to work.”

  Jackie’s mouth drops open, and I’m sure my face looks the same. “What are you going to do? Burn it down like you did the family farm?”

  Commodore’s expression betrays nothing, but his words reveal all. “I didn’t need to burn down the farm when your brother did it himself out of spite.”

  “I don’t believe you,” Jackie snaps as Lincoln’s grandfather’s accusation burns in my brain.

  My dad burned down the farm? And then blamed the Riscoffs?

  I don’t know why I’m surprised, but I am. All these years, I’ve thought one thing, and it turns out that the truth is the opposite of what I thought.

  “I don’t give a damn what you believe, Ms. Gable,” Commodore says as he rolls around Jackie. “It doesn’t change the truth. Don’t be stupid. You have a great job and an extended invitation to live in luxury. Accept it and don’t argue.”

  Jackie’s jaw tightens, and I know she wants to go ballistic on Commodore, but somehow she keeps herself together. To Commodore’s back, she says, “I don’t take orders from you, Mr. Riscoff. I never have and never will. Whatever I choose to do will be my decision.” Her gaze flicks to me. “Whit, we need to talk. Now.”

  Commodore spins around in his chair with a quiet buzz. “Your niece is under the protection of my family. If you have information that impacts the situation, I need to know.” His dark gaze moves between Jackie and me, as though he’s ready to start an interrogation.

  “Enough,” Lincoln says. “We’ll have this conversation privately. Not here. Not now. Let’s go.”

  “This can’t wait,” Jackie says.

  Commodore crosses his arms over his chest. “Then tell us all.”

  Jackie looks around the room, and Lincoln’s right. We have a small audience, and whatever Jackie is going to say, now isn’t the time. However, that doesn’t stop her from delivering a message I don’t want to hear.

  “Renee Rango’s in town. I’ve been told she’s here to serve Whitney with a lawsuit.”

  “What?” I gasp.

  Lincoln pulls me even tighter to his side. “What kind of lawsuit?”

  “Wrongful death. She’s saying Whitney’s at fault for Ricky’s suicide.”

  7

  Lincoln

  Whitney sits silently beside me as we ride back to the estate. She hasn’t said anything since we left the hospital.

  “If there’s really a lawsuit, we’ll fight it, and we’ll win. There’s nothing to worry about,” I tell her as we approach the bridge.

  “You don’t know that. Renee . . . she’s . . .” Whitney takes a deep breath.

  “She’s what?” I ask.

  I wait while Whitney gathers her thoughts and turns in her seat. Her troubled blue gaze meets mine.

  “She’s crazy. Like completely off-her-rocker, batshit crazy. You don’t understand how nuts she is. There’s literally nothing I wouldn’t put past her. She swore she would never let any of this go public if I did what she wanted . . .”

  The blood pumping through my veins seems to slow as my brain locks onto the last part of what Whitney said. From the worry stamped on her features, I know it’s important.

  “What did she want you to do?”

  Whitney closes her eyes and swallows, and I brace myself for what’s coming next.

  “She wanted me to make Ricky a rock star. Write his songs. Make sure his career took off like it did with his first song. She said if I didn’t do what she wanted, she would tell everyone about who his father really was, and . . .”

  Realization hits me with the force of a dam breach as she trails off, gathering the courage to finish. But I don’t need her to finish. My brain is already jumping to conclusions.

  For ten years, I haven’t been able to figure out what would make Whitney not only go back to Ricky after he cheated, but actually marry him. Now I have the piece of the puzzle I’ve been missing for a decade.

  Renee Rango and her threats. That bitch. She stole ten years of the life I wanted, and I’m not going to let her take another second.

  “She wanted you to marry him and make him a star . . . and if you didn’t, she was going to expose her marriage to my father and tell everyone Ricky was his legitimate son and heir?”

  Whitney nods, tears turning her eyes glassy. “She said she’d destroy your family, and that Ricky would get everything and you’d get nothing. I knew if he inherited, he’d run the company into the ground, and every single person who relied on your family for a paycheck would’ve been ruined too. I couldn’t let that happen.”

&nbsp
; The magnitude of what she did, for me, is astounding.

  “You married him to save my family. To save me.” I say it out loud because I need to hear it to make it real.

