The Note by Natalie Wrye (urban books to read .TXT) 📗

too much for a message, and I called last night but your phone went straight to voicemail and your inbox was full.” He expels a long breath, taking a serious pause before inhaling another one. “You know it’s been hard for me and Mare over the past two months. Since the funeral of her father and all.”

I nod at nothing. Because I did know.

“I’m sure you know that cleaning up the affairs of a law mogul like Fitzgerald Sparrow after his passing isn’t easy, but we’re pulling through. I’d have called sooner, but there was so much going on. Guess I don’t really have a choice at this point.” He exhales soundly, and the sound is heavy, weighing down on me as I wait, the chatter of houseguests in the luxurious manor clamoring softly in the background. His sigh is soft. “Soph, we need to talk.”

My heart sinks at the familiar four words.

Four words no one on earth wants to hear. I perch against the powder room sink.

My foot won’t stop shaking, knocking back and forth as I stand, and the need to get out of this damn house has me gnawing on my bottom lip, anticipating the worst.

Like someone knocking.

Or Noah finding me.

And right now, my heart can’t comprehend anything worse. I want to leave. Right now.

“Can’t it wait, Jess?” I stare at the doorknob. “I have something I have to do first.”

“Sure,” Jesse shoots back in his classic lawyer-type tone. “That is, unless you want the crazy woman who stole your information to find you before I do. I’d prefer you not end up on the next episode of ‘Fatally Attracted Snapped’ but that’s just me.”

My ears fill with static. “What?” I’m not sure I heard him right. But he repeats it.

“I was using the counsel of an old Harvard friend to find out information about Chris Jackson’s money laundering businesses around the city, since she tipped me off to a fraudulent deal with a luxury condominium building named Millennium Gardens. Ever heard of it?”

“I’m sure it’s another Manhattan place I can’t afford, so no.”

“Well, in exchange, for details about that deal, I gave her information that I had. Professional information.” He stalls. “And personal information about…about…” He hesitates, his words gone soft, causing a lump to build in my throat that I can’t clear.

“About what, Jess?”

“About Dad.” I hear my brother sigh over the phone, his deep voice heavy. “I told her all about Dad, about his probation, about him working with Chris Jackson all those years. About the crimes.”

I swallow air. “So, this woman knows everything about us? About our family?”

“Pretty much. And she’s only recently gone off the grid…after I told her you were my sister. I don’t know what the hell is going on, except she seems to know you. Ever met a Cynthia Stratford?”

The name doesn’t ring a bell, and I tell Jesse so. But it doesn’t stop the fear that enters his deep voice, chilling me to the very bone. I hold the phone closer as he begins to whisper.

“Yeah? Well, she knows you, Soph. Or at least she wants to. She’s a blonde woman. About five-foot-seven. Has cheekbones that could crack mirrors. And she’s head legal counsel for Quinn Real Estate Group, Incorporated. Personal lawyer to Quinn Real Estate CEO, Noah Quinn, out of Australia.”

The room in front of me tilts immediately, shock sucking my mouth dry. The foot that’s been shaking stops, and I realize that nothing makes sense.

Not a single thing about the man I slept with last night.

Calling a cab to come out to the Quinn Estates isn’t easy, but that’s exactly what I do when I’m off the phone with Jesse.

The rain outside hits the huge house even harder than before, and by the time I slink out of the downstairs bathroom, a woman with a headset who could only be a wedding planner corrals servers, bartenders, tables and lots of wine bottles inside from the heavy showers, clapping her hands.

“Okay, everyone spread out! We’re going to have to change plans. If this rain doesn’t let up, we might have to have the wedding inside.”

I hide behind a corner as they bumrush in, taking over the entire foyer. Inside?

How big is this house, really? I tried to get an idea yesterday as I walked the grounds, but even I am unable to come to terms with how humongous Noah’s family’s estate might be.

Watching five hundred dollar bottles of the best champagne and diamond-studded decorations cross in front of my face almost feels surreal to a woman whose rent was rarely on time, who thought polyester was high fashion, who sometimes stole quarters from the tip jar at work.

If Jesse knew how much I’d struggled these days, he would kill me. I hadn’t let my brother in on my issues.

We Somersets were prideful; my father could tell you that.

By the age of seven, I’d learned to shoplift with the best of thieves thanks to dear old Dad, and by ten I could hot-wire a car faster than most people could start one.

I was eight when my father went away, and that was when the stories began. Aunt Roberta, kneeling beside me, whispering in my tiny ears tales of how my father was a hero. A prince. A legend.

Whispering that the men who’d hidden him away in prison were the wrong ones—the ‘bad guys.’”

And I’d believed it.

Believed it enough to start my own life of crime when he was gone and Jesse, just as lost as I was, resorted to a gang lifestyle to put food on Aunt Roberta’s table.

Being bussed to a juvenile detention center at seventeen was enough to turn Jesse’s life around, pushing him to eventually become one of the best trial lawyers in the country.

But that was where my fairytale started and ended.

College debt and a major most of Manhattan corporate didn’t give a shit about left me little options, and when I graduated from the local university in the Bronx, I’d been back