The patience required not to grab Baron and shake the story from him taxed his control. Darius curled his fingers around the arm of his chair and waited.
“On Thanksgiving, you told Helena and Gabriella about Gage and Isobel’s marriage. That he’d been cruel, abusive and faithless. Everything you said...” He dragged in an audible breath. “It was true. All of it. Their marriage was horrible, and Gage’s jealousy, insecurity and weakness were to blame.”
Shock slammed into Darius with an icy fist, rendering him frozen. He stared at Baron, speechless. But his mind whirred with questions.
How do you know? Why didn’t you say anything to your wife and daughter?
How could you not say anything to me?
“How?” he rasped. “How do you know?”
Another of those heavy sighs, and Baron turned away, staring out the side window. As if unable to meet Darius’s gaze.
“Gage told me,” Baron whispered. “The night he died, he told me the truth.”
“What?”Darius clenched the arms of his chair tighter. If they snapped off under the pressure, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
Baron nodded, still not looking at him. “Yes, he found me in the library that evening and broke down, confessing everything to me. Isobel had demanded a divorce, and he’d been distraught. I’d barely understood him at first. But as he faced losing Isobel and Aiden, he’d come to me, horrified and ashamed.”
Baron finally returned his attention to Darius, but the agony on the older man’s face was almost too much to bear.
“My son... He was spoiled. Yes, he had a big heart, but Gage was entitled, and the blame for that rests on Helena’s and my shoulders. He’d defied us by marrying Isobel but hadn’t been prepared for the separation and disapproval from his family. Hadn’t been ready to live on his own without our financial resources. But instead of faulting himself, he blamed Isobel. Yet he loved her and didn’t want to let her go. So he’d alienated her from us physically and with his lies of mistreatment and infidelity. He admitted he lied about the cheating, but at some point he’d started to believe his own lies. Became bitter, resentful, jealous and controlling. It transformed him into someone he didn’t know, someone he knew I wouldn’t be proud of. Who he’d become wasn’t the man I’d raised him to be. And I think that’s why he confessed to me. His shame and guilt tore at him, and in the end it drove him out into the night, where he crashed his car and died.” Baron swallowed, his voice hoarse, and moisture dampening his eyes. “Do I think Gage killed himself that night? No. I don’t think it was intentional. But I also believe he was reckless and didn’t care. He just wanted the pain to stop.”
Air whistled in and out of Darius’s rapidly rising and falling chest. A scream scored his throat, but he didn’t have enough breath to release it. He squeezed his eyes shut, battling the sting that heralded tears. Tears for Isobel’s senseless suffering at her husband’s and family’s hands. Tears for the man he’d loved and obviously hadn’t known as well as he’d thought. Tears for the agony of conscience Gage succumbed to at the end.
“I’m sorry, Darius,” Baron continued. “Sorry I lied to you, to Helena and Gabriella. Gage didn’t ask me to keep the truth a secret, but I did because I couldn’t bear causing them more pain on top of losing him. Even if keeping the secret meant standing by while Isobel was villainized. I made a choice between protecting his memory and protecting her, and now I realize my lie by omission is hurting not just my wife, daughter and Isobel, butyou, a man I love as a second son. I can’t continue to be silent. I can’t allow her to be crucified when she’s been guilty of nothing but falling in love with my son. Both of my sons.”
Trembling, Darius shoved to his feet, his desk chair rolling back across the hardwood floor. He pressed his fists to the desktop, wrestling against the need to lash out, to rail over the injustice and torment they’d all inflicted on Isobel.
Stalking across the room, he tunneled his fingers through his hair, gripping the strands and pulling until tiny pinpricks of pain stung his scalp.
“You’re going to tell Helena and Gabriella the truth,” he demanded of Baron, who’d also stood, silently watching him.
“Yes,” he murmured. “I planned on doing it today, but I felt you deserved to hear it first. Darius.” Baron lifted his hands and spread them out in a plea of mercy, of surrender. “I’m so sorry.”
“Sorry?” Darius laughed, the sound crackling and brittle with cold fury. “Sorry doesn’t give her back the years where she was abandoned, left to raise a child on her own. If you knew Aiden was Gage’s, why didn’t you help her?”
“Gage said he believed Aiden was his, but I didn’t know for sure. And she’d refused the paternity test, which deepened my doubts. And honestly, I hated her after Gage’s death. I wanted her to suffer because I no longer had my son. I didn’t want any reminders of him around—and that included her and a baby that might or might not have been Gage’s. It was selfish, spiteful. Yes, I know that now, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself for it. Gage told me I’d raised him to be a better man. But I don’t know if I did.”
Darius clenched his jaw, choking on his vitriolic response.
Helena and Gabriella might not have known the truth, but their behavior toward Isobel since she’d reentered their lives had been spiteful, hurtful. So unlike the gracious, kind, affectionate women he’d known for over a decade.
And he’d excused it.
Which meant he’d condoned it, just as Baron had.
Grief and searing pain shredded him.
He’d told Isobel he would never leave her out to dry. Throw her to the wolves. But he’d done it. He’d broken more than a contract. He’d shattered her trust, his word.
His concern had been about betraying the Wellses, when he’d ended up betraying and tearing apart the family he’d created, the family he’d longed for—with Isobel and Aiden. The roar he’d been trying to dam up rolled out of him on a rough, raw growl. Every moment they’d shared since the night of the blackout bombarded him.
Laughing together in the hallway.
Sharing the stories of his parents’ death and Gage in the dark.
Touching her.
