The hot flash of betrayal washed over me. “How could you not tell me?”

“Because your mother asked me not to, and my loyalty is to her above all. Even you, son. We were determined to finish out the contract and be done with the whole thing, but it seems things are more complicated than we realized.”

“Who read over the contract? Marty?” Marcus asked after their old incompetent lawyer, his brain firing behind his eyes like a machine gun.

At that, Dad flinched. “Your mother.”

This time, we all groaned.

“Oh my God,” Luke breathed. “We are so screwed.”

Marcus scrubbed a hand over his weary face. “We are. This letter says something about a noncompete. Why would she sign a noncompete with Bower?”

“Because she believed she had no choice,” Dad said, defeated.

“We could have helped,” Marcus shot. “All you had to do was ask, and we would have.”

The door opened again, marking the entrance of Mom, a banker box overflowing with papers nestled in her arms. Her face bent in pain, eyes accusing when they met Marcus’s.

“This wasn’t your responsibility. It was my fault, and I wouldn’t drag you, my children, into the mess I made. I know I’m not smart, and I have no head for business, as evidenced by my gratuitous mismanagement of the business that is my legacy. I have enough regrets without drowning you all with me. If you hadn’t discovered it, Marcus, if you all hadn’t insisted on taking over, I would have just let Longbourne die. It might have put me into the ground to do it, but there is no world that exists in which I would willingly put my children in danger, financial or otherwise.”

But Marcus shook his head at her tearful plea. “Don’t you understand the position this puts us in? If you had just told us from the beginning, all of this could have been avoided. Every time you keep a secret from us, the danger multiplies. Running away from it only makes things worse. Case in point.” He held up the letter in display.

Mom’s chin rose, nose in the air as she strode toward him. “It must be very fulfilling to look down at me from up there on your high horse, Marcus Bennet.” She shoved the box into his hands.

“Nothing about this fulfills me, Mother,” was his reply. “I’ll start with the contract, figure out what we’re dealing with. Until then, it’s business as usual. No more surprises,” he said with a hard look around the room. “As your investor and the current owner of Longbourne, that’s not a suggestion.”

And with that, he headed for the door, opening and closing it with more force than was necessary.