My skin prickles, feeling two sizes too small for my body. “You knew then . . .”

“That your father was more worried about sneaking around on your mother than dedicating himself to the company I gave everything to build? Yes.”

I lower myself onto a marble bench, trying to process the bomb he just dropped on me.

“I wanted time to groom you before I died, and I didn’t know how long I would have,” he continues. “The legacy has to be protected, no matter what it takes. My great-great-grandfather didn’t trust his sons not to tear it apart to each take their own piece. So he adopted the English entailment mindset. The oldest son would get everything, and he would take care of everyone. But your father was only interested in taking care of himself. I couldn’t take the risk that he would drain the bank accounts, sell off the assets, and run away with one of his women.”

“Did he know that?”

Commodore looks off into the distance. “Yes. He knew. The day of the accident . . . we fought. I lost my temper. I told him he would get nothing from me.”

My elbows drop to my knees and I clasp my hands together. I lower my head to rest on my fist. “Jesus Christ. So that night . . .”

“He was leaving for good, and I knew it. I wasn’t going to stop him. But instead . . . I killed him.”

My stomach plummets as I look up at my grandfather. “You were there? The night of the accident?”

He shakes his head. “No. But I might as well have been. It was my decision that put his car on that bridge.”

“Jesus fucking Christ. Why are you telling me this now?”

Commodore is quiet for several moments. “Because the sins of the past always come back to haunt us, and what you don’t know can hurt you. I shouldn’t have kept the paternity claim from you. That was a mistake, and now we have to do something about it.”

“What do you want to do?”

My grandfather leans back in his chair and threads the fingers of both his hands together. He taps his thumbs, and I suspect that whatever he says next is going to change everything.

“This morning, my private investigator found a marriage license between my son and Renee Rango dated two years before he married your mother.”

I stare at him in shock, barely able to grasp the implications of what he’s saying. “When was the divorce?”

He presses his lips together, and my gut sinks lower. No . . . he’s not going to say what I think he’s going to say . . .

“As far as we can tell . . . there wasn’t one.”

Twenty-Six

Lincoln

The past

As impatient as I was to try to see Whitney again, I knew I needed to have all my facts together before I did.

For the last two days, I’d been on the phone with an investigator in LA who was compiling a report on Ricky Rango. Turned out, the motherfucker didn’t just cheat on her once, he’d cheated on her multiple times. As the investigator reported back with each instance, it made me sick to my stomach.