Crash Into Me(116)

He knew. He knew who'd killed my father.

Holding my hands in his, he brought them to his mouth in a kiss. Quietly, he said, "Nina, I never met your father. I need you to believe me. I didn't harm your father."

"Why did the person who wrote that letter say you'd know?" I asked, praying to hear that he knew nothing about my father's murder.

"I need you to understand. Until my father and brother died in that plane crash, I wasn't part of the business. I hadn't found what I wanted to do, but I knew I didn't want to run hotels or anything else they did. I was your typical wealthy kid in his mid-twenties drinking and jamming whatever I could up my nose. I'm not proud of that, but I need you to know I wasn't part of what went on with them."

The man on the floor in front of me seemed so strange now. I'd never known anything about him like that. "Tristan, I need to know what this is all about."

He squeezed my hands and continued in a shaky voice. "When my father and brother died, I was thrust into everything with the business. I had to be that person I'd never wanted to be on top of learning how to run all the businesses, particularly the Richmonts. I had no idea what either of them had done. For months, I found out things about my father and Taylor that I'd never imagined they could do. Then one day I began sifting through documents related to a real estate deal my father and brother had been involved in." He stopped a moment and then said, "I didn't know why, but your father's name was on one of the documents."

Documents? "Why would my father's name be anywhere in papers of your father's?"

Tristan began to speak but his voice cracked and he stopped. "I didn't know. Then when I began digging, I found a slush fund my father used to pay for things he didn't want some on the board to know about. It wasn't until I dug into the money he spent there that I found out why your father would be involved in anything with my family's company. I swear I wasn't involved in what my father did."

"No, don't tell me your father was part of why my father died. Please don't say that."

"I'm so sorry, Nina. He must have been investigating a real estate deal and my father..." He couldn't finish his sentence, so I did.

With a sob, I said the words that broke my heart. "Your father had my father killed because he was getting too close to something he was doing."

Tristan buried his face in my lap and pleaded, "I swear I didn't know. I wasn't part of the business then. If I was, I wouldn't have let that happen. I couldn't get your father's death out of my mind. I wanted to do something to try to make up for what had happened."

I looked down at his head in my lap and realized what he was saying. "It wasn't a coincidence that we met, was it?"

He said nothing but lifted his head to look up at me, and I knew the answer. "No. I was sickened by what my father had done. I needed to do something, so I researched everything about your father and found out about you and your sister. I knew you lived right in Brooklyn and found out you worked at a gallery in SoHo. I just needed to try to fix what had been done, to see if I could help any."

His sorrow touched my heart, but then all my insecurities blew up inside me. "So you thought you'd just come by and see what the child of the man your father had murdered looked like? Maybe throw some money at her to make yourself feel better."

"Nina, I swear I didn't mean any harm. It's all I had to give and I thought if I could help you, then maybe some part of your life could be better."

I pushed him away in disgust and leaped up off the bed. "So that first night you didn't like me or want to spend time with me? You just wanted to take me for a ride in your expensive car and foist some cash on me to ease your conscience?"