  Whitney nods. “Yes.”

  The impact of a single word has never been stronger.

  “Jesus Christ.” I bring a hand to my face and cover my mouth.

  Whitney’s gaze drops to her lap. “You have to understand, between your mom and Renee, there was no chance anyone would let us be together, so I did what I thought was right. I hoped if I could just keep Renee and Ricky happy, they’d leave you alone . . . but it wasn’t enough. Renee won’t stop. Now all she cares about is money, and she’ll destroy everything in her path to get it.”

  I wrap both arms around Whitney and lift her into my lap. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have figured it out together. Commodore would’ve crushed her before he’d let her take down Riscoff Holdings. And he sure as hell never would’ve let Ricky inherit a damn thing if he didn’t think he would be a decent CEO. He wasn’t even going to let my dad have the company.”

  Whitney’s shocked gaze collides with mine. “What? I thought . . . I thought the tradition was impossible to change.”

  “Turns out Commodore doesn’t give a shit about tradition when it’s weighed against keeping the company out of the wrong hands. I can’t believe you did that for me, for us. Jesus Christ, Blue. Why?”

  She lays her head on my shoulder. “Because I loved you too much to let her ruin your life, and I had the chance to stop her. So I did.”

  Ten years ago, I thought Whitney deserted me for another man, but she did something so much bigger. She gave up us to save me.

  “I didn’t deserve you then, just like I don’t deserve you now. I’m so sorry you thought you had to do it.”

  “Don’t say that. I don’t want it to all have been for nothing. I kept her away for ten years, but I just couldn’t handle it anymore. Not after Ricky . . .” Whitney pauses, and I can’t let her go on.

  “No matter what happens next, I will protect you. And someday, I’m going to prove I’m worthy of you.”

  We ride in silence the rest of the way to the estate. As we approach the gate, the SUV slows to navigate the throng of reporters who are all crowded around something—not the gate, but a car parked on the side of the road with a redhead standing next to it.

  “What the hell is going on?”

  Whitney lifts her head and follows my gaze out the window. “Shit. Jackie was right. Renee is back, and she’s here.”

  8

  Whitney

  Even though I haven’t seen her brassy red head in months, I would recognize Renee Rango anywhere. There’s no mistaking her in the middle of the swarm of reporters outside the gates of the Riscoff estate, although I wish I was wrong.

  Nerves buzz to life like little soldiers ready to hold the line, because every time I face Renee, it’s a battle. And this time, I have no doubt she’s out for blood. My last encounter with her started and ended with her accusing me of murdering her son, in front of two police officers and the coroner, while I was making a positive ID of Ricky’s body.

  I’ll never forget the way her shrieks of “Arrest her now!” echoed off the walls of the morgue as security escorted her out of the building. Even now, my hackles rise at the memory of her voice.

  When Ricky’s lawyer called to tell me that I wasn’t invited to the reading of his will, I wasn’t surprised. I knew Renee would do everything she could to make my life hell after he was gone. But I learned too late how effectively she’d plotted her revenge. She made sure Ricky not only named her as executor of his estate, but also the sole beneficiary.

  When I asked how that was possible, because California is a community property state, the lawyer spouted a bunch of legal jargon at me that I didn’t understand. The bottom line, though? He said community property wasn’t even a concern at this point because Ricky had spent every penny, and if I wanted to contest the will, all I’d be arguing over was inheriting half the debts Ricky left behind.

  The one exception? The house had been purchased in my name, so Renee couldn’t throw me out. I stayed in LA for three months to see if the lawyer was lying, but when they carted off the furniture for auction and the sheriff put the notice on the door, I finally believed he was telling the truth. I was lucky that the house sold to a creepy fan for just enough to cover the balance of the mortgage, so at least I didn’t have that debt weighing me down.

  Before I left LA, there was one final nail pounded into the coffin of my former life. I called Ricky’s manager, and he told me Renee had assigned all future royalties of the songs I’d written to the creditors to keep them from taking her house.

  It added insult to injury. My hard work for a decade had been used to save her lifestyle.

  That was also the day Cricket made one last attempt to beg me to come home for her wedding. With nothing to keep me in LA and nowhere else to go, I came running back to Gable.

