“You—” Gray sputtered, entirely at a loss. “Why are you telling me this?”

Mandy smiled softly at him. “Oh, I don’t know. Clearing the air, I guess? You were unfinished business for a very long time. Tell me, what have you been up to the past thirty-eight years? I want the whole truth and nothing but the truth.”

That was a lawyer line. Gray hadn’t gone to trial for Lacy’s murder but knew enough about the legal world to be aware that those words were part of the oath you made before you testified. Had she been arrested before and gone to trial or was this a coincidence?

“I went to MIT,” he began uneasily.

He had never told anyone the whole truth about his life. The basics should suffice, right?

“I graduated in 2006 and moved back to Manhattan. I worked for Apple and helped develop some of their tech. When apps started becoming popular, I developed a couple on my own and they made it big. I became a millionaire from the second one and decided to open my own app-making company.”

All of that was fairly innocent but he didn’t include all of the stalking he did of the Hales as he tried to figure out how to overthrow them. Or everything he did in the dark to have enough power to do that. Or how he changed his mind and decided to let Aaron overthrow their father for him once he figured out what he was up to.

Mandy raised an eyebrow. “That seems pretty innocuous. How’d you end up in prison then?”

Gray choked on his drink. How on earth did she figure out he had been to prison? Unless…had she overheard his conversation with Aaron in the restaurant? If so, exactly how much?

“How…” he coughed. “How do you know about that?”

She shrugged. “I happened to hear you talking to your friend. Interestingly enough, that’s something we have in common. I spent nine years locked up because my creep of an ex-husband laid a hand on my kid and I stabbed his eye out. Makes me real popular with the men, let me tell ya.”

The light in her eyes grew teasing toward the end of her little speech and he was stunned. The surprises never stopped with this one. She went to prison? She stabbed someone in the eye? She had a kid? That was a lot of information from a single sentence!

All Gray was able to get out after that was “You have a kid?”

“Yep. She’s twenty-seven and married with an adorable two-year-old son. I got knocked up by a real loser of a foster brother when I was sixteen and was kicked out. Britt and I lived in a women’s shelter for a while but that’s not important,” Mandy said with a wave of her hand.

If that wasn’t important, what was? What kind of life had his one-time foster sister lived?

It suddenly occurred to him that Mandy might be the one person who would actually understand his full story. She had stabbed someone without regret (or so it seemed) for the sake of her family. There was a decent chance she wouldn’t judge him for what happened with Lacy.

Could he really be himself for once and really, truly talk to someone? Even Aaron didn’t know everything about him. It was obvious he didn’t trust him so why would Gray bother to tell someone uninterested?

Not one person alive knew the full story. Letting it all out to someone who could get it might be nice. It wasn’t like he had anything to lose anyway.

Gray found himself laughing. “Alright, you got me. What I told you is the tip of the iceberg. You want the real story? It’s not as pretty.”

Mandy shrugged. “Who needs pretty? I want to know what you actually went through.”

A tiny piece of the stone surrounding his heart chipped away at her words. So he told her.

His days hacking into his biological family’s life to get revenge for his mother’s murder. Trying to fill the emptiness in his life with money and women because he thought it was what someone of his father’s station would do. How he hated his brother until he realized they were on the same side.

Getting involved with Lacy Knighton trying to learn more about Aaron only to discover that woman was a threat to the only family he had left. Caring enough to act on it. Murdering Lacy. Getting caught and going to prison.

He finished by telling her about building up his empire again from the inside, Aaron’s lackluster prison visits, and how lonely and jealous he had been since getting out and seeing how happy his brother had been the past twenty-five years. 

“Pathetic, huh?” Gray asked ruefully. “Pretty sure my sob story is even worse than yours.”

“So you have family but he only tolerates you because you went to prison for him and doesn’t seem to want you near his perfect little family. Geez, Mikey. Your life sucks,” Mandy said with a slight laugh.

Her expression grew more serious and she gripped his arm. The touch was somehow rough and comforting at the same time. Gray couldn’t recall the last time anyone’s touch could be considered comforting.

“I’m sorry you went through all that. It must have been terribly lonely. Must still be terribly lonely.”

Half of a smile made it onto his face. She was trying to make him feel better when she had been through a nightmare of her own. “What about you? Your life hasn’t been all that great either. But at least you have a family that wants you.”

Mandy’s eyes clouded. Her hand moved from his arm to his hands. She clasped his hands in hers and met his gaze earnestly.

 “You don’t have to be alone, you know. Even if your brother doesn’t care, I do. I always have.”

Gray’s heart skipped a beat at the implications. Did he really not have to be alone? Mandy hadn’t given him a horrified look after hearing all he had done. Her sympathy and kindness remained.

She wasn’t offering her heart romantically but she was offering him a type of companionship. At least that’s what he thought. What was she offering exactly?

Gray pulled his hands back. “You don’t have to do that because you feel sorry for me. I don’t need anybody’s pity. My life is unfulfilling but at least I have my money. I can go anywhere and do anything.”

He was trying to make himself feel better while simultaneously attempting to salvage his wounded pride. Mandy saw right through him in a second.

“Uh huh but who will you do those things with? People aren’t meant to be alone, Mikey.”

It was weird being called Mikey again. It made him feel five years old. But at the same time it was grounding, in a way. Someone remembered him from a time he had long tried to forget.

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