Nina turned to face her and put her hand up in front of Brandi's face. "I so don't want to hear another fucking word from your mouth. Get the f**k away from me right now before I totally lose my cool."
Brandi was cheap, but she wasn't stupid. Nina had barely finished speaking and she was running from the room, nearly getting her four inch heels stuck in the door as she slammed it shut behind her.
"Tristan, what is this? Why haven't you been home in two days? What's going on here?" Nina rightfully demanded to know.
I leaned forward to pour myself another drink. "Nina, go home." I couldn't explain to her why I was sitting there with a woman I didn't give a damn about instead of lying in bed with the woman I loved more than anyone or anything in this world.
She wasn't going home, though. That wasn't her style. My mind was still racing as she sat down next to me, but my high was quickly fading, leaving the reality of what I had to do pressing down on me like a weight on my chest.
"I'm not going home. I know we've been dealing with some things, but I can't believe you're just planning on never coming home again. Have you been here every night?"
I looked away, unable to face her when I saw the tears in her eyes. First, I'd been a selfish prick and fallen in love with her, all the while telling myself I'd been keeping her safe. Now, I had to tell her the truth. It didn't matter if she left anymore. Whatever I'd thought I could give her was over now.
"Have you been with her?" she asked quietly.
I shook my head sadly. "No. I wouldn't do that. I never meant to do any of this, Nina."
She took my hand in hers and held it to her heart. "Tristan, what's going on? Why would you stay here instead of coming home to me?"
I couldn't continue like this. I'd kept what I'd found out about her father's death and my family's part in it a secret for weeks, and I couldn't do it anymore. Every day I worried that her memory would finally return and she'd know the ugly truth and leave me again. At least now, I knew that she was safe from Karl and his friends on the Board.
It wasn't her they wanted out of the way. It was me.
"I'm sorry, Nina. I have something to tell you. I can't keep it from you anymore."
She touched my chin with her forefinger and forced me to look at her. "You can tell me anything. I love you, Tristan."
Bowing my head, I kissed her palm. "It's time you knew everything. Come with me."
I led her upstairs to the apartment above the club that I'd been staying at. It was nowhere as nice as our house or the penthouse, but it didn't matter. Telling her the truth as we sat on expensive furniture wasn't going to change what I had to say.
"What's this about, Tristan? Why are we here?" she asked as she looked around at the place where I'd been hiding from her.
"Sit down. I need to get his off my chest before it crushes me."
She sat on the edge of the grey sectional that took up most of the living room and looked up at me with eyes full of worry. I knew what she thought I was about to say—that I'd met someone else and didn't want to be with her anymore. Maybe she thought that I'd lied about Brandi and was actually cheating on her.
At least I wasn't that man.
I took out her father's notebook and held it in my hand as I finally confessed what I'd held in for far too long. "Before I tell you what I need to say, I want you to know that I never meant for things to get to this point. I wanted to tell you every day, but it just never seemed the right time. No matter what you think after this, I need you to know that I've never loved anyone like I do you."
Nina reached out to take my hand and squeezed it in sympathy, not knowing what I had to say would likely turn her away from me forever. Her blue eyes were begging me not to break her heart. "I know you love me. If you're going to tell me you've been with someone else, don't. I'd rather not know. Just let me go on thinking it never happened. I can live with that. I can."
I shook my head and dropped her hand. "I wasn't with anyone else. I wish it was that easy. No, there's no one else. That makes what I have to tell you ten times harder."
"Tristan, what is it? Tell me."
"I thought you'd remember by now, to be honest. I dreaded that every day I might come home and you'd tell me you remember everything and then leave me. Maybe it's better that you didn't. I should have to tell you this. It's the least I can do as the last remaining member of my family."
Her face telegraphed her confusion, and I continued, pacing as I began the story that I knew would be the end of us.