  All these memories coalesce into a ball of fire in my chest, and I want to do nothing more than rip Renee Rango’s fake red hair out by the roots.

  My visions of petty revenge fade away when Lincoln sits straighter beside me.

  “I remember her,” he says as he stares out the window. “From years ago. She showed up at the house once to see my father, and my mother ordered her off the property. Fuck, I never put it together.”

  The gates open as the SUV ahead of us, carrying Commodore and McKinley, slips inside and we follow, leaving the muted voices of various members of the press behind us. The thought of what Renee Rango is telling them sends my apprehension even higher.

  No matter what Lincoln said about protecting me from Renee, I know how ruthless she can be.

  When we climb out of the SUV, Lincoln waits for his grandfather to be assisted into his power chair before he speaks.

  “We need to exhume my father’s body and perform the DNA test. I don’t trust Renee Rango, and if there’s a shred of a chance that she might be lying about all of this, we need to know now so we can shut her down.”

  Commodore settles into his chair and maneuvers it to face us. “I agree. We’ll do it tomorrow morning. It’s time to lay this to rest, once and for all.”

  9

  Lincoln

  Renee Rango has shot straight to the top of my list of people I despise. I will never forget that she took ten years from Whitney and me, and I wasn’t even aware she did it. To me, that makes her a very real and dangerous adversary.

  Ricky Rango’s mother is about to become well acquainted with an indisputable fact of my life—no one fucks with what matters to me and gets away with it, and Whitney matters more than anything.

  Commodore withdraws to his old office when we enter the house, and Whitney and I follow my sister into the drawing room where she powers on her laptop. I don’t know where the hell my brother is, and right now, I don’t care.

  “Find out if they’re filming Renee Rango out front,” I say to McKinley. “Check the gossip sites. Someone has to be live streaming.”

  My sister glances back at me. “I was planning on working. Why don’t you use that fancy little box in your hand to do it.”

  “You’re faster on a computer. Besides, damage control comes first. Work can wait.”

  With a huff, she lets her fingers fly across the keyboard and pulls up three different gossip sites within seconds. Headlines about Ricky Rango are on the front page of all of them, but only one has a live stream.

  I point at the rectangle on the screen. “Click there. I want to know what this woman is saying.”

  McKinley moves the cursor with her finger and clicks. The window fills the screen, and Renee Rango’s voice comes from the speakers as she holds her informal press conference outside the gates of our goddamned house.

  “Why did I keep silent for so long? I was afraid for my life and for my son’s life. There’s nothing a mother wouldn’t do to protect her child, and you have to take precautions wh
en you’re dealing with a family like the Riscoffs who don’t think the rules apply to them.”

  The reporters lap up her bullshit. At least, all but one of them.

  “Did the Riscoffs give you money in exchange for your silence? Is that why you really stayed quiet? Because I find it hard to believe you were still afraid for your life and Ricky’s after he became a superstar,” one man asks pointedly.

  The cameras trained on Renee’s face show her lips pinching and jaw flexing as he makes his statement.

  “Considering you’re not female, and you’re clearly not a mother, you can’t possibly understand the lengths a mother would go to protect her child, no matter how old he is. I wasn’t taking any chances. The Riscoffs are—”

  A woman cuts her off. “But did they pay you off, Renee?”

  Renee’s face screws up into a vicious frown. “It was blood money. I took it because I had no choice. Don’t you dare judge me.”

  “And what do you think about the rumors that Whitney Rango, your late son’s widow, is now in a relationship with Lincoln Riscoff?”

  Renee’s gaze sharpens. “I have only one thing to say about that opportunistic, gold-digging whore—she killed my son! She may as well have put that needle in his vein. She never should’ve cheated on him. She did this; she took him from me. And now I’m going to take everything from that lying little c—”

  The recording cuts off, and McKinley and I both spin around when we hear a gasp.

  Whitney stands behind me, her arms wrapped around her middle. “That bitch. That conniving, lying bitch. I never cheated on him!”

  I reach out to pull her against me, but Whitney shakes her head.

  “I don’t need placating. It’s time to set the record straight. I’m done letting Renee paint me as the monster here, and the press believing every single word of it. I’m done. It’s my turn now.”