"My father was Victor Stone. I was never close to my father, so I never really knew what he was like. By the time I was an adult, I was too busy stuffing the shit you saw downstairs up my nose to be bothered to find out what Stone Worldwide was all about. My brother was the one my father wanted to take over for him. Taylor was all about business and following in my father's footsteps, so I didn't care about that world. It was for people like them. I was too busy having a good time."
I knew this probably wasn't making much sense, but I needed to get it all out. It was as if saying it out loud might finally exorcise it from my mind and give me some peace. I needed to believe that I wouldn't always be covered in the layers of guilt that covered me now.
"When Taylor was twenty-four, he got a teenage girl pregnant. She was only fifteen. Her name was Amanda. I don't know why, but he abandoned her and the baby she was carrying. He wouldn't take her calls or see her, so she became depressed and when she was three months pregnant, killed herself."
"Oh, my God...I'm so sorry."
Nina's sympathy only made this worse. Shaking my head, I continued on. "The girl's father was a judge who my father's company ended up in front of for a sexual harassment case. It was a common civil suit that Stone Worldwide gets at least half a dozen times each year, but this one wasn't going to be one my father could win because the judge knew what Taylor had done. So my father had him murdered to be sure he'd win the case."
Suddenly, Nina's eyes narrowed to slits and she sat back with a heavy sigh. "Why does this sound so familiar? I swear I've heard something like this before."
My heart began pounding in my chest at the real fear that she was finally remembering. I wanted to stop, to push it all out of my mind and take her in my arms and never let her go. But I couldn't.
Now I had to say the hardest part. "No one would have ever known about all this if an investigative reporter hadn't begun checking into something about my father's company. I imagine he probably thought he was onto some real estate scheme or something like that, but he somehow found out about Taylor and Amanda Cashen, and from there it just snowballed until he had uncovered everything my father had done, including the murder of her father."
"Who was the reporter, Tristan?"
I stopped pacing and looked down into her face. "I never knew what my father and brother were doing. I had no idea, Nina."
"What was his name?" she said again, louder.
"I didn't know, Nina. I need you to believe that."
Her eyes grew wide, and she covered her mouth with her hands. Behind them, she said with a sob, "Oh my, God! I remember. I remember everything. You knew when you met me. You knew who I was and didn't tell me until that night."
I fell to my knees in front of her and stared up into all that pain. It tore my heart out. "Nina, I'm not asking for forgiveness. I know what I did was wrong. I didn't know what to do. If I told you when we met, you wouldn't have come to live with me. Karl and his friends were sure you knew about what your father had uncovered. I couldn't let them hurt you. I wanted to stop the cycle of pain that my father had begun."
"So you lied to me from the minute you met me? I fell in love with you!"
"I fell in love with you. That's the only part that wasn't built on a lie. I love you. I never meant to hurt you."
"This is why you've been avoiding me? You didn't want to face me with the truth," she cried as she recoiled from my touch.
"I'm sorry, Nina. Karl was threatening you, telling me that if you knew anything of what your father had found out that he'd kill you to keep you quiet. I didn't know about any of what Taylor and my father had done to the Cashens until I met with Judge Cashen's daughter in Atlanta. Until then..."
She cut me off as she jumped off the couch to get away from me. "Until then, all you knew was that your father had my father murdered execution style in a parking garage in Newark and you weren't going to tell me."
I slumped against the arm of the couch and hung my head. "I didn't know how to tell you without losing you. I couldn't lose you."
"So you lied to me every day and night."
"I convinced myself that it was okay because I was protecting you. I thought if I could make sure you were safe that someday you'd understand."
"I found out that night when I got into the accident. When were you going to tell me this time?"
I didn't know how to answer that. I'd never gotten that far. I'd been so concerned that Karl would hurt her that telling her the truth had been pushed aside.
"When, Tristan? When?" she screamed.
"I don't know."
"Look at me! At least face me now."
I turned around and looked up at her. "I'm sorry. I thought if I just had enough time I could solve this whole thing and you'd never have to know what my father did. I swear I didn't know about anything he did until right before I met